Incoming Catholic Board director set to tackle tough issues

July 15, 2021 · 0 Comments

Addressing equity, diversity and inclusion has been long been a mission for Dominic Scuglia.

It was a mission he put into action as founding principal of St. Maximilian Kolbe Catholic High School, and it was a mission he furthered in Saskatchewan for the past five years.

Now, they are principles that will guide his work as he returns to Aurora to take the helm of the York Catholic District School Board – a new challenge at a particularly challenging time.

Mr. Scuglia, who has been an educator for nearly 35 years, will take over as Director of Education for the York Catholic District School Board next month, an appointment he says has left him “humbled” and “filled with joy.”

He returns to Aurora after a tenure in Regina that placed significant emphasis on Indigenous learners, an experience which allowed him to connect directly with First Nations and become immersed in the Truth & Reconciliation process.

“These unique experiences really help you understand some of the intergenerational trauma,” he says, noting that a number of the staff he worked with were from Cowesses First Nation where more than 750 unmarked graves were found last month. [These experiences are] important because of the scrutiny our Catholic church is going under right now, especially with the fact they ran residential schools and the schools the unmarked graves were found were run by Catholic organizations, so I feel compelled that we need to follow the Calls to Action (from the Truth & Reconciliation Commission), including Call to Action #58 which calls on the Pope coming to Canada and apologizing.

“There is a delegation that is leaving Canada just before Christmas and heading to Rome to meet with the Pope about the issue of the apology. I know the people who are going and they are good people and I think we will get a good resolution about that encounter with the Pope just before Christmas.”

In addition to Truth & Reconciliation, questions still swirl around diversity, gender and Pride Month, issues he says “our capital-C Catholic Church grapples with.”

The question, he says, is how can Catholic education “move forward in 2021 to be inclusive and allow healing to happen.”

“I want to be a part of that journey. I want to be part of leading it and understanding fully that there are tensions within our church around both of those issues that need to be resolved, that I think with true dialogue we can get to a good place,” he says.

Part of this dialogue is embracing the philosophy of Justice Murray Sinclair who said, “education got us into this mess and education is going to get us out of this mess.” From Scuglia’s perspective, using curriculum is a powerful tool in bringing about change.

“Looking at the colonial literature we put in front of kids is one of the areas we would be looking at changing and diversifying the curriculum so it is more reflective of the communities we’re teaching and more reflecting our Indigenous communities,” he says. “There are some incredibly powerful stories by Indigenous authors that will get us to the same place but engages in the conversation of understanding Indigenous people as well as BIPOC – great stories, great learnings that can happen through changing some of the narrative in the curriculum that is available to our students today.”

An essential step in getting there is building upon experiential learning opportunities, he adds. Indigenous teaching relies heavily on land-based learning, fundamentals of which he is bringing back with him from Regina.

There, students got their hands dirty looking at the cultural uses of tobacco, growing it from seed and using it as a teaching tool.

“The knowledge-keepers and elders said, ‘You need to take this outside of Regina Catholic Schools and share it with other school boards,’” he recalls. “When I found out I was coming back to Ontario, I asked if I could take the seeds with me and I’m coming equipped with tobacco seeds and open to sharing with our schools to keep the tobacco growing across Canada so that when we do engage with elders and knowledge-keepers and Indigenous exercises we will have our own tobacco to share.”

Despite the increased scrutiny it has faced, Scuglia says it is important to still have faith-based education options in the community.

“Our greatest teacher is Jesus, and within the four gospels there are some really poignant and important messages that I think are relevant to us to lead a good, moral life,” he says. “We’re not only good people but we’re good people for other people; social justice is a very important part of what we teach and we go out of our way as Catholics to look for that justice in places where there is injustice and bring justice to those places either through fundraising or other supports that we can provide.

“We have kids and staff who travel to impoverished parts of the globe to assist in the building of a hospital, a school, an orphanage. It is not to minimize the good work that happens in public schools because they do good work as well, but we do our teaching through the teachings of Jesus Christ and that is what makes us separate and effective.”

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter