Tucked away on a street corner near Toronto?s Trinity Bellwoods Park is a blink-and-you?ll-miss-it homeschooling haven called Sage and Savant. It?s not actually a home, it?s a small storefront?a beautiful, light-filled space with large glass windows, a cursive sign, and children spilling from the door when it?s time to play outside.
In many ways, Sage and Savant?s obscure little storefront could be seen as a metaphor for the crisis Black students are facing within Canada?s education system: if you aren?t looking for it, you won?t see it. I see it, as a Black mom, because my children are in the midst of it. I hear about it, from other Black parents and white parents of Black children, desperate to ensure their child can receive a peaceful and trauma-free education. But if you aren?t in the trenches, you don?t know about it. Since it opened in early 2019, Sage and Savant has become a safe haven and a resource hub for parents who?ve chosen to pull their kids from public and private schools, preferring to figure out a more customized, creative way to homeschool (or ?un-school?) their children. Numbers are hard to find, however. While you can find a few reports and some limited data on how Black children are treated differently at school, there?s a real lack of hard statistical data on exactly how many Black kids are being pulled out and homeschooled.
In Black mom Facebook groups, parents post congratulatory updates about their teenagers graduating high school or getting into th...