Joan Green's Report and Osgoode Hall

Yesterday, legal representatives for Peterborough Needs PCVS made their case before the court in Osgoode Hall as part of the ongoing judicial review of KPR’s ill-conceived attempt to close PCVS.

Osgoode Hall, a designated heritage building

One bit of information made public in the session was the employment of educational consultant Joan Green by KPR five years ago. Green, whose leading role in the development of the EQAO standardized-testing office suggests a dedication to the remote-control, one-size-fits-all, corporate-style approach to educational management, was appointed last winter by the Minister to review the PCVS case.

According to provincial policy, the Minister is supposed to appoint an “Independent Facilitator” to review contentious school closing procedures. Indeed, Green refers to herself as “independent” on the first page of her report. Given that she is a former employee of both the Ministry-mandated EQAO office and KPR itself, it is obvious that Green was anything but an “independent facilitator.”

That report, dated February 17th, suggests that KPR’s drive to close PCVS – and thereby make Peterborough the only city in Ontario without any regular English-language school services available to an entire city ward – was done with the knowledge and backing of Queen’s Park. Green’s report stays so firmly “inside the box” that one would think it had been prepared by KPR administrators themselves. And given that Green was not long ago contracted by KPR, this isn’t far from the truth.

A community furor was raised when Green’s report was finally released to the public late in March – some five weeks after the February 17th date. The long delay suggests that neither the Ministry, Laurel Broten herself, nor the Liberal caucus had any interest in intervening in KPR’s plans to undermine the social and economic fabric of Peterborough while dismantling its most successful secondary school, which has been a model of inclusiveness, engagement and achievement that would be the envy of any school board in North America. This in spite of the fact that our own Liberal MPP, Jeff Leal, is well aware of the negative impacts closing PCVS would have on Peterborough.

On the contrary, the long delay, the appointment of Green, and the failure of her report to address the realities of KPR’s embarrassing abuse of the accommodation review process all suggest that the opposite was true. The powers at Queen’s Park seem to have felt the need to “circle the wagons” to protect the backroom decision-making privileges of both the Ministry and school board officials – at the expense of common-sense, the well-being of Peterborough citizens, and the prospects for Peterborough’s future development in accordance with the Places to Grow Act.

Delaying the report had the effect of delaying the launch of the judicial review by Peterborough Needs PCVS, as the legal action couldn’t justifiably begin before its release.

Had the report called for KPR to return to the negotiating table with the community, the judicial review would not have been warranted at present. Because the sanitized report Green did make refused the practical obligation to call out KPR for a consultation process which nearly everyone involved agreed was farcical and fruitless, and for the board's utter lack of regard for the community it supposedly serves, the report necessitated the privately-launched judicial review. The delay in releasing it directly resulted in the delay in bringing the case to court, and yesterday KPR’s lawyers used this consequent delay in their defense, arguing that it is now too late for the board to change course for next year.

According to the report, Green managed to “convince” herself of a wide range of questionable assertions during her review of KPR’s slipshod accommodation review process. Plainly disregarding what was evident to almost everyone involved, Green wrote, “I am convinced that most [teaching] staff felt free to participate in the ARC process and that they were not directed to refrain from comment” (p.23). Green also wrote that she “believe[s] that the Board considered the range of social and economic impacts that school closure has on communities” (p.18).

Green apparently accepted uncritically KPR’s incredible claim that no partnership opportunities exist for its facilities, writing “the fact is that there are no viable partnership possibilities with the exception of the potential use of some space in one of the Board’s facilities by Trent University” – a statement obviously without any merit whatsoever (p.24).

If Green really does believe these claims, there must be a line-up of people trying to sell her Florida swampland, used cars, and books about Nibiru’s impending collision with Earth.

In her “General Observations,” Green wrote that she was sure that most people involved with the accommodation review process would consider it “exhaustive and exhausting” (p.32). This statement is patently ridiculous even in its own context, as the report acknowledges the many deficiencies in the process, which was as simplistic as it could be possibly be, and certainly not remotely close to “exhaustive.” If a series of four public meetings over four months can be called “exhausting,” it is hard to imagine what adjective Green would apply to accommodation review processes around the province which typically include up to twenty meetings spanning a year or more.

