Peggy Aitchison, a principal at the Etobicoke School of the Arts (ESA) in Toronto, kept a list of all black students at her school and circulated it among teachers in an attempt to find “achievement gaps.” Per CTV News Toronto, Aitchison admitted that she presented the list to staff in November 2017, but students only found it at the end of the school year. She said the list had “the objective of supporting success for all students” but acknowledged it was a “mistake.”
Aitchison has since been transferred to a new school, but students and parents at the school are calling for her dismissal, and the situation has prompted investigations and accusations of racism.
“Upon reflection and discussion with others, I recognized that this was a limited, flawed, and ultimately inappropriate approach to identifying gaps in supports and so, that very same day, I retracted that compilation that was based solely on perception,” Aitchison said in a statement.
George Brown, the father of one the students named on the list, has filed a “human rights claim” against Aitchison and the Toronto District School Board. “It took the photos of the black students in the yearbook and places it beside their names,” he told CTV News Toronto about the list. “It is not being done on the basis of collected data. It is profiled.”
He also added that there was a separate category for students who are mixed race. “As if you had some kind of white in your background, maybe you aren’t, I guess, stupid. But you were put in another list if you were black from Africa or Jamaica,” George explained. He added that he knew of similar lists made at the school five years prior, and the information was not limited to Etobicoke School of the Arts.
“It made me feel as if I am not necessarily a student, but a black student,” Noah Brown, George’s son, said. “I want my principal to know this has real emotional effects on people of color and it is damaging to their wellbeing. It tells them they will be only seen by their identity and that they will be racialized for the rest of their life.”
George and Noah both said they want the Toronto School Board to provide human rights training to all their staff and the principal to apologize to every student on the list individually. Meanwhile, Aitchison’s move to a new school was approved by the Toronto District School Board. “Transferring someone just means they get a new start, a fresh start, and she can just redo that trauma somewhere else,” 18-year-old Marlee Sansom told theGlobe and Mail. “It doesn’t help the students that are still in the school.”
“Peggy Aitchison is not a suitable leader for [EPA] as well as any other school,” Noah said. “If the [Toronto District School Board] continues to have this principal within their organization then I believe they tolerate racism.”
