Nili Kaplan-Myrth exits OCDSB, blaming 'toxicity' on and off the board

A high-profile member of Ottawa's largest school board has resigned, alleging the organization is "entrenched in internal toxicity" and "driven by external forces with a goal to undo human rights and social justice work."

Dr. Nili Kaplan-Myrth is a family physician who rose to public prominence while advocating for vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In 2022, she was elected to a four-year term as the Capital/Alta Vista trustee for the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB).

That tumultuous tenure came to an end at the close of the board's committee-of-the-whole meeting on Tuesday, with Kaplan-Myrth announcing her exit from the organization.

"We need people to stand up for public education," she said, reading out from her letter of resignation, "but nobody should have to do so in the face of the kind of harassment I have experienced."

Trustee Cathryne Milburn asked the board chair, Lynn Scott, if she had any response, but Kaplan-Myrth cut in: "It's not her who has the final word. That is my resignation." Kaplan-Myrth then rose from her seat and placed her letter in front of Scott. 

The board chair said Kaplan-Myrth's resignation must be accepted at the next regular board meeting. The board then has 90 days to find a replacement. 

"I'm disappointed, frankly," Scott told CBC after the meeting. "When we have trustees who have been with us for a while and when we have seen that there are good things that they can do, it's always a sense of loss."

Pino Buffone, the board's director of education, acknowledged Kaplan-Myrth received "a lot of vile, unacceptable comments from the public more broadly, irrespective of her position or her perspective on various issues."

Days before Tuesday's meeting, Kaplan-Myrth sent a statement to CBC News outlining her reasons for leaving the board despite having more than a year left in her term. Before the meeting, she'd informed at least one other trustee of her plan to resign, according to her statement. 

Kaplan-Myrth said the board failed to support her when she faced threats and hateful messages because of her progressive views and her being an outspoken member of Ottawa's Jewish community.   

"That's the reality of politics, you're no doubt thinking," she wrote in her statement. "[But] it discourages decent people from putting their hands up as candidates at all levels of government."

"What made matters much worse," she added, "was the toxicity within the school board."

LISTEN / Kaplan-Myrth talks to Ottawa Morning

Ottawa Morning9:14OCDSB trustee abruptly resigns

Nili Kaplan-Myrth former OCDSB Trustee for Zone 9 Capital and Alta Vista explains why she is leaving her role on the school board and what she says is a toxic environment.

'The final straw'

Among Kaplan-Myrth's other specific allegations against the board was the "weaponization" of code-of-conduct complaints she says were designed to silence or punish her.

Since being elected in October 2022, Kaplan-Myrth has faced three code-of-conduct complaints. One failed to gain enough traction among other trustees, while another resulted in Kaplan-Myrth being disciplined in December 2023. 

A third, "vexatious" complaint was filed against Kaplan-Myrth this past April and concerned comments she made during a meeting that month, according to a letter her lawyer sent the Ministry of Education. Kaplan-Myrth also shared that letter with CBC. 

At the April meeting, Kaplan-Myrth spoke against a member of the board's equity committee wearing a keffiyeh, calling it an "act of aggression." The National Council of Canadian Muslims called Kaplan-Myrth to task, saying her statement was "an unfair and dangerous conflation of Palestinian culture and identity with aggression and violence."

That third code-of-conduct complaint was "the final straw," Kaplan-Myrth wrote. 

"I cannot continue to participate on a board like this. It is driven by external forces with a goal to undo human rights and social justice work, [and it] is entrenched in internal toxicity."

'Vile Jew hate'

Some of Kaplan-Myrth's concerns date back to the start of her term, when she called for a return to masking in classrooms. At one board meeting in late 2022, security and police had to remove some attendees for disrupting the proceedings. 

"Within a few days of that meeting, I had to quarantine my email and give up my OCDSB cell phone because of vile Jew hate and threatening messages," Kaplan-Myrt wrote. "When I approached the director and chair of the OCDSB, they failed to make an internal or a public statement that harassment would not be tolerated. My fellow trustees were silent."

Kaplan-Myrth pointed to March 2023, when she said she was threatened for planning to wear a rainbow T-shirt, in support of transgender rights, at a board meeting. 

"My own family was murdered because they were Jews. These kinds of threats are more real to me because of intergenerational trauma," she wrote in her statement. 

"I nevertheless showed up to that meeting and continued to show up to meeting after meeting, asking repeatedly for my colleagues to understand the trauma of having to scan the room for threats. The only safety plan that was put into place was a process whereby I was supposed to send a text message to staff or to a friend when I arrived at the OCDSB building, to ask someone to walk out to my car to meet me."

Scott told CBC she believes staff did everything reasonable to the reduce the amount of online vitriol Kaplan-Myrth was exposed to. 

"I think from both [a] physical standpoint in terms of a security plan and also online to the greatest extent that we possibly could, [we] gave our very best attempts to support the trustee," Buffone added. 

Kaplan-Myrth also criticized the board for what she said was a failure to distinguish between "legitimate" constituents and "nefarious actor[s]."

Scott said that while there have been campaigns of disinformation and misinformation aimed at the board, she's not so sure they have actually shaped trustees' decisions, as Kaplan-Myrth has alleged. 

"We have a good group of trustees who for the most part do their homework, consider a lot of different potential points of view, a lot of different information and we have a first-rate staff who provide us with all of the internal information that we need," Scott said. 

Asked if there was anything the board could have done differently to ensure Kaplan-Myrth stayed on, Scott said it's always difficult to know. 

"Hindsight sometimes gives you hints, but it's hard to point out specific things that would have made a difference. I mean, anytime when you're dealing with people — and we deal with a lot: members of the public, members of our staff and each other — there are often times when you look back and say I could have done that differently, except if you did it differently, maybe the same thing would still have happened.

"You just don't know."