‘I’m for religion, just not like this’: Legal challenge against separate school funding served on the province

A lawsuit against separate school funding in Ontario has been served on the province.

Hamilton teacher Adrienne Havercroft is one of two plaintiffs in an application filed Jan. 4 to the Superior Court of Ontario arguing legislation enabling Ontario to fund Catholic schools is unconstitutional.

I believe that we have a separation of church and state to protect the integrity of both institutions," she said. I think that faith contaminates public institutions, and I think that taking public money contaminates institutions that are supposed to be for worship. To me, it's just an inherent conflict of interest."

In the application, plaintiffs say publicly funded Catholic schools violate the right to freedom of religion guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Havercroft, who now teaches English at Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School in east Hamilton, has experienced first-hand hiring practices she says are unfair.

At the time, there were no teaching jobs at all," said Havercroft, who graduated in 2009. The only people that I knew who got teaching jobs right out of teachers' college were people in the Catholic board."

It took Havercroft more than a decade to land a permanent classroom job - what she describes as a soul-crushing" experience. She believes she may have been hired sooner had she been eligible to apply to positions at both boards.

Educators applying to jobs with the Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board require a faith reference portfolio," which includes a reference signed by a parish priest, said chair Pat Daly, adding that the board has made exceptions for hard-to-fill roles, such as tech or French immersion.

Daly, who is also the president of the Ontario Catholic Schools Trustees' Association (OCSTA), said most Catholic boards in Ontario would have similar requirements.

This means 100 per cent of jobs are open to Catholic teachers and only some - about two-thirds, based on current staffing at Hamilton schools - are open to non-Catholics.

Havercroft made it clear she isn't against religion - in fact, she grew up going to church and her grandparents were missionaries.

I'm for religion, just not like this," she said.

Behind the action is grassroots organization One Public Education Now (OPEN), a coalition of groups and individuals who believe in a non-denominational, two-language public school system, launched in 2017.

For OPEN co-founder Reva Landau, this fight isn't new.

Landau, a retired business systems analyst with a law degree who lives in Toronto, launched a similar challenge in 2012, but was denied legal standing and the case was thrown out.

The judge made it very clear he was not ruling on the merits," she said.

Landau went back to the drawing board, this time recruiting Havercroft and James Sutton, a Markham parent whose kids rode the bus an hour each way to get to a French immersion public school, as plaintiffs.

I realized there were a lot of people who were really annoyed about the funding of Catholic separate schools, but they didn't know what they could do about it," she said.

Over the years, letters, emails and articles advocating for defunding of Catholic schools have been written - and largely ignored - Landau said.

The government can't ignore the lawsuit," she said. They have to respond."

Landau said a single public-education system with a central administration would be cheaper, give students and teachers more options, and promote diversity.

There's a lot to be said in a diverse community with everybody being in the same classroom together and playing with each other and associating with each other and not being segregated," she said.

The group is fundraising for to cover legal fees.

Kate McCullough is an education reporter at The Spectator. kmccullough@thespec.com