Toronto parents rally to save job of long-serving principal at arts high school
For more than three decades, Barrie Sketchley has led Rosedale Heights, an art-focused high school near Toronto’s tony Rosedale-Moore Park neighbourhood.
Now more than 80 years old, Sketchley’s fate will be decided on Monday when the board of trustees votes to approve — or reject — suggestions on principal assignments made by Toronto District School Board (TDSB) staff. Sketchley is expected to be forced to leave the school he helped build into something students and parents say is pretty special. And they are outraged and upset, racing against the clock to save his job. This is all happening against a backdrop of a number of controversies involving Canada’s largest school district.
Just last week, Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government introduced legislation to give the province more oversight over local school boards.
It was two weeks ago that parents and students first heard that Sketchley was expected to leave. The TDSB has a policy on transferring principals between schools; while this is meant to ensure that good principals are being moved around, parents haven’t always been happy with the decisions.
When Zara Kheiriddin, a 15-year-old Grade 10 student at the school, first found out that Sketchley was going to be moved, she acted quickly: with a friend, she organized a petition to keep him — and secured nearly 300 signatures from fellow students and teachers before Sketchley himself shut it down.
“It’s like, resounding, that most of students and parents and the staff, too, want him to stay,” said Zara. “It’s the school where I’ve felt the safest personally from, like, bullying and typical other — the kind of stuff you get in other schools.”
Zara is the daughter of National Post columnist Tasha Kheiriddin, who, in turn, wrote to Ontario Education Minister Paul Calandra expressing concern over Sketchley’s transfer.
“The community is asking for fairness, respect for a principal who has given everything to public education, and the right to maintain leadership that reflects the school’s unique mission and values,” Kheiriddin wrote. “I urge you to look into this matter immediately.”
Calandra’s office did not respond by press time to National Post’s request for comment.
“It just shows that not only do they disrespect parents, they’re disrespecting a valued educator who’s given so much to the community. That they would force him out in this way is appalling,” said Kheiriddin in an interview.
On Monday, trustees from the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) will meet to discuss Sketchley’s future. Given Sketchley’s age, some are concerned that a transfer would be a de-facto forced retirement.
Weidong Pei, the trustee for Willowdale, wrote last Thursday to Clayton La Touche, the director of education at the TDSB, formally arguing that Sketchley should be allowed to remain at Rosedale.
“Transferring Mr. Sketchley at this stage of his career — which would in effect amount to a forced retirement — would not only be undignified, it would also deprive RHSA and the TDSB of one of our most valued and effective school leaders,” he wrote.
In an interview, Pei said that he’s hoping the decision can be reversed, and if Sketchley chooses to retire, he can do so “on his own terms.” Scores of parents and students have emailed trustees to protest Sketchley’s transfer.
“This is not the right thing to do,” said Pei.
Deborah Williams, the trustee who represents the area of Toronto where Rosedale is located, declined to comment on the specifics of Sketchley’s case.
Katrina Matheson, the chair of the parents’ council at Rosedale, said people are “just really shocked at how disrespectful it is,” to be moving Sketchley after so many decades of service. He has been a TDSB teacher and principal for more than 40 years.
But there’s another lingering issue, too. Within the walls of Rosedale, there’s a burgeoning controversy about the student selection lottery. Since Rosedale is an arts-focused school, students are required to submit expressions of interest in attending. However, 20 per cent of seats are reserved for people from visible minority communities and First Nation, Inuit and Métis students receive priority admissions.
In the past, Rosedale itself made decisions about which students would attend the school, but now it’s handled centrally, at the TDSB. Parents and staff told National Post that Sketchley allegedly objected to this loss of control, and is perceived as a troublemaker by the TDSB. Sketchley himself declined to comment, citing TDSB policy.
“There’s people who skip classes and talk about how annoying it is to go to an art school and that they’re only there because their friends are there, or their parents make them go there,” said Zara.
The TDSB declined to comment on Sketchley’s case, saying it cannot comment on “any decisions that have not been approved by the Board.”
“The next round of decisions with regard to principal assignments — which happens routinely across our system throughout the year — will be made at upcoming Board meetings in June,” wrote TDSB spokesperson Ryan Bird in an email.