Catherine Kronas: My experience shows parents can fight back against woke school boards

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The kids are back at school. And across Canada, legislatures have created important ways for parents to participate in their children’s education. The rules vary by province, but the point is the same: parents should have a real say in the school system, not merely act as customers. But that voice is worth little if exercising it comes at too great a cost.

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I spent three terms on the school council of my son’s high school, both as an elected member and chair. During that time, I challenged the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board’s (HWDSB) authority to impose its will on our school council. The result was two bogus human-rights investigations against me. In neither case were the allegations against me upheld.

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The trigger for my situation was the school board’s insistence that every school council meeting begin with an Indigenous land acknowledgement. Whatever you might think of land acknowledgements, parents should have the right to make up their own minds about them. As chair, I offered council members the opportunity to vote on the matter. The school board declared instead that they were mandatory.

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When I declined to read a land acknowledgement during a 2024 council meeting, the result was a human-rights investigation by the board into my behaviour, based on the absurd argument that I had caused “harm” by something I didn’t say.

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After I was cleared of causing harm the first time, I raised the issue again at council and later posted my objection to land acknowledgements on social media. The result was a second human-rights complaint against me — this time the school board suspended me from my council position during the investigation, despite lacking the legal authority to do so. Once again, there was no finding against me. But the suspension forced me to miss an important meeting.

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Throughout this entire ordeal, I repeatedly pointed out that my local board had no authority to impose its political ideology on council meetings. In Ontario, school councils exist under the Education Act and are governed by O. Reg. 612/00. Their purpose, according to the regulations, is to improve pupil achievement and enhance the accountability of the education system. Councils have the right to make their own bylaws, keep their own minutes and come to their own conclusions. They are not a tool of the school board.

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My struggle to get the school board to recognize the limits of its power was a lonely one. But I was not alone. Geoffrey Horsman, a parent, school council member and biochemistry professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., launched his own judicial review after the Waterloo Region District School Board similarly demanded land acknowledgements prior to his school council meetings.

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Despite the ongoing debate, this matter has been conclusively settled by the courts. The 2025 case of Zemer et al. v. Toronto District School Board saw parents challenge the Toronto school board’s decision to disband an elected council and order a new election. The Ontario Divisional Court found the board had acted without jurisdiction, describing a school council as “at arms-length from a school board and the rest of the education system.” Yet school boards continue to act as if they’re in charge of school councils.