BOARD LOSES DRUG APPEAL

Jean Grant says her son was a test case for a new school rule - and
her battle with the Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board was a
test case for parents who refuse to back down.

"I want other parents to know what school boards can do, what
principals and vice-principals have the power to do," Grant said Monday.

In what Grant calls the first case of its kind, the Superior Court of
Justice rejected an appeal filed by the board, which wanted to keep
her son out of high school and was fighting a Child and Family
Services Review Board decision to keep him in class.

Grant's son, now 18, was expelled from PCVS in December 2008 after a
school investigation determined he and several other boys had consumed
and sold marijuana.

Board officials could not be reached for comment.

Grant admits her son used marijuana, but not on school
property.

"They expelled him because they said he had a negative impact on
school climate," Grant said.

"This rule just came into effect in February of 2008. So he was one of
the first expelled under this new rule. I had no idea you could expel
a child based on something they did on their own time, on the weekend."

She took her son's case to a provincial Child and Family Services
Review Board tribunal. The tribunal overturned the board's decision to
expel the teen in March 2009, putting the board's position - that
offcampus activities can lead to expulsion if they are found, in the
board's view, to influence school climate - to the test.

"That was the first time that a tribunal overturned an expulsion by a
school board based on the fact that it didn't happen at school," Grant
said.

In June, the board filed an appeal in Superior Court, naming Grant and
the family services board as respondents. This, again, was a test
case, Grant said.

"This is the first time a school board has ever taken a tribunal to
court," Grant said.

"Their word is final. It's supposed to be the final word, and yet our
school board took them to court and tried to say that they were wrong."

Last week, the court ruled against the board, and awarded partial
costs to Grant. She said the $3,000 award won't cover the expenses she
has incurred in her battle - but she's glad she took up the fight,
both for her son's sake and for other parents.

"He got as far as Grade 12 without ever being in trouble once, in his
entire school career, and then all of a sudden, he's expelled? It just
never made any sense to me. I believed in him, and I really believed
that what they were doing was very, very wrong," she said. "And my
hope now is, with this official ruling, that parents can go to the
tribunal level without needing a lawyer. Because now that the court
has said that you have to show an impact on the school, the parents
can go to tribunals and say this has nothing to do with the school."
Grant's son graduated from high school in January and is applying to
colleges.

Grant said the board could appeal again. If that happens, she said,
she'll keep up the fight.