The Ontario group Parents of Black Children (PoBC) has recently launched an anonymous racism reporting tool for school boards across the province after some educators voiced concerns about current reporting procedures.

According to Claudette Rutherford, teacher and member of PoBC, several educators have told the group they don't feel comfortable using the reporting tools that were provided to them as they were faced with challenges such as "proving the acts."

"We wanted to create something that would allow for those incidents to still be reported but that would mitigate some of those challenges that people were facing when reporting," said Rutherford.

Parents of Black Children is a group committed to "advocating and ensuring that all school boards meet the educational, emotional safety, wellbeing and physical needs of Black students, by providing them with equitable opportunities to pursue their education in an environment free from oppression and anti-Black racism in all its manifestations."

"Through my time in education, I've seen first-hand a lot of the ways that Black students are disadvantaged in the system and I wanted to empower parents to know how to support their children best," said Rutherford.

The Government of Ontario recently announced the launch of the Student and Family Advocates initiative (SFA), a program to support Black students. The PoBC group is currently running a system navigation that they received funding for, which, according to Rutherford, is a similar initiative.

Members of the community can support PoBC by sharing their work, signing up to volunteer or donating here.

Here is CHUO's interview with teacher and member of PoBC, Claudette Rutherford: