Durham District School Board solidifies its ranking as Ontario’s WORST school board by BANNING parents and media from its meetings

We hate to say we told you so – actually what are we saying? – we LOVE to tell you we told you so.

And last week you may recall that we labeled the educrats who toil at the Durham District School Board as control freaks and censorious thugs. They will kill the mic of a parent who dares to ask an insensitive question. If that doesn’t work, they’ll have a security guard or police officer frogmarch that parent out the building. And if the parents in the cheap seats dare to heckle, these egregious educrats will simply shut down the meeting, retreat to their offices, and kill the livestream. Incredible.

So, what does this awful school board do for an encore? You might not believe this, but these tin pot dictators have actually BANNED parents from attending the next two school board meetings including the one that took place last Tuesday evening.

Why? Well, it was all due to “safety” concerns! This is according to the woefully woke Camille Williams-Taylor, director of education for the DDSB.

In a statement, Williams-Taylor had his to say:

On May 15, at the most recent meeting of the Board, the public was evacuated by security and police. Comments that were yelled out or muttered were heard by some members of the audience, in some cases, or by the whole room in others. Some of these comments were homophobic, transphobic, and hateful. Other comments and behaviours were intimidating and harmful by tone or content. To be clear, the DDSB firmly rejects and condemns this behaviour.

We are considering how to proceed with future Board and Standing Committee meetings in a manner that permits the engagement of the public while securing the safety of all participants.

We have a responsibility to the safety of all participants in our learning and working spaces, of which our boardroom is one, both virtually and in-person. On [May15], staff, students, and members of the public were made to feel unsafe as a result of the behaviours of some members of the audience. These behaviours exemplified hatred, intolerance, bullying, and harassment, and so, the public gallery was closed. In my optimism that the audience would ultimately return to a climate of respectful decorum, I waited too long to evacuate the gallery. This resulted in harm, and for this, I sincerely apologize.

Of note, Williams-Taylor gives no examples of alleged homophobic, transphobic, and hateful statements. In fact, parents we spoke to who attended the May 15 meeting cannot recall any example of what she is referencing. In fact , some parents feel her comments are borderline defamatory.

That said, this idea of banning parents is outrageous. The idea that trustees knows what’s best for the children of these parents is staggering. And it should be noted that the DDSB is a taxpayer-funded school board. What right does the DDSB have in banning the stakeholders who foot the bills? For that matter, what right does it have to stock pornographic books in elementary school libraries? Diversity?

So it was that many parents and their allies gathered at the Whitby, Ont.-based DDSB last Tuesday evening. They were met by security guards and police officers who told them to vacate the premises (which they did, moving their protest to the public sidewalks.) Many protestors wore green tape covering their mouths emblazoned with the word, “SILENCED.”

In the final analysis, congratulations go out to the DDSB educrats. You have moved beyond censorious thugs and control freaks. By your despicable behaviour, you have proven yourselves to be downright psychotic. And again we ask, where-oh-where is Ontario’s milquetoast Minister of Education, Stephen Lecce, who hides in his ivory tower e as the DDSB and several other school boards continue to violate the rights of parents, all in the name of wokeism.