Thames Valley unveils anti-racism strategy on Our London Family anniversary
The London-area's largest school board will unveil a new anti-racism strategy targeting Islamophobia on the second anniversary of an alleged hate-motivated collision that killed four members of a London Muslim family and injured their young son.
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The London-area’s largest school board will unveil the development of a new anti-racism strategy targeting Islamophobia on the second anniversary of an alleged hate-motivated collision that killed four members of a London Muslim family and injured their young son.
The new strategy, which also is meant to counter anti-Black racism, was included in a preliminary budget presented to Thames Valley District school board trustees this week.
The strategy will be released on June 6, 2024.
Education director Mark Fisher said the new strategy is linked to directly “the tragic event that happened two years ago” in London.
Four members of the Afzaal family died after they were struck on June 6, 2021 by a vehicle while out for an evening walk at Hyde Park and South Carriage roads.
Police allege the collision was deliberate, the family run down because of their Islamic faith.
A London man is charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one of attempted murder.
Killed in the crash were Talat Afzaal, 74, her son Salman Afzaal, 46, his wife Madiha Salman, 44, and their daughter Yumnah, 15. The couple’s son, Fayez, age nine at the time, was injured but survived.
Earlier this year, the Peel District school board, where about one in four students is Muslim, adopted an anti-Islamophobia strategy it said was a first in Canada.
Fisher said about 10 to 12 per cent of Thames Valley students identify as Muslim, and five or six per cent identify as Black.
“They are groups that have faced significant barriers and racism,” he said.
Feedback on racism came to the board through a community outreach program and with an equity advisory committee going out and talking to the community, he said.
“Meeting with individuals face to face . . . we’re hearing a lot of positive things, but we are also hearing . . . less positive experiences that members of marginalized communities have had in the past,” he said. “We need to be open to hearing that information.”
Purveen Skinner, superintendent of student achievement, said the new strategy is “a starting point” for the board.
“We know that racism exists in our school and our communities,” she said. “The decision was to move forward with those two groups, understanding that there will be more groups we move forward with in subsequent years.”
Fisher says the board has a new human rights department located in the director’s office.
“We have an opportunity to be proactive because what we heard from many members of these communities was that if they brought issues forward, they really didn’t go anywhere,” he said. “Or they weren’t treated . . . with the level of seriousness that would be expected.
“(The new office) is an internal mechanism in which people can bring forward complaints or violations of the human rights code which, in the end, will prevent us from having to go to the human rights tribunal.”
Full details will be released on June 6, a Thames Valley spokesperson said.