In conclusion, Green summarized the many shortcomings of KPR’s policy and procedures, and suggested improvements. Given the importance of PCVS to Peterborough, the contentiousness of the plan, and the fact that both Peterborough trustees voted against closing the school (not mentioned in the report), one would think that the very existence of so many obvious shortcomings would suggest that KPR should be sent back to the drawing board.

Instead, Green’s report defended the rights of school boards to disregard provincial policy, put on a sham consultation process giving the impression of public accountability, and move ahead with predetermined decisions made behind the scenes with no regard to either the greater public interest or the input given by the people who actually use the schools.

The scope of the judicial review case now being heard at Osgoode Hall is wider than Green’s narrow report – but only slightly. In effect, the judges hearing the case will be making a decision on the highest-profile school closure in Ontario’s history with major ramifications for the public interest, based not on the substance of the place of PCVS in Peterborough, but on legislative technicalities.

If they decide in favour of KPR, the door will be wide open for school boards to entirely disregard provincial policy statements, community input, and the interest of municipalities. The sloppiness and arrogance of KPR administrators and trustees will be established as the benchmark for tolerable incompetence among public bodies. Any pretense to public accountability may then be confidently shed by every other school board, knowing that there is literally nothing citizens can do to contest any decision, no matter how absurd, or how many rules were bent or broken in making it.

KPR’s existing policy enables administrators to close any school without any rational justification or provocation, on one year’s notice, against the wishes of a community’s elected trustees. If the judges decide in KPR’s favour, the autocratic power to decide how to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars with no representation from the taxpayers themselves will be established as the norm across the province, and indeed across the country.

They will be setting a precedent as damaging to the public school system as a previous judicial review decision, on Trent’s downtown colleges, was to the governance of universities across Canada.

WiFi: Another Legal Accident Waiting to Happen

Tomorrow, June 6, in a Toronto Divisional Court, lawyers for Peterborough Needs PCVS will make their arguments regarding KPR’s mishandling of the attempted PCVS closure. In the upcoming posts, we’ll put the Judicial Review into a broader perspective and look closely at some of the details.

While the lawyers prepare their cases, let’s wrap up our examination of another issue on which KPR may one day face legal action from the very people it supposedly serves – the ill-conceived plunge into the world of pervasive WiFi.

In the preceding two posts we’ve seen the way KPR’s repression of dissent around its WiFi plan resembles that around the attempt to close PCVS. We’ve also seen the direct link between astronomical technology expenses and the drive to close schools, and the obliviousness of KPR trustees and administrators of the Pandora’s Box they’re opening in allowing students unlimited internet access on their own hand-held devices.

The most important issue around WiFi for many, however, continues to be the safety hazard it poses.

Unless you’re a trained scientist, it’s not likely that you understand the nature of different kinds of radiation, or what role exposure to them can play in long-term health problems. Even among scientists themselves, there’s no unanimity, as demonstrated by the differences of opinion on the subject held by doctors and Trent University professors. Last year, KPR made the news by handpicking professors who supported their view of WiFi for a public information session, while excluding Environmental and Resource Studies professor Magda Havas, whose research concerns public health effects of industrial development, as you can see from her extensive website, which includes useful information on “electro-pollution.”

The fact is that Kawartha Safe Technology supporters are far from the only ones to suspect long-term negative effects will result from extensive, uncontrolled exposure of children to WiFi radiation. KSTI’s position – that school boards, as public bodies, should err on the side of caution – is a common-sense one, especially because schools are already hardwired and WiFi has little more to offer than convenience. As with other “conveniences” in our contemporary world, such as junk food, plastic bottles, and disposable consumer items, WiFi’s eventual cost will likely outweigh its benefits many times over.

This past February, Peterborough’s Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Rosana Pellizzari, wrote to KPR’s Director of Education in response to concerns about WiFi in schools raised at the Peterborough City-County Health Unit by parents and teachers. Pellizzari asked for clarification as to why KPR had done nothing to accommodate concerned parents, and for a comment on the radiation measurements made in KPR schools as reported by the KSTI.

