UPDATE: Hamilton public school board retracts statement about why investigation didn’t result in sanctions
The Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board has said it wishes to retract a statement made Wednesday about the end result of a third-party investigation into allegations of racism and oppression within the board of trustees.
Late Wednesday, the board's director of education, Manny Figueiredo, had said the investigators could have suggested sanctions against trustees found to have breached the board's code of conduct, but that the investigators elected not to do so."
In a new statement on Thursday, after The Spectator reached out to the investigator, Figueiredo said: To be clear, the investigator followed this agreed-upon protocol and met all of the requirements of her investigation mandate."
The back-and-forth over the handling of the report came on the same day that the board was meeting to reconsider sanctions against trustees at the heart of the report that was spurred by complaints of racism and oppression from a former student trustee last summer.
The investigation by Arleen Huggins and Philip Graham, a partner and associate, respectively, with law firm Koskie Minsky LLP, found evidence of racism and oppression displayed by some trustees.
Earlier Thursday, The Spectator reached out to Huggins for reaction to the board's latest statement. Huggins said the statement from the board has a number of serious inaccuracies."
But Huggins deferred further explanation back to the school board, which only said a statement would come later.
Late Thursday night, the board issued a new statement, walking back the previous one.
We retract the statement as there were inaccuracies connected to the third-party investigator and sent in error and without consulting with the investigator," an email from the board's spokesperson stated, before providing a new statement.
When we began the process to retain a third-party investigator, the expectation was that we would follow the formal process described in the trustee code of conduct," reads the new statement attributed to Figueiredo. As you know, the complainant eventually decided against launching that formal process by filing a formal code of conduct form and we felt it was important to respect that decision.
Regardless, it was clear the allegations still needed to be examined. The investigator developed a special review protocol to guide this process, since it was outside of the usual structures of the code of conduct."
The new statement still explains why the formal" code of conduct investigation promised by Figueiredo in August did not manifest. Formal processes can open the door to sanctions being issued against trustees found to have breached the trustee code of conduct.
Ahona Mehdi, the former student trustee whose allegations prompted the third-party probe, did confirm Figueiredo's claim that she didn't want to proceed with a formal code of conduct complaint. Her understanding was that a formal complaint would have been dealt with by trustees internally. She didn't trust them to hold themselves to account, she said.
Neither the board nor Huggins have spelled out what specific serious inaccuracies" were contained in Figueiredo's earlier statement, but it appears to have to do with him suggesting the investigator had the power to issue sanctions against the trustees.
The statement the board wished to retract" said: Absolutely no limits were placed on the third-party investigator with respect to recommendations, including breaches or sanctions regarding individual trustees."
But the new statement said: Ultimately, determining code of conduct breaches and appropriate sanctions is the responsibility of the board, as per the Education Act and our own governance policies."
**UPDATE: This story was updated at 12:10 a.m. on March 5 after The Spectator received a new statement from the school board.
Katrina Clarke is a Hamilton-based reporter at The Spectator. Reach her via email: katrinaclarke@thespec.com