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Education

Catholic school board members oust fellow trustee for opposing LGBT agenda, talking to media

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7 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

One of Monique LaGrange’s fellow trustees said she ‘violated the Trustee Code of Conduct by speaking to the media about what the Board did and about gender ideology.’

A Canadian Catholic school trustee opposed to extreme gender ideology and who compared the LGBT agenda targeting kids to that of “brainwashing” Nazi propaganda has been “disqualified” from her position after her fellow board members voted her out because she spoke to alternative media.

On Tuesday, the Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools (RDCRS) board of directors voted 3-1 to disqualify Trustee Monique LaGrange. As a result of being voted out, LaGrange later resigned from her position.

LaGrange’s lawyer, Alberta-based attorney James Kitchen of Liberty Coalition Canada, told LifeSiteNews that the RDCRS voted to kick her out “pursuant to section 87 of the Education Act (disqualification).”

Kitchen said that one of LaGrange’s fellow trustees “submitted a second complaint that Monique had violated the Trustee Code of Conduct by speaking to the media (specially Laura-Lynn and Talk Truth) about what the Board did and about gender ideology.”

On September 26, the RDCS passed a motion to mandate that LaGrange undergo “LGBTQ+” and holocaust “sensitivity” training for her social media post.

One of her fellow trustees had complained that because she spoke to the media against gender ideology, after she was ordered to undergo the training, she should be “disqualified.”

LaGrange said that her being disqualified shows that “Alberta has an abuse of power happening, beginning at the lowest level of politics,” in comments made to alternative non-legacy media.

She added that she hopes her removal “motivates Albertans to step up and replace these woke boards in our province.”

LaGrange said she will continue to “move forward and defend our families, our children and our freedom.”

LifeSiteNews contacted LaGrange for additional comment and will later provide more information on her ousting.

In a media statement yesterday, the RDCRS said that LaGrange had violated “sanctions issued on September 26, 2023, and further violations of Board Policy and the Education Act.”

“As a result of the disqualification, as per Section 90 of the Education Act, LaGrange resigned from her position this morning. Effective today, Mrs. LaGrange is no longer a member of the Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools Board of Trustees,” the RDCRS noted.

The RDCS did not specify which sanctions LaGrange had violated.

LaGrange initially came under fire when she posted to social media in September an image showing kids in Nazi Germany waving swastika flags during a parade, with the bottom of the post showing an image of kids waving LGBT “pride” flags along with the text, “Brainwashing is brainwashing.”

After her post went viral, calls for her to step down grew from leftist Alberta politicians and others. This culminated in her removal as director of the Alberta Catholic School Trustees’ Association (ACSTA).

LaGrange was elected in 2021 and said about being kicked out of the ACSTA that it was “unfortunate that ACSTA decided to make a rash decision to remove me, refusing to acknowledge that the heart of my message was to protect our children and to nourish their God-given identities.”

LaGrange to fight her removal

Kitchen told LifeSiteNews that as far as the next steps for LaGrange, they are looking to have her disqualification reviewed by a court.

They want a “Judicial review application to the Alberta King’s Bench,” Kitchen said.

“We will be doing that here in December,” he said.

“This meme is not comparing or attacking the LGBTQ community, it is about protecting our children and keeping parents as the primary educators,” she added.

There has been growing opposition in Canada to the teaching of radical transgender ideology in schools, which not only impacts children but also those in education who voice their opposition to such teaching.

In recent months, many concerned Canadians have protested LGBT indoctrination in the nation’s schools. In September, thousands from coast to coast participated in the Million Person March.

Extreme leftists trying to push their LGBT agenda in the classrooms has led to the conservative-led governments of Saskatchewan and New Brunswick implementing parental consent policies into law.

Saskatchewan, under Premier Scott Moe, recently passed a new policy protecting parental rights that states parents must be told if their child changes “genders” at school.

Moe followed the example of New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs, who was condemned earlier this year by LGBT activists for reviewing the province’s “gender identity” policy that allowed schools to hide students’ “transgender” status from parents.

Under the new policy, teachers need parental consent to use different names or pronouns for students younger than 16.

At its recent AGM, members of the ruling United Conservative Party (UCP) under leader Danielle Smith passed a host of resolutions calling for parental rights to be protected.

Smith told 3,800 UCP members that she unequivocally defends parental rights, saying society depends on “strong and nurturing families” and parents are the “primary caregivers and educators” of their children.

Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) leader and MP Pierre Poilievre recently blasted what he called “radical gender ideology” targeting kids in public schools.

While LGBT activists have gone after the likes of Higgs and Moe for their slight pushback against gender ideology, a recent Leger poll has shown that Canadians in general favor parental rights in education, especially regarding the material being shared with children.

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Red Deer

Expelled member of Red Deer Catholic School Board will have judicial reviews heard May 1-3

Published on

News release from The Democracy Fund

TDF and James Kitchen Defend School Board Trustee Monique LaGrange

Briefs were filed in Monique LaGrange’s case on the week of April 8, 2024.


RED DEER: The Democracy Fund (TDF) has partnered with lawyer James Kitchen to represent former school board trustee Monique LaGrange as she takes The Board of Trustees of Red Deer Catholic Separate School Division to court for kicking her off the Board because they took offence to one of Ms. LaGrange’s social media posts.

Mr. Kitchen filed two applications for judicial review in December 2023, challenging the Board’s decisions to penalize Mrs. LaGrange and disqualify her from sitting on the Board. Mr. Kitchen has now filed his briefs, which lay out in detail how the Board’s decisions are procedurally unfair and unreasonable and should be overturned by the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta.