Embarrassingly, the dynamic duo of Rusty Hick and Diane Lloyd took Pellizzari’s query as an invitation to promote KPR’s “vision” of “why the use of wireless technology is a crucial component of 21st century learning.” Predictably, their response, which you can read here, failed to answer the question as to why KPR hasn’t bothered to accommodate concerned parents by offering some kind of WiFi-free environment – unless you count the elimination of the problem of having “cables strewn across the floor” as a justifiable rationale.

Hick and Lloyd state unequivocally that they “know the technology is safe.” They also state that one of the main reasons for installing WiFi is to allow students to use their own hand-held devices in class. The defense they offer regarding the safety of WiFi is threefold: a) a lot other institutions are using it; b) the measurements made in classrooms are lower than the Health Canada threshold for radiation exposure; and c) many health authorities have concluded that “wireless technology does not pose a public health risk.” KPR’s attitude toward WiFi is perhaps best summed up in the blunt characterization of it as “a fact of modern life.”

A more sophisticated view is offered by the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association. This past March they issued a position paper (included in the correspondence at the above link) which quite rationally compares this potential workplace hazard to cigarettes and asbestos, and observes that “the health effects of unprecedented long-term exposure to this radiation may not be known for some time.” The paper points out that school boards like KPR are engaging in an uncontrolled experiment with its students by exposing them to WiFi signals for unprecedented durations throughout their growth from young children to adults.

The paper notes that Health Canada’s “safety code 6” threshold of 1000 microwatts per square centimeter – a threshold repeatedly referred to by KPR and others as their primary benchmark – is based on a six-minute exposure by an adult male, and was never intended to be applied to schools. The paper also observes that many countries in Europe have much more stringent guidelines than Health Canada’s, and unlike Health Canada, also consider deeper potential long-term biological effects.

The OECTA paper also points out that “at least three percent of the population has an environmental sensitivity to the radiation emitted” by wireless devices – often to levels far below the Health Canada guideline. The paper notes that “employers have a duty to accommodate persons with environmental sensitivities under the Canadian Human Rights Code as well as the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act.” KPR and other school boards, backed by the Ministry of Education, have chosen to ignore these facts, at their own legal peril.

Remember when it was perfectly fine to wear strong perfumes in schools? Who could have conceived a generation ago that people with chemical sensitivities would complain, and have their rights to a healthy environment upheld? Who would have wagered that schools would become “nut-free” in deference to those with allergies? My grade 12 math teacher routinely went to the staff room to smoke a pipe, and held the view that both he and his students should be allowed to smoke in class. Now we don’t even tolerate smoking in the school yard.

And then there’s asbestos. KPR is now on the hook for a million-dollar asbestos removal-and-containment bill as they refurbish TASSS. Apparently this deadly carcinogen, responsible for the early deaths of many thousands of unsuspecting people, was thought perfectly acceptable to install in schools when TASSS was built forty years ago.

The first legal action against public schools for forcibly subjecting their students to wireless radiation was filed in Portland, Oregon last year. You can read some wildly contrasting views on the suit in this online news article and the comments posted by readers. In those comments, you’ll see the great discrepancy between attitudes in Europe and attitudes in North America.

The contact list on the website for Citizens for Safe Technology, a North American umbrella group, confirms another notable discrepancy – far more women are on top of the issue than men. It seems that the basic social norms that say that males should be comfortable with any technology no matter how dangerous continue to have a great deal of power.

The bottom line is that the ubiquity of wireless radiation in our built environment today is no defense for its presence in schools. In fact, the opposite is true – we all get enough radiation exposure as it is without soaking our biggest public institutions with it, day in and day out, year after year. Like other “facts of modern life,” such as junk food, cigarette smoke, bullying, and images of violence, we should be trying to minimize radiation exposure in schools, not maximize it.

If history is any indication, pervasive WiFi in schools will eventually be consigned to the dustbin of bad ideas by a court upholding Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. 

By that time, Hick and Lloyd may be long gone from KPR, leaving taxpayers with the bill to reconfigure our schools’ internet connections. But tomorrow’s court proceedings offer ample evidence that taxpayers’ rights rarely cross their radar screen.