Liberal MNA wants Montreal school service centre head gone after report on toxic climate

As the fallout continues over a toxic climate found at an elementary school in Montreal, a Liberal MNA says the head of the province's largest school service centre is part of the problem and wants her to step down.

Bedford elementary school, which is located in Montreal's west-central Côte-des-Neiges neighbourhood, has been put on watch by the province's Education Ministry.

According to a 90-page report that is publicly available, the school has a group of 11 teachers, acting as a "dominant clan" that fosters a climate of fear and intimidation among students and staff. These teachers are said to have punished students with learning disabilities simply because they don't recognize those disabilities as legitimate.

"Many teachers prevented staff who were able to offer additional resources to students from entering the classroom," reads the report. "Some of them even went as far as hindering surveillance of their classrooms by covering class door windows or interior windows in classrooms that have them."

Several witnesses interviewed by the investigators said some subjects like science, ethics and religious culture and sex education were either not taught or taught to very few students during the school year.

The behaviour outlined in the report began during the 2016-17 school year. 

Reporting by Montreal radio station 98.5 FM in 2023 on incidents at the school sparked the ministry's investigation. It was conducted between Nov. 16, 2023, and April 19, 2024, and included 73 interviews. 

The 11 teachers at the heart of the allegations are still at work.

Marwah Rizqy, the Liberal MNA for the Saint-Laurent riding and the party's education critic, says the situation should've never gone this far. She points out that a previous report in 2021 from an external firm that specializes in industrial and organizational psychology had already found issues with the school's climate and not enough was done to address them.

As far as she's concerned, that falls squarely on the shoulders of Isabelle Gélinas, who became the executive director of the Centre de services scolaires de Montréal (CSSDM) in February 2022.

"She is not the woman for the job, she's part of the problem!" Rizqy wrote on X, describing Gélinas's behaviour as "willful blindness."

The Liberal MNA has three demands: Gélinas's departure, the suspension of the 11 teachers and a follow-up on the students who were affected.

"We have to find the children who went to the Bedford school, those who didn't have access to a speech therapist or an educational therapist, those whose intervention plans were ripped apart," she told Radio-Canada.

"Find those children and make sure they have all the tools they need to succeed academically in Quebec." 

Education minister still trusts Gélinas

Gélinas declined a CBC News request for an interview.

In an interview with Radio-Canada on Tuesday, she said the situation in the school has improved in the last year and a half, when the province intervened. 

In a brief statement to Radio-Canada, the office of Bernard Drainville, the province's education minister, reiterated its trust in Gélinas. 

On Tuesday, two government employees showed up to monitor the situation at the school. They're expected to come up with an action plan for Bedford by Nov. 30. The plan will have three objectives:

• Re-establish a learning environment that is healthy and safe.
• Make sure teachers on staff are qualified to do the job.
• Make sure teachers stop interfering with issues related to the school's management. 

Three other schools with the CSSDM are being monitored by the provincial ministry for issues also related to a potentially toxic climate. Two of them are also in the Côte-des-Neiges neighbourhood: Saint-Pascal-Baylon elementary school and La Voie high school.

The third one, Bienville elementary school, is in the northeastern Saint-Michel neighbourhood.