Serving students in culturally clustered schools

I still think that this is a bad idea? There are other ways to solve social issues and problems. Excuses are unacceptable and only help to further alienate various groups in our city. However, if someone can provide me with a reason this a good idea, I am all ears. Andy MJ /a.k.a “The GTA Patriot”.

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Educators debate need for same-culture role models amid reality of ‘segregated’ schools. When Canada’s largest school board votes tomorrow on whether to start an Africentric alternative school, there will be those, including Ontario’s premier, who oppose a school that clusters children by race.

Segregation, critics charge, has no place in our public schools.

Yet schools have long been segregated, naturally, by virtue of the colour-coded neighbourhoods in which they sit, says veteran urban planner Mohammad Qadeer of Queen’s University.

In Canada, he argues, this could be a good thing?

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Girl Refused Employment Because Of Dreadlocks

Jessica Devnani was excited about the prospect of starting her first summer job at Canada’s Wonderland, but in the end, she found no amusement in the park’s request that she cut her dreadlocks, or find work elsewhere.

“I went in for my interview and they hired me on the spot so a week later I went for my first day of training,” she explained.

When she showed up she was given the bad news — the hair had to go.

“I was angry they didn’t tell me at the interview when they saw my hair,” she adds.

As a private company Canada’s Wonderland is entitled to a hiring policy and they have a rule of no extreme hairstyles.

A spokesperson for the company declined an interview.

“They got my hopes up with the job and then telling me I had to resign,” Devnani complains.

Canada’s Wonderland says it will look into better communicating its hiring policies and Jessica doesn’t plan to take any action against them, but she just hopes it doesn’t happen to somebody else.

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Cheers, jeers greet Pastor Paul Melnichuk

Mostly poor flock welcome minister living the good life as critics rally outside his church. Thousands of members of the embattled Prayer Palace congregation cheered on their pastor yesterday as he bragged about his suntan, the support of worshippers and the openness of his administration while one congregant warned, “The devil decided to mess with the wrong church.”

Outside, private security guards, church volunteers and a couple of police cruisers kept a close eye on a small group of demonstrators protesting the lavish lifestyle of senior pastor Paul Melnichuk, his twin sons, who are the church’s junior pastors, and the Prayer Palace’s dwindling contributions to charity.

The Prayer Palace and the Melnichuks were the subject of a recent Sunday Star investigation that found the church’s three pastors living in multi-million-dollar mansions and enjoying a lavish Florida hideaway while encouraging the largely poor congregation to tithe a percentage of their income.

“Money should be invested within the black community,” said protestor Jane Reid, pointedly observing that “after all, 90 per cent of the people who attend the church are black.”

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