An anonymous blogger at a blog called Blazing Cat Fur first noted it online, observing:
“School administration take part preparing the Cafeteria and making it into mosque every Friday and no one but Muslims can use the Cafeteria during the Islamic prayers on Friday.”
PLUS: an anonymous (liberal) teacher writes in…
I fully support your protest against the TDSB and, while neither Jewish, Hindu or Christian, I plan to attend on Monday.
Watching your video of the news conference, I noticed you had some question about how “the story broke.” I don’t know about the story, but I can tell you I spent the better part of the past year writing on this issue to the TDSB, all the trustees including those newly elected in November, my MPP, the Premier, the Ministry of Education, the media, and to other miscellaneous groups and individuals I thought might share my concern. Just about no one replied. Deafening silence.
Below is the message I sent, lightly tweaked for the various recipients. So you can see that the issue had been raised, contrary to the claims that no one had complained, but officials were ignoring it. (…)
n June 2009, as a teacher at Jarvis Collegiate, I took my concerns on this issue to the principal, Ms. Elizabeth Addo-Noel. Her first response was to state that students were being released on the basis of religious accommodation. However, when we looked carefully together at the TDSB’s own calendar showing obligatory prayer times for Muslim students (see above), she agreed that the practice could not be justified as religious accommodation. When I suggested that the practice was, then, simply a “gift” to Muslim students, she smiled and stated that she would continue the practice.
