Vital preparations for a new K-12 school year
How to survive and even thrive when your school board is feckless and you've got anti-Zionists to deal with.
In the summer of 2023—that is, before 10/7—my friend and co-writer of many letters to school administrators, Gili Zemer, organized a meeting with our school principal to discuss recent incidents of antisemitism. I don’t recall how I became aware of the meeting. I didn’t know any Jewish families at our school and I didn’t even know if there were any other Jews at Rawlinson Community School.
At any rate, I learned about the meeting and decided to join the Zoom call. I joined late and when I entered the call there was an ongoing discussion about antisemitic incidents that had occurred. Some of the parents were quite upset and wondered why so little attention had been directed towards addressing problems of antisemitism in our school, especially since other forms of hate, such as racism against Blacks or gender-based discrimination, had an obvious zero-tolerance policy.
The meeting concluded with a question: what should we do about this? What next? There were probably a dozen or more parents on the call and some of them knew each other. As can happen when a dozen or more upset Jews get together, the discussion was lively but, as I observed, it was not reaching a practical solution.
Unable to break into the stream, I wrote in the chat that I thought it would make sense to start a Jewish families group so that we could communicate, coordinate, and activate any plans we may decide to put into action. I offered to pull together an email list and a few others on the call seconded my proposal.
The emails came streaming in and one parent offered to set up a listserver for the group, which was snazzier than my email list. Before long, we had over 50 Jewish parents and guardians on our list. When 10/7 hit, the list was invoked as a means of communicating about our shock and grief. Gili hosted multiple events at her home aimed at comforting our Jewish community and bringing it together in a physical space, her lovely home, and she used the list to get the word out.
By the second event, a Shabbat potluck that she organized with hubby, Avital, over 90 Jewish members of the local community attended. From there, there was no turning back. A community had discovered itself.
As Gili and I have detailed elsewhere, she secured a TDSB grant to host two antisemitism workshops for parents and caregivers. However, when the plans were announced, a small group of dedicated anti-Zionists tried to scuttle the event. They claimed they weren’t against antisemitism education. They only wanted to ensure that the organization that delivered it didn’t support nasty old Israel. After all, why should Jews have any say in who delivers antisemitism education at TDSB schools, right?
This small ragtag team of anti-Zionists would have gotten their way if it were not for our ability to mobilize the mainstream Jewish community and its allies at our school. When we were told to change the planned provider, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, a TDSB partner, to something more palatable to the anti-Zionists, we responded with a letter signed by over 100 parents and guardians. These signatories were mobilized within 24 hours. In the end, the workshop went on as planned.
If we hadn’t had something as simple as a list of Jewish parents and guardians, we would not have been able to mobilize in time. Already the superintendent and our beloved school trustee, Alexis Dawson, were pressuring us to change the provider and appease the anti-Zionists. But thanks to Gili, who had brought the community together before this fiasco, we had more than a list. We had a community, which at least in some preliminary form, had bonded. And that is a powerful thing. We weren’t just an assortment of Jews on a list. We celebrated the sabbath together. We shared food and stories. And we weren’t going to be pushed around.
Of course, anti-Zionists are sore losers and our bunch was no exception. With the assistance of then-superintendent Erin Altosaar, they arranged to have our poor principal (now retired) read out a letter to the school advisory council that was no more than an anti-Zionist diatribe. The letter was signed by nine anti-Zionists, two of whom later asked to have their names removed.
Once again, we mobilized. Our core writers drafted a letter to the Director of Education, Colleen Russell-Rawlins (who is also on her way out), and it was accompanied by several dozen signatories from our list. As a result, we were able to schedule regular weekly meetings with the Executive Superintendent, Jack Nigro, to hear our concerns and explore solutions.
Now, as Neo famously once said:
I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin.
School year reloaded
The mainstream Jewish community at Rawlinson will start this new academic year organized. The frequency of social interactions among members has grown. We have our own WhatsApp group now and can exchange information readily. New members have joined and plans are underway. It’s all good.
Except that Rawlinson is no longer my daughter’s school (nor my son’s) and even if it were, what about all the other schools in the TDSB and other school boards? That’s what this post is about. It’s about the need for every school community to organize itself and step up its plans to defend itself from the haters.
What are some of the things that should be done to get to where we got to?
Contact your school’s principal and arrange a meeting to discuss how the school is dealing with antisemitism and anti-Zionism.
Ensure that the meeting is advertised so that other Jewish community members may attend it.
Ensure that the meeting ends with someone taking responsibility to pull together and maintain a list of Jewish families at the school.
Use the list and not only in times of crisis. Use it to foster a sense of community. This is obviously of value in its own right, but it also helps galvanize support when a crisis hits and collective action is needed.
Draw on the community to get proper representation on the school’s advisory council.
What are some of the things to achieve that go beyond where we got to?
Coordinate local school-level groups within and across wards. It is great to act locally but good intelligence requires a communication network that fans out beyond a single school. Indications and warnings need to be shared widely so others not yet affected by emerging threats can take pre-emptive or preventative action.
I believe that each ward should have a group like we have at Rawlinson, and these ward-level groups should tie into an even broader coalition. In this way, the Jewish community can zero in or zoom out to whatever level is appropriate. For instance, issues that need to be brought to trustees may be best dealt with at the ward level, which is the level at which trustees operate.
Grassroots organizations focused on fighting antisemitism in the K-12 environment, such as the Jewish Educators & Families Association (JEFA), could also be engaged. However, the structure that I am proposing is much more flexible and robust than any single grassroots organization can provide. We can and should work together, but we cannot be overreliant on such organizations.
The easy part and the hard part
In the Rawlinson case, I handled the easy part by suggesting that we self-organize. Putting a list of names together was easy, as was getting a few emails out to get the ball rolling. The hard part, and what I fear many other groups may lack, is what Gili graciously and skillfully provided, and that was the creation of opportunities for developing a genuine sense of community.
I say that’s the hard part because it requires far greater resources. Not everyone can welcome 90 people, mostly strangers, into their homes, and then decide to do it again. At Rawlinson, we lucked out. Someone who could do that chose to do just that.
Those reading this who have such personal resources could make all the difference by creating opportunities for people to come together and find themselves within a community they might not have noticed or cared about until then.
That is how we thrive. And that is how we win.