Former teacher’s Charter challenge of school board scheduled for Monday

Ex-Kitchener educator was allegedly stopped from finishing a presentation at a board meeting last year

Carolyn Burjoski’s Charter challenge of the Waterloo Region District School Board’s decision to cut short her delegation at a school board meeting last year will be heard on Monday.

Burjoski’s lawyer, Jorge Pineda, said in a statement he will argue that the decision to end her presentation after four minutes was a violation of her right to freedom of expression, which is guaranteed in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Burjoski says she was “ejected” from a school board meeting on Jan.17, 2022, after raising questions about “the age-appropriateness of the new books coming into elementary school libraries dealing with sexuality.”

She wants a judicial review to overturn the board’s decision and order the board to let her finish giving her presentation.

Both sides will make oral arguments at the hearing on Monday, and the court will either issue a ruling that day, or release a decision at a later date.

In a statement Friday, the school board said it cannot comment on legal proceedings.

This is a separate case from Burjoski’s lawsuit against former chair Scott Piatkowski and the board, where she is seeking $1.75 million in damages.

In a video posted on Twitter, Burjoski described what she says happened at the Jan. 17 board meeting.

None of Burjoski’s allegations have been proven in court.

She said she read from a book called “Rick” at the meeting.

It “depicts a young boy whose friend talks about naked girls all the time,” she said. “This young boy decides that there must be something wrong with him because he

has no sexual feelings yet so, after attending the school’s Rainbow Club, he declares his ‘asexual identity.’”

Burjoski said she suggested Rick might not have sexual feelings yet because he is a child.

“The presentation also showed a passage from a book called ‘The Other Boy,’ about a girl who identifies as a boy and takes puberty blockers and testosterone as part of a medical gender transition,” she said in the news release.

“This book makes it seem simple or even cool to take puberty blockers and opposite-sex hormones and does not take into consideration how that child might feel later in life about being infertile,” she said at the meeting.

After she made that comment, board chair Piatkowski halted her presentation and called it a human rights violation, she said.

The board voted on whether to let Burjoski continue; letting her proceed was defeated by one vote.

Director of education jeewan chanicka has said legal counsel confirmed the board made the right move.

In her other $1.75-million lawsuit, Burjoski, an elementary teacher

with the board at the time who has since retired, seeks $500,000 in general damages for defamation, libel and slander, $500,000 for “intentional infliction of mental or emotional suffering,” $500,000 in aggravated damages and $250,000 in punitive damages.

In its statement of defence, the board said Burjoski is using a lawsuit to try to silence them.

“This action is brought by the plaintiff for the purposes of silencing the defendants and chilling the expression of others in relation to matters of public interest — namely, the support of the LGBTQ2S+ community …” it said in a statement of defence.

The board and chair “deny they ever engaged in any conduct toward the plaintiff that they knew or ought to have known would cause psychological or any other harm to the plaintiff,” and said they did not defame her.

Last August, Burjoski responded to the statement of defence in a video posted to Twitter.

“As I expected, the board denies any and all wrongdoing, “the Kitchener woman says.

“What I did not expect is that in their defence, this board, who cut off my presentation and ejected me from the trustees meeting, forbade me from speaking to my students and colleagues and publicly maligned my reasonable comments as transphobic hate speech, is now pleading before the court that I am trying to suppress their free expression by suing them.”

When asked for comment about Monday’s hearing, Burjoski sent The Record an interview posted earlier this week by the Calgarybased Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, a legal advocacy organization that is paying Burjoski’s legal fees for the hearing that starts Monday.

She said in the video she received a call from human resources the day after her presentation was cut short and was told she would be working on home assignment, and that she was directed not to speak with her colleagues or her students.

“I want people to know what happens to a person when a school board or the media or social media comes down like a boot on top of somebody and squashes them,” she said in the video. “In my case, when the boot lifted off, there were 100 more of me.”

The virtual hearing is scheduled for 10 a.m. at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in London, Ont., and is open to the public.

‘‘ I want people to know what happens to a person when a school board or the media or social media comes down like a boot on top of somebody and squashes them.

CAROLYN BURJOSKI FORMER TEACHER