District School Board of Niagara

Today, we officially withdrew our daughter from the DSBN. After a year of roadblocks, stalling on her legally required IEP, and two high risk safety incidents at TWO separate schools, this is the final straw. Today, our daughter was hit in the eye with a rock by a kid who has been bullying her. Staff witnessed it, were told about it, and did nothing nor mentioned anything. Yesterday, they promised she'd be safe when we brought it to their attention. Her eye and face are bruised from the assault and we're forced to return to homeschool because the DSBN is incapable of keeping a 7-year-old safe or supporting neurodivergent students. She could have been blinded in that eye or been concussed. Last year; they almost lost my 6 year old child when she was allowed to wander outside alone and no one had known where she had went. Thankfully I'd arrived early and intercepted her. A similar incident of placing a child on the wrong bus occured at a DSBN school just miles from ours. This isn't just a "bad day" and it is NO misunderstanding This is a systemic failure. Shame on this pathetic excuse for a school board. They deserve to be publicly called out and held accountable. We have already taken this to the Ontario Ombudsman and the Human Rights Tribunal. No more excuses from the inept leadership responsible for our children's safety and well-being.

As a student in the DSBN, I am very disappointed that the platform of Blooket is not allowed or included in your list of allowed websites for children. Are we diminishing children's happiness? Blooket is one of the platforms that I love, because it's actually entertaining and educating.

As someone who’s been in MULTIPLE dsbn schools, the staff doesn’t care, once in a while you’ll meet a good staff and or person in the school but other then that, if you are even slightly different the schools are horrible, I have people harassing me and my best friend for absolutely no reason, and if you talk to the staff about it they won’t do anything, they’ll be the sweetest soul to the harassing bully and be like “sweetie you can’t be rude, okay hun?” And then the staff always wanna turn it around on me and say “well use your wits!” (Wits is “Walk away, Ignore, Talk it out, and Seek help” if you didn’t know) which wont help with immature teens, I’ve also had the same teacher misgender me many times and they do nothing about it and try and make excuses, look they don’t care about your safety or comfortability, they care about keeping their jobs.

As a student of one of their schools, they do nothing regarding bullying. Both me and my bud are being HARRASED during the school week and the school does NOTHING! We've tried bringing it up to staff and they say they're working on it and I'm positive instead of actual discipline they're just holding the kids hand and saying "Kind words Julia, we don't be mean to each other" LIKE THE KIDS GIVE A CRAP. Its either they make a lazy attempt or they just do nothing. We have a whole entire pink shirt day yet the kids still think its "cool" to call you names. Newsflash, we don't live in a world full of magic and rainbows. This is real life.

I strongly recommend to stay far away. Especially if your child is Indigenous and has disabilities. Prince of Wales S, Thorold principal Carolyn Jonovich has left no hope. Discrimination, racism, neglects children needs with disabilities, does not follow DSBN policies as stated on their website. Year and half later, I have advocated and repeated my concerns over and over again. This is the school who doesn’t call the child parent when they’re hurt. The superintendent Jaime Sinnett told us “we are not privy to know that information”’ after I just educated her on an Indigenous family perspective. When I was trying to understand the consequences for the principal action due to her neglect towards my child. Before you put on your orange shirt tomorrow DSBN employees, your organization has shown us racism is very much alive and your organization does not recognize or honour the Truth and Reconciliation Act or the impacts on survivor families from Residential Schools.