The two judicial reviews will be heard virtually by a Red Deer judge over the course of a three-day hearing on May 1-3, 2024, starting at 2:00 PM on Wednesday, May 1. Members of the public are encouraged to attend by accessing this link.

In Alberta, judicial reviews are heard on the basis of a record of documents compiled and submitted to the Court by the decision-maker, which is supposed to include everything presented to the decision-maker at the time the decision was made. In this case, Mrs. LaGrange had submitted to the Board 33 pages of emails and letters from Albertans who supported her. At first, the Board failed to provide these supportive emails and letters to the Court, but that changed when Mr. Kitchen filed an application to compel the Board to do so. Redacted versions of these emails and letters, which are also quoted at length in the briefs, can be viewed here, starting at page 113 of 169.

Mrs. LaGrange was democratically elected to the Board in 2021. Despite this, the Board expelled her because she allegedly failed to comply with sanctions imposed on her by the Board in September 2023 for posting a meme to her Facebook account that some people found offensive. The impugned meme depicted two side-by-side photographs, one of children holding swastika flags and the other of children holding pride progress flags. The meme, which drew much support but also some disapprobation from the community, included a caption stating, “Brainwashing is brainwashing.”

The Board asked Mrs. LaGrange to apologize for the meme, which she declined to do because she believed she had done nothing wrong. In speaking to the Western Standard, Mrs. LaGrange stated, “I was elected to stand up and protect our children, and that is what I am doing.” Among other things, the Board, on September 26, 2023, ordered LaGrange to undergo sensitivity training at her own expense for allegedly breaching their code of conduct by posting the meme and to refrain from making public comments about sexual minorities in her official capacity as a Trustee.

The Board subsequently alleged Mrs. LaGrange had breached some of these sanctions and voted to disqualify Mrs. LaGrange as a trustee.

TDF and lawyer James Kitchen have chosen to defend Mrs. LaGrange to defend the free speech rights of all Canadians, especially in the context of statements made by democratically elected representatives.

To support Mrs. LaGrange, please consider making a tax-deductible donation on this page.

About The Democracy Fund:

Founded in 2021, The Democracy Fund (TDF) is a Canadian charity dedicated to constitutional rights, advancing education, and relieving poverty. TDF promotes constitutional rights through litigation and public education and supports access to justice initiatives for Canadians whose civil liberties have been infringed by government lockdowns and other public policy responses to the pandemic.

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Education

Solar eclipse school closures underscore impact of learning loss

Published on

From the Fraser Institute

By Michael Zwaagstra

Instead of making every effort to protect instructional time and ensure that schools remain open, students are being sent home for ever more dubious reasons.

Schools are closed out of an “abundance of caution.” No doubt you’ve heard this phrase many times over the last few years. It was commonly used during the pandemic when provincial governments closed schools for months on end—even after it was widely known that COVID-19 posed little risk to most children.

Ontario schools were closed for 135 days during the pandemic, more than any other province. Parents and teachers are still trying to recover from this enormous learning loss. Clearly, this was one situation where an abundance of caution caused more harm than it prevented.

Sadly, it appears that provincial officials and school board administrators haven’t learned from their mistakes. Instead of making every effort to protect instructional time and ensure that schools remain open, students are being sent home for ever more dubious reasons.

For example, school boards across Ontario cancelled classes on April 8, the day of the solar eclipse. Apparently administrators felt there was too great a risk that students might look at the sun during the eclipse and damage their eyes. No doubt more than a few of them glanced at the sun while sitting at home that day. However, there was no need for the school closures to be as total as the eclipse. If they were really that concerned, school officials could have kept students indoors or simply altered the dismissal times.

Initially, the Waterloo Region District School Board (WRDSB) took a common sense approach by stating that schools would remain open and teachers would use the eclipse as a learning opportunity for students. Then, only days before the eclipse, the WRDSB suddenly reversed itself and said their schools would indeed close on April 8, and students would have the opportunity to engage in “asynchronous remote learning” instead.

This decision sent the unfortunate message that WRDSB trustees are incapable of standing up to pressure from people who think that schools must close at the slightest sign of real or presumed danger. As for the notion that remote learning was an adequate substitute, our experience during the pandemic showed that for most parents and students, remote learning was thin gruel indeed.

As a further sign of how far paranoia has crept into the education system, some teacher unions demanded they too should be able to work from home during the eclipse. For example, Jeff Sorensen, president of the Hamilton local teacher union, said, “If it’s not safe for children [to be at school], then it’s not safe for adults.”

The union representing Toronto’s Catholic teachers made a similar request. In a memo to its members, local union president Deborah Karam said the union was “intensifying our efforts” to ensure that teachers be allowed to complete their professional development activities at home that day. Surprisingly, no union leader has yet explained why teachers would be less likely to look at the sun while at home than at school.

Of course, school boards must focus on education while also looking out for the wellbeing of students. But there’s more to student wellbeing than simply shielding them from all perceived risks. Extended school closures cause considerable harm to students because they lead to significant learning loss.

By normalizing the practise of closing schools at the slightest sign of danger, real or perceived, we risk raising a generation of young people who lack the ability to do a proper risk assessment. Life itself comes with risk and if we all took the same approach to driving a car that school boards take to school closures, would never set foot in a vehicle again.

Ontario students had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience a solar eclipse in an educational environment, guided by their teachers. While some parents no doubt taught their children about the eclipse, many others had to be at work.

By closing schools out of an “abundance of caution,” school boards sent the message that school is not a place where unique educational events can be experienced together. Students should be in school during events such as the eclipse, not sitting at home.

If we’re going to exercise an abundance of caution, let’s be a lot more cautious about the risks of closing schools at the drop of a hat.

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