‘My kids aren’t safe to attend school because they are Black’: Mother

The Thames Valley District school board says it is investigating for the second time a mother’s claim her Black child was subjected to constant racist slurs and bullying at a London-area school.

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“We take all accusations of discrimination seriously,” the Thames Valley District school board said on May 8. “The Thames Valley human rights and equity department are investigating.”

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The investigation is the second the board has conducted into the complaints of Amanda Smuck, who grew so concerned about racist language and bullying she said her son was subjected to at East Williams Memorial public school in Ailsa Craig that she gave him a whistle to blow to alert school when he experienced racist behavior.

Smuck, who lives in Ailsa Craig with her two sons aged 10 and eight, said she pulled her two children out of the school in the community 20 kilometers northwest of London at the end of the 2022-23 school year after her older son had been subjected to “sometimes daily reports of racial slurs or racially based bullying.

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“I grew tired and distracted hearing these stories on almost a daily basis from my children. I didn’t feel they were safe attending East Williams, where racial slurs appear to be culturally accepted,” Smuck said.

Her oldest son started at East Williams in 2017. He experienced violent incidents in the classroom and on the school yard that were not addressed appropriately by staff, Smuck said.

“There is a culture of bullying, violence and racism at the school that goes mostly uncurbed. My kids aren’t physically, emotionally or psychologically safe at that school.

“My kids aren’t safe to attend school because they are Black.”

During the 2021-22 school year, Smuck said her eldest son, who was in Grade 3, was called the N-word “almost every day” by another pupil.

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Smuck said she contacted her son’s teacher in November 2021. The teacher spoke with the school principal and a superintendent, said Smuck, who also called and emailed both administrators.

“I was told there was little they could do to curb the behavior,” Smuck said. “Staff hadn’t ‘seen or heard’ the child call my son that name, so they couldn’t be sure he wasn’t lying.”

As well, Smuck said the school administration told here their “hands were tied” because of a rule prohibiting them from suspending pupils in Grade 4 and lower grades.

Meanwhile her missed a week of school due to anxiety and complaints of nausea and headaches, she said.

In January 2022, Smuck said she gave her older son a whistle to take to school that he could blow if he was being harassed with racial slurs.

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Smuck said when her son used the whistle, staff arrived fairly quickly and the pupil didn’t say the N-word as often.

But Smuck said she was concerned the racial harassment was continuing nonetheless and she sent more emails to the teacher, principal, superintendent and education director Mark Fisher. Fisher didn’t respond to her email, she said.

As well, Smuck said, the pupil who called her son the N-word threatened her two children that if they “didn’t leave town” they would be killed.

Smuck filed a complaint with the Thames Valley board’s new human rights representative Ruchi Punjabi.

After that the problem slowed to only “occasional racial slurs” but her children, she said, witnessed “many, many racial incidents on the playground.

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“Some of which landed my older son in the principal’s office defending himself for altercations where he stood up to racist bullies on behalf of his friends,” Smuck said.

Punjabi compiled a four-page report in April 2022 that detailed Smuck’s allegations of racist behavior directed at her son and her attempts to get board staff to address the issue.

Smuck took her children out of school at the end of the school year and now homeschools them.

The Free Press, through the Thames Valley board’s communications branch, asked to speak with the teacher, principal and superintendent but didn’t hear back.

Arlene Morell, the Middlesex County trustee who represents East Williams, and board chair Beth Mai didn’t respond to requests for comment.

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The board also didn’t respond to a question about whether Smuck would receive the results of the new investigation that was launched after she contacted The Free Press to share her family’s experience at the school.

Smuck said she did speak with Mai, who recommended her claims should be re-investigated.

Smuck said she is sharing her story almost a year after she removed her children from the school after hearing about another mother’s “heart wrenching story and (similar) experience at East Williams” on Facebook.

Smuck said she believes one of the reasons East Williams didn’t adequately address the alleged racist behavior experienced by her son is because rural schools are underfunded.

“They don’t fund rural schools the same as city schools,” she said. “The whole system has a resource problem.

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“I don’t see until you deal with the resource problem how you are going to deal with a racism problem – the problem with my son is nobody saw it – even when they were aware this situation was going on in the playground.”

The Thames Valley board announced in February it was developing an anti-Black racism strategya system-wide policy that will take a year to complete.

The plan “will outline the concrete, and measurable actions we will take as a board to make Thames Valley more welcoming for Black students, families and staff,” education director Mark Fisher said at the time.

“As a school board, it is our responsibility not only to educate future generations about the continued importance of Black history, but also to take immediate and sustained action against anti-Black racism in our schools and workplaces.”

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The board, with about 161 schools and roughly 85,000 students, has sharpened its focus on anti-racism initiatives in recent years.

The board announced in May 2023 it was developing an anti-racism strategy targeting Islamophobia.

The board also scrapped a program that placed police officers in schools to provide programs and build relationships with students, rejecting a staff recommendation to reintroduce a revamped program.

The program, launched in 2008, was paused in June 2020 in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, sparked by the killing in Minneapolis of George Floyd, who was Black, by a white police officer.

Uniformed officers had been placed in schools to teach students about a variety of community safety topics, including alcohol, drugs and human trafficking. Critics of the program said the presence of police in schools was unsettling to some students, particularly marginalized youth and people of color.

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Smuck, who is looking for a part-time job, said she has limited options when it comes to enrolling her children at another school.

If her application to an out-of-area school was approved, she would be expected to drive her children back and forth, she said.

“The invisible cost being that drop-offs and pickup would limit my availability for employment, which I now need to do to keep our household afloat due to inflation,” Smuck said.

She said her family is not Catholic but she is considering sending them to a Catholic school.

“I need my kids to be able to attend school in a safe environment,” Smuck said.” I also think they should be able to safely attend their home school of East Williams with their peers and friends.”

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@HeatheratLFP

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