Education
Teacher refuses to give up fight for free speech after being canceled for objecting to LGBT books
From LifeSiteNews
Ontario’s Divisional Court dismissed Carolyn Burjoski’s application for a judicial review of the January 2022 decision by school trustees to kick her off the board, but she will appeal the decision.
A now-retired Canadian teacher who was silenced for voicing concerns over LGBT books in school libraries vowed to continue to fight for her right to free speech after she was muzzled by her board.
Last year, longtime Waterloo Regional District School Board (WRDSB) teacher Carolyn Burjoski was stopped mid-presentation by then-board chairman Scott Piatkowski at a Board of Trustees meeting on January 17, 2022, because she was criticizing LGBT books in school libraries.
Piatkowski went as far as to expel Burjoski from the meeting. The next day she was made to work from home and told to keep her mouth shut under the threat of losing her retirement benefits. Piatkowski then told legacy media that Burjoski was “transphobic” and was using “hate speech” in the board meeting. Of note is that Piatkowski is a longtime supporter of the socialist NDP party.
Burjoski’s fight for justice began after she was removed from the board meeting because she exposed the dangers of LGBT books in school libraries. According to court documents, during her presentation, Burjoski revealed that some of the books made it “seem simple or even cool to take puberty blockers and opposite sex hormones.”
“I was ejected from a Board of Trustees meeting for criticizing the age appropriateness of sexual content in children’s books in elementary school libraries,” she said.
In May 2022, Burjoski filed a $1.7 million defamation suit against the WRDSB and Piatkowski that remains before the courts.
In June 2022, Burjoski applied for a judicial review of Piatkowski’s decision to suddenly stop her presentation, claiming it violated Ontario’s Human Rights code.
On November 29, three judges with Ontario’s Divisional Court dismissed Burjoski’s application for a judicial review of the January 2022 decision by her trustees to kick her off the board.
School board showed ‘display of authoritarian speech suppression in a public forum,’ says canceled teacher
Burjoski, in an update to social media last Thursday, said she would fight the dismissal of the judicial review with an appeal.
“I was silenced and removed for voicing my concerns about age-inappropriate content in some elementary school books. My respectful presentation was cut short by the chair who wrongly accused me of violating the Human Rights Code,” Burjoski said.
“This was not just a violation of my right to free expression, but a stark display of authoritarian speech suppression in a public forum where diverse viewpoints should be welcomed and discussed.”
Burjoski said that her judicial review being dismissed “is deeply concerning” and could set a “troubling precedent for free expression in Canada, empowering school boards and other public bodies to silence and censure every voice they disagree with.”
“So today, I am escalating this matter to the Ontario Court of Appeal by filing a notice of motion for leave to appeal. This is not just about a school board meeting. It’s about the integrity of open dialog on important issues in our educational system and other public forums.”
Burjoski noted how a true democracy “thrives on diverse opinions and the freedom to express them.”
“It’s vital that our judicial system protect our charter rights against administrative overreach that stifles our free speech,” she noted.
“I am fully committed to this cause and am deeply grateful to the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms for sponsoring this appeal pro bono.”
She encouraged “everyone” to support JCCF financially in its “relentless work to safeguard Canadian freedoms.”
Burjoski suffered a breakdown from the entire ordeal, which was so bad that she had to be taken to the hospital by ambulance. She said she is “still in recovery from this trauma.”
She has documented her ordeal on her website cancelledteacher.com.
Yesterday, LifeSiteNews reported that the WRDSB recently decided to get rid of the word “parent” on a slew of official documents and replace it with “caregiver” or “family.” Not all WRDSB members were on board with the change, however.
From the Fraser Institute
According to a new study published by the Fraser Institute, if Canada wants to remain competitive with emerging economies around the world, we must increase our math, science and reading scores—and not simply pursue high levels of “equity and inclusion” as the primary goal for our schools.
Indeed, highly equitable and inclusive schools—with declining PISA scores, as is currently the case in Canada—do a disservice to students and society at large.
Why? Because higher test scores translate into greater “knowledge capital”—that is, the full body of knowledge available to an economy—and boost economic growth (and, incidentally, the tax revenues that fund our schools).
Indeed, the goal should be equitable access to a quality education. And the most realistic and meaningful way to measure student progress is through PISA tests, which every three years assess the performance of 15-year-olds worldwide in core subjects of math, science and reading rather than the limited curriculum objectives used in provincial testing, which can only show progress or decline within individual school systems. In today’s world, where competition is truly global, we must know how our students and schools perform compared to their peers in other countries, especially the “Asian Tigers” of Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and Tiawan whose rapidly growing economies have been driven by rising PISA scores.
Obviously, countries with higher test scores can teach other countries how to improve—although there are limits and some traps here. Attempting to cut and paste Singapore’s or Korea’s much more meritocratic systems of highly competitive student assessment and selection would be impractical and impolitic in Canada. Even so, policymakers should consider reinstating more meaningful meritocratic norms in Canadian schools to encourage and recognize academic achievement. Nothing succeeds like success, except recognized and rewarded success.
Closer to home, other provinces could benefit from considering why Quebec is such a stellar performer in math and why Alberta has the highest overall PISA test score average of all provinces.
But fair warning, recent attempts at school improvement in Canada show that top-down one-size-fits-all changes—including extending compulsory attendance, reducing average class size and tinkering with course content—have had little positive effect on student performance, although they may please teacher unions. If policymakers want to achieve more equitable success for more students, they should introduce more flexibility, school autonomy and choice into our top-heavy centrally regulated school systems. In this respect it may be no accident that the three highest performing, mid-spending provincial K-12 education systems (Alberta, Quebec and Ontario) offer relatively high levels of school choice, although of quite different kinds.
Equity and inclusion are noble goals, but they shouldn’t interfere with student progress. There’s too much at stake, for students and the country.
Author:
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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