Ding Dong, the Witch is…Fired
Notorious Peel District School Board Associate Director finally gets the axe
In November of 2021, I wrote a long-from two part essay on the ideological take-over by woke activists of the Peel District School Board (PDSB). The essay was called The Peel District School Board and White Supremacy and detailed the events that lead to the radical overthrow of a board that made the false determination (based on weak survey data with tiny sample sizes) that the PDSB had a serious problem with anti-black racism. It did not. It still does not. The PDSB, and many others boards across Canada, have a serious problem with the race grifting, gender woo, and the teaching of negatively skewed ahistorical narratives. Today’s essay , written pseudonymously by PDSB high school teacher Igor Stravinsky, presents the final chapter in the career of former PDSB Associate Director Poleen Grewal (one of PDSB’s most infamous race grifters) - an anti-white racist who featured prominently in the essay mentioned above. -
Ding Dong, the Witch is…Fired: Notorious Peel District School Board Associate Director finally gets the axe
By Igor Stravinsky (Teacher and Commentator)
If you are a psychopath who gets off on bullying, harassing, humiliating, degrading, embarrassing, and generally abusing people, Anti-Racism is the ticket you have been looking for. And without a doubt, the queen of all that was former PDSB Associate Director Poleen Grewal, fired last week by the PDSB.
Anyone unfortunate enough to work with her knows she took great pleasure in inflicting emotional trauma on good and hard-working educators by shaming and blaming them, baselessly accusing them of racism, white supremacy, colonialism, etc. and destroying their careers. Her army of loyal minions knew how to toe the line or face her wrath.
You would think that a senior administrator of a public schoolboard would be constrained by institutional culture and regulations, not to mention common decency, with the expectation of treating people respectfully and with dignity, but you would be wrong. Like most school boards, the PDSB has been taken over by Critical Theory (CT) activists who have declared war on anyone who does not accept their ideology.
That ideology attributes any kind of below-average social or economic outcomes black or indigenous people are achieving as entirely the result of racism or colonialism, and prescribes endless transfers of power and resources to members of these groups (regardless of their individual circumstances) as the only possible solution to improve these outcomes.
My guess is that Grewal and people like her probably know CT is bullshit but it suits them to accept it because by masquerading as true believers in it, they are protected when they do their thing and get off on lashing out at “white supremacists”, “brown people complicit in white supremacy”, “white adjacent” Asians, or even black or indigenous people who dare to question CT.
As a powerful Associate Director bringing down the hammer on any teacher or administrator who dared question any tenet of CT (such as “knowledge is socially constructed”), Poleen enjoyed the protection of the community activists who had taken over the PDSB by convincing the provincial government it was in their political best interest to put the board under direct ministry control. The PDSB was her fiefdom and she took full advantage. But psychopaths eventually get sloppy and start to believe they can do anything and get away with it. Poleen fell victim to hubris.
She used her influence as Associate Director to get her son marks of 100% in three courses. When teachers complained, she was investigated and found guilty of abuse of power (see the McNair Report).
Although her guilt was common knowledge, the government appointed supervisor, presumably by the order of Education Minister Lecce, did nothing. For Lecce, it was a sticky situation. He had aligned himself with the CT activists and they did not want anything to happen to Grewal- a loyal puppet on their strings they had been putting to good use to bring “anti-racism” to the schools.
And what does that “anti-racism” look like? Degraded academic standards and low expectations for student achievement and behaviour- the result of efforts to hide the disproportionately poor academic performance and higher number of incidents of inappropriate behaviour of large numbers of black kids in the board.
So Grewal was put on leave for two years, meaning she was collecting hundreds of thousands in salary and benefits for doing nothing, as anyone can see for themselves by looking at the annual sunshine list of public employees.
Then, earlier this year, the government handed control of the PDSB back to the trustees. Lecce could see that things were going from bad to worse with CT firmly entrenched and likely wanted to distance the ministry from the stench well in advance of the next provincial election. But that opened the door for the trustees to finally get rid of Poleen Grewal once and for all, which they have indeed done.
She is gone, but the damage she has inflicted is really hard to calculate, in both monetary and human terms. Dozens of dedicated, life-long educators were railroaded out of their careers- fired without cause meaning millions in severance pay was meted out only to have these highly qualified and experienced people replaced by incompetent sycophants hired by Grewal purely for their devotion to CT and loyalty to her. The board is now being run by incompetents.
And the true tragedy of the entrenchment of CT, which has taken over just about all of our institutions, is that there are many, many more Poleen Grewals out there, poisoning their organisations the same way she did, and being praised by the CT activists for doing so. Most are not so arrogant as to blatantly abuse power like Grewal did, and so are untouchable.
What politicians will have the nerve to put a stop to this? To clean house, and bring back integrity to our public institutions? The objective of a board of education should be to foster academic excellence in the pursuit of truth and knowledge, in an environment which is safe and welcoming and fair to all, which pulls staff and students together based on our common humanity.
The Peel Board was never perfect, but it once aspired to that mission, and as such was a rewarding place for students to learn and teachers to teach. Most importantly, it was open to reflection on how it could be better, and not beholden to a particular, cynical ideology.
It can be like that again, but for that to happen, we, the citizens of Ontario, will have to demand it.
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Thanks for reading. For more from this author read, Ontario’s Ministry of Education has “No Policy” on Child Gender Dysphoria
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Well the Wicked Witch may be gone but I think any celebrations may be premature. Apparently the trans shop teacher, Kayla Lemieux, was able to get the Ruby Slippers and after clicking her heels three times and saying, "There's no place like home" found a new home and job with the Hamilton School Board as a shop teacher and role model for all of the lucky students in attendance. Of course the N.Y. Post had to put a damper on things by calling the move the, "Definition of Insanity". The Equity Munchkins, however, were quick to point out that Lemieux's new appointment is a bold step forward for their equity mandate and are optimistic that more school boards will champion their important cause.
In keeping with the Wizard of Oz theme, perhaps we can take some inspiration and hope for relief from this equity madness from Glinda, the Good Witch from the North who said:
"You have no power here! Begone, before somebody drops a house on you too!"
People need to pay more attention to municipal and SB elections. I don't know about Ontario, but out here on the west coast the typical voter turnout in municipal and SB elections is somewhere around 15 percent, and you can bet yur bottom dollar that people take advantage of that ennui and apathy and get f**cktards like this person elected to promote their own personal ideological hobbyhorses. That's how Victoria has ended up with a neoMarxist "woke" mayor and council for the past decade. That's how Langford elected a completely inexperienced but oh so woke mayor and partial city council a year ago and now their council meetings have descended into the chaos that Woke Watch describes (as well as implementing a 12 percent property tax hike, much to the dismay of everyone who did not take the time to understand the platforms of any candidates and did not vote).