
When asked if she would run again for school board trustee, Charline Grant told the Caribbean Camera. “I have run in two elections in 6 months. I don’t want to think about running again, although I have been approached to run provincially.
“I don’t want to think about that at this time, I just want to spend time with my family my kids compete in sports at a high level.”
Charline Grant, longtime parent activist, again failed to take the top spot in the York Region School Board Trustee. This time she lost to Nadeem Mahmood, an IT professional, who now becomes Vaughan’s York Region School Board trustee, according to unofficial results from last Thursday’s by-election.
Mahmoud, a 20-year Vaughan resident who has four daughters and served as co-chair of the Run for Canada charity, garnered 933 votes while Grant tallied 267 votes.
In March, Grant filed a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario over what she called the school board’s “discriminatory decision” not to appoint her as a trustee after earning 2,161 votes in the 2018 election.
The by-election for Wards 1 and 2 seats, was called after the abrupt resignation in January of Anna DeBartolo, a month into the new term.
Voter turnout on Thursday was just 4.05 per cent, with 1,750 out of 43,160 eligible voters casting a ballot for one of the 13 candidates who were registered.
The school board estimates the by-election cost $177,000. And based on the turnout, that works out to about $100 dollars per voter.
Grant went on to say that “Nadeem has reached out to me and he would like me to work with him on bringing about bringing about some changes, so I look forward to that. Another positive thing is that there’s now a group that has been formed called Parents of Black Students in York Region and I’ll be working with them to mobilize our community so that we can protect our children from a lot of things that have been happening over the years; and the way I see it is if we are able to mobilize the black community, they may not like us but they will definitely respect us, and we need to be respected.”