This question is to the Minister of Education. Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board trustee Sabreina Dahab this week successfully passed a motion to redraft 2022-23 suspension and expulsion data to show desegregated categories such as gender and race by June 2023, because she knows what it will show: that kids in schools who are the most impacted by discretionary suspensions and expulsions are Black, racialized, Indigenous and disabled students.

We have the data to support that suspensions and expulsions don’t work. They perpetuate the school-to-prison pipeline.

In 2020, the minister announced a ban on discretionary suspensions for children in kindergarten to grade 3. Is the minister willing to extend this ban to include all elementary school students?

The data is clear: Discretionary suspensions are a tool that feeds racism, anti-Black racism and ableism in our school system.

Will the Minister of Education answer Trustee Dahab’s question and extend your ban on discretionary suspensions for kids in elementary school to go beyond grade 3?