A Brief History of the Quebec Board of Black Educators

In 1968 a group of Black educators who had been informally working with Black youth in the city got together to form an organization in order to formalize the work they were doing. These individuals were mainly Quebec certified teachers, some university students and a few instructors from the universities.

This was a tumultuous time in the educational activity in the city. Large numbers of immigrants from the Caribbean were arriving in the city and the schools were ill equipped to address the cultural variations and problems the children of these immigrants brought to the schools.

In addition there was a marked absence of native born Blacks on the university campuses. This lead to the observation that, for Blacks, the route from the Caribbean to Mc Gill was shorter than the route from the local schools to the university. There was no CEGEP system at that time. There was something endemic in the school system that prevented local Blacks from completing high school.

The organization was formed and incorporated as THE QUEBEC BOARD OF BLACK EDUCATORS. The immediate strategy was to create three streams of redress. Our own remedial summer schools, work with the school boards and other local institutions, and work with the parents of the students.

First we decided to open channels of communication with the English Montreal School Board that was then the Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal. We quickly discovered that the situation for students in the schools was even worse than we imagined. The members of the QBBE were kept busy going from school to school representing students and their parents who were being subjected to racism in its various guises.

Further the school as an institution was unable to cope with a culture which the teachers were totally unfamiliar. With the support of the teacher’s union we formed a committee to liaise with the officers of the PSBGM.

One of the first concessions of the PSBGM was the creation of the post of Black Liaison Officer. This educator was charged with performing the job which the members of the QBBE were previously performing on an adhoc basis. This officer visited schools, held workshops for teachers and administrators and generally explained the students to the teachers and the teachers to the student and parent.

Other positions were created to address the problems of Black students at school. There was a Black Psychologist, a Black social worker, more Black teachers were employed by the school board and major problems were addressed at the regular meetings of the QBBE/ PSBGM liaison committee.

The second stream of redress was the summer schools. There was a ready pool of Black students in the city who had not finished high school because they were in a number of instances actively discouraged from continuing their education. The abiding statement of the QBBE which was not wavered for its 37 years of existence is: students placed in a positive culturally sensitive environment with strong certified teachers will perform well and in some instances extraordinarily well.

In the spring of 1968 the QBBE decided to create a remedial program summer program for those students who did not finish high school but wanted to continue at university. We approached

 Mc Gill, Concordia, and Sir Williams University in those days and Dawson College in its nascent stage. The universities and Dawson College pledged to support the summer school financially, encourage and accept graduates of our program into the first year programs of these institutions.

This was the birth of Da Costa Hall summer school for high school students. The following year the elementary sector, Bana, was added. At the present time the time the schools are accommodated at four locations. These schools have served approximately 14, 000 students over the life of the organization. The appeal of the schools is that a significant number of students from other communities attended the schools each year.

The Bana elementary program is located in St. Laurent, Cote Des Neiges and LaSalle.

Da Costa Hall High School is located at Dawson College. During the past 36 years the programs have been conducted for five weeks each summer. In 2004 the programs served approximately 375 students.

Da Costa Hall provides academic enrichment, remediation and supplemental programs for students from grade seven to eleven. Bana provides academic enrichment, remediation and reinforcement for elementary students across the grades.