OCDSB trustee Nili Kaplan-Myrth appeals sanctions

A trustee on Ottawa's largest school board says she's appealing the decision to sanction her, following a December vote barring her from attending its next meeting or sitting on several committees for three months.

"When you boil it all down, the decision that was handed down was to sanction Dr. [Nili] Kaplan-Myrth with one of the most serious penalties that was available to the board," Mark Freiman, the lawyer representing the outspoken trustee, told CBC News Monday morning.  

"They imposed one of the most serious sanctions for basically saying a number of things that they found uncomfortable."

The sanctions followed an investigation by the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board's (OCDSB) integrity commissioner into two complaints involving the conduct of three trustees.

The board then voted to sanction Kaplan-Myrth, a family doctor in Ottawa, barring her from its next meeting later this month and from sitting on five different committees for the next three months. 

Social media posts scrutinized

Integrity commissioner Suzanne Craig's report took aim at social media posts by Kaplan-Myrth, including one following a closed-door meeting on Sept. 7 in which she described what was said.

"Imagine turning to a room of colleagues to say their silence as I receive antisemitic death threats isn't OK," the trustee wrote, according to the report. "The only person to respond says *they* are uncomfortable with the risk I bring to them […] so can I please stay off social media…"

According to Craig, Kaplan-Myrth engaged in conduct "through social media posts that discredits and compromises the integrity of the Board," and that has contributed to conflict rather than resolution. 

"Trustee Kaplan-Myrth's continued use of social media to criticize her fellow Trustees and this conduct does not encourage resolution of conflict and disagreement in a respectful and professional manner," Craig wrote.

Craig's report also probed complaints regarding a back and forth between trustees Donna Blackburn and Kaplan-Myrth during a Sept. 11 meeting. 

At that meeting, Blackburn accused Kaplan-Myrth of being a "white woman attacking a Black woman."

"I object, you will NOT characterize me as a white woman," Kaplan-Myrth told Blackburn. 

"I am a Jewish woman who has received daily antisemitic death threats for standing up for health and safety. You have been out to get me from day one, as my colleagues can validate."

Craig said Kaplan-Myrth also ignored the security plan laid out to protect her by talking to the media following the meeting in a room that hadn't been deemed safe. 

While Craig said she found no breach in that instance, she said the trustee's conduct and statements — including telling trustee Blackburn to leave the room and her comments to others present — did violate that board's code.

Kaplan-Myrth, who narrowly avoided a similar investigation in September, was the only trustee sanctioned following the December meeting. Trustees Blackburn and Donna Dickson were not found to have breached the code.

"Trustee Dr. Kaplan-Myrth's appeal is based on her contention that the Report's findings against her are based on faulty or incomplete findings of fact as well as fundamental errors in its statements about the relevant applicable legal principles," Freiman writes in the appeal, adding that the report's conclusions cannot be reconciled with its findings about Blackburn and Dickson.

"Taken as a whole, the Report can be seen to illustrate Trustee Dr. Kaplan-Myrth's central complaint that the Board has not taken seriously her concerns about antisemitism or its impact on her own safety," Freiman wrote "It has instead sought to blame her for causing the problems and/or for making the Board look bad by raising these issues in public."

According to the board's Code of Conduct for members, a decision about the appeal will need to be reached within two weeks.

In the aftermath of the sanctions, Kaplan-Myrth sent a letter to Ontario's Education Minister Stephen Lecce, and filed a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario. 

Safety plan disclosed

In an email to CBC News on Monday, Kaplan-Myrth said she's also filed a complaint with the information and privacy commissioner of Ontario over the disclosure of emails between staff discussing her safety plans through an access to information request made by Rebel News.

Initially, Kaplan-Myrth believed those details had been leaked to the media, according to her appeal.

The matter also came up in Craig's report, where it discusses a memorandum "in which [the trustee] accused staff of unlawfully disclosing her information to media outlets."

Freiman said the board should have notified Kaplan-Myrth that the information was being released and, at the very least, given her the opportunity to object to the disclosure.

"And should not have, in fact, released the information because of the potential for negative consequences," Freiman told CBC.