July 13 2020

As we say goodbye to another academic year, the No IB Fees Campaign thought it timely to give an update. 

As our supporters know, most schools with the IB program in the TDSB are in neighbourhoods that are high on the Learning Opportunities Index, which measures “external challenges affecting student success”, such as low income. Our contention is that IB has been the most accessible rigorous academic pathway for working-class and racialized students in the TDSB. Its barriers for entry have been lower than that for Arts and Gifted programs. Charging fees for IB turns it into an elitist and inaccessible program, and empties neighbourhood schools of students needed to keep them open. 

By mid-January our campaign pushed back against the fees through a petition with more than 1000 signatures, hundreds of letters to the Board, trustees, and political representatives, in-person engagement at Ward and School Advisory Council meetings, a media blitz, and a student week of action. 

At the January 31 IB Fee Strike Debate, in a packed auditorium at the Parkdale public library, two teams of parents, teachers, IB students, and IB alumni debated the merits of students going on fee strike. The audience voted in favour of the side that argued “Yes, IB students should go on a fee strike”. Despite this support, IB students decided to instead wait for the outcome of a Human Rights case filed on behalf of IB students against the TDSB. That legal case is now underway and we eagerly await news of progress. 

By mid-February many IB families had not registered to continue the program in the fall, nor had they applied for financial assistance. Activists had earlier warned the TDSB students would fall through bureaucratic cracks created by the new fees, and they have.

Then in late February the Board announced that the new fees would be further reduced for students from households with less than $75K yearly income, due to a private donation from a condo developer. Anyone who knows the context of Parkdale, a neighbourhood struggling against gentrification and push-out, sees the irony of this. Charging fees to a program that makes up 50% of PCI’s student population threatens to depopulate the school and leave it vulnerable to being closed and sold off by the TDSB to a developer, as the TDSB tends to do. By donating money to help lower-income students stay in the program, the developer donor is trying to make itself look like a “friendlier” gentrifying force.

IB families expressed cynicism towards the corporate donation. As community organizer Alykhan P. put it: 

“The private sector does this to 1) launder their image in the minds of the public 2) disrupt and divide organizing efforts 3) further exacerbate public education’s dependence on precarious private cash injections 4) exploit this dependence to speed up the flight to private schools by families who can afford it 5) gain sway over the curriculum often resulting in industry-friendly misinformation - as we’ve seen especially in Alberta.”

Even as the privatization of IB barrels ahead, the No IB Fees Campaign has so many reasons to celebrate:

- We’ve built community! We have a network of engaged students, parents, teachers, and community members, many of whom hadn’t worked together before. 

- We’ve put the TDSB on notice. Our relentlessness has shown the Board that they cannot get away with privatization or with any move that deepens racial and economic inequality.

- Specifically, we’ve put Trustee and TDSB Chair Robin Pilkey on notice. While defending the Board’s racist and anti-working-class move, she has lied about data to other trustees, to the media, and to the public. She has refused to represent her own constituents who have begged her to oppose IB privatization, saying that she is within her rights to ignore parents’ and students’ wishes in order to do what’s best for the Board (i.e. cuts). We will remember this leading up to and on Monday, October 24, 2022, should Pilkey choose to run for re-election.

Stay tuned for more updates about the campaign! The fight is far from over, particularly given how pandemic economic conditions are putting the IB program even further out of reach for working families in Parkdale, Weston, and other lower-income neighbourhoods.