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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Months after the Zemer decision, I wrote to HWDSB CEO Sheryl Robinson Petrazzini asking her to identify the board’s authority in continuing to impose its land acknowledgement requirement. Her response was that councils “ should begin with a land acknowledgement,” but she ultimately acknowledged that it was “ not legally mandatory under current bylaws.”
I finally had it in writing! It took two investigations, a suspension and nearly two years of constant struggle to establish what should have been obvious from the start. School councils are independent bodies. But while this may have been a vindication, it was not a victory. The bigger problems of bullying and compelled speech remain.
Last year, for example, HWDSB superintendent Lindsay Snell issued a memo directing schools to turn their commencement ceremonies into yet another opportunity for the school board to impose its woke ideology on students and parents. The memo said commencement planning was to be guided by an “anti-oppressive/anti-racist/anti-colonialism lens” and directed that, “as citizens of Turtle Island,” schools “will include the HWDSB land acknowledgement in all commencement events.
In a response, Ontario Education Minister Paul Calandra told school boards to keep graduation ceremonies “strictly student-centred, apolitical, inclusive and respectful,” and warned organizers that graduations were “not an appropriate forum for organizers or administrators to express political views or promote personal or institutional positions.”
But when my son graduated this past June, I watched as not one but two land acknowledgements were delivered from the stage. Despite the minister’s intervention, the board carried on with the same institutional smugness it has always displayed. Will this ever change?
When a principal or superintendent tells parents that land acknowledgements are mandatory — or acts like they are — most parents will be inclined to believe them. As I found out, parents who question that authority can end up being investigated, suspended and/or ostracized by other parents. Even if they’re completely correct.
Most parents on school councils have jobs, children and little spare time. Board administrators do this for a living. They have staff, lawyers and vast public resources behind them. The board can be wrong without anyone ever paying a personal price for it. When I stood up to the board, my costs were very personal. It is thus easier for parents to say nothing than get involved. Unfortunately, this allows the power of school boards to go unchecked.
With students now back in school, council elections will soon be approaching. Parents who put their hands up to serve need to understand what they’re getting into. If their goal is to have a say in their child’s education, they’ll likely be up against a school board that has other ideas. This isn’t an argument for doing nothing — I encourage all concerned parents to get involved. Rather, my experience should be seen as a warning about the size of the task ahead.
C2C Journal
Catherine Kronas is a Hamilton, Ont., parent who served for three terms on the school council of Ancaster High School in the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board. The longer, original version of this story first appeared at C2CJournal.ca.
