An Ottawa area school board trustee has been sanctioned and barred from committee meetings for three months after the board found she violated the code of conduct.
Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB) voted against trustee Nili Kaplan-Myrth on Dec. 19 in response to a complaint made in September, which resulted in an investigation and report by the integrity commissioner.
The board vote saw 11 in favour of the motion that stated that Ms. Kaplan-Myrth violated the code of conduct for her position. No trustees were opposed and none abstained. One trustee, Justine Bell, voted against the sanctions, which were passed with 10 in favour.
Ms. Kaplan-Myrth is banned from attending the committee of the whole, committee of the whole budget, ad hoc policy review committee, advocacy strategy committee, and advisory committee on equality. She is also banned from attending the January 2024 meeting of the board.
The Epoch Times reached out to Ms. Kaplan-Myrth but did not hear back by publication time.
It had first been proposed to ban Ms. Kaplan-Myrth from committee meetings for six months, but was revised as this was the first time the board found her guilty. Many councilors expressed a desire to reconcile board members.
It was the second time that the board questioned whether Ms. Kaplan-Myrth had violated the code. The first time was an in-camera meeting on Sept. 11.
The in-camera meeting was held with the board, without Ms. Kaplan-Myrth, to discuss the complaint about her text messages from November 2022. There was a vote to find her guilty of violating the code and to put sanctions on her, but the motion did not have the numbers it needed to pass.
On Sept. 19, Ms. Kaplan-Myrth announced on X, formerly Twitter, that she would not be attending the meeting that day because she feared for her safety.
“Targeting the only Jew on a board of trustees for standing up for herself isn’t *me* bringing shame to the @OCDSB.”
She also said in a subsequent post that she was being targeted for being Jewish.
Integrity Commission Report
In a 50-page report, Integrity Commissioner Suzanne Craig presented her findings to the board regarding two complaints received in late September. The complaints called into question statements, social media posts, and behaviours of Ms. Kaplan-Myrth and two other trustees, Donna Blackburn and Donna Dickson.“The two complaints that are the subject of this report relate to three meetings that took place on September 7 and 11, 2023 and public comments related to those meetings,” the report said.
“The evidence suggests a history of political infighting and conflict within the Board which started during the 2022 municipal election and continued after the inauguration of the new Board,” Ms. Craig wrote. “Many with whom I spoke shared that at the beginning of the Board term, relations seemed to be reasonably collegial, but very quickly matters deteriorated and collegiality and civility declined.”
In particular, the report discusses the tension between Ms. Kaplan-Myrth and Ms. Dickson, which started shortly after the board was elected.
In November 2022, the board voted on whether or not to require a mask mandate in schools, the report noted. Ms. Kaplan-Myrth accused Ms. Dickson of voting with “white supremacists”—something that Ms. Dickson found “insulting,” according to the report.
A few months later, in January 2023, Ms. Dickson sent an email asking Ms. Kaplan-Myrth not to send her emails directly.
In May 2023, Ms. Kaplan-Myrth sent an email to the manager of board services and the then-vice chair of the board requesting an amendment to the minutes from the March 28 meeting. She requested that a comment made by Ms. Dickson be deleted, calling it an “inappropriate comment” that was “dismissive of the persistent, serious death threats sent to Trustee KaplanMyrth.”
Ms. Craig said that the first complaint, against all three trustees was, in essence, “that the conduct and statements of the Respondents was rude, insulting, intimidating, and disrespectful of the Board and the rules put in place for decorum at Board meetings; and that this disrespectful behavior during the Board meetings and otherwise constituted a pattern of misconduct conduct that violated the Code.”
A second complaint, received on Sept. 22, named only Ms. Blackburn and Ms. Dickson and questioned their conduct and statements to the media, particularly that they violated the code of conduct.
During the meeting, Ms. Craig told the board that mediation was discussed as a possible solution to the conflict, but that she felt it would not be successful as the trustees had “entrenched positions.”
“To be clear, it was considered. I did not deny it. There were other issues to consider and I determined for all three trustees concerned, to feel safe, there wasn’t an atmosphere conducive to mediation.”
She also concurred with Ms. Kaplan-Myrth’s comments that there is dysfunction and breakdown of communication and a lack of trust among board members.
She said she also supports using “all of our tools” in schools to prevent sickness from spreading, including COVID-19 and RSV. These tools include masking and vaccinations.
