Teacher disparaged school division, staff and students online, lawsuit alleges

A northern school division suing a former teacher wants a judge to order the removal of her “defamatory and injurious” comments on social media about students, staff and the division itself.

In a statement of claim filed in Manitoba Court of King’s Bench last week, the Frontier School Division is suing the woman for unspecified damages for allegedly posting numerous disparaging statements that began in January 2025.

The alleged comments include threats of physical harm, racial slurs and derogatory and salacious insults.

The lawsuit also seeks a permanent injunction barring the woman from publishing defamatory statements against the division, its staff and its students, along with an order forcing her to delete statements from Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram or any other platform she has posted on.

“The division has been severely injured in terms of its character and reputation,” the statement of claim says. “The online defamatory statements tend to lower the division in the estimation of right thinking members of society generally and reflect negatively on the character and reputation of the division.

“The division has demanded that the defendant cease and desist from making and publishing untrue and defamatory statements about it and its employees, but the defendant has refused to do so.”

No one from the school division returned a call for comment Tuesday. The division’s lawyer said he could not comment.

The woman, whose last known address, according to court documents, was in Ajax, Ont., could not be reached for comment.

The Free Press is not publishing the alleged statements.

The lawsuit says the woman was hired on a temporary contract to teach at the Helen Betty Osborne Ininiw Education Centre in Norway House from September to December 2024, and then at Thunderbird School at South Indian Lake from January to June 2025.

An affidavit from Frontier’s area superintendent Donald McCaskill said Thunderbird’s principal received an initial complaint in February 2025 about the teacher’s online remarks.

McCaskill said after meeting with the woman and her Manitoba Teachers’ Society staff officer on March 12, 2025, where she acknowledged her comments “violated division policy and acknowledged that they were made in poor judgment,” she was allowed to continue teaching.

McCaskill said that less than a week later, a staff member at the teacher’s school reported the woman had posted a comment “that expressed dislike of a specific cultural group,” and she was placed on leave until another meeting could be held with a MTS staff officer.

McCaskill said that after a meeting on April 7, 2025, during which the woman apologized for the comment and agreed to meet with the co-worker affected by the post, he cleared her to return to teaching the next day.

Almost two months later, McCaskill said the guardian of a student taking science in the teacher’s class said the woman had tried to get the student to sign a document agreeing not to look at her social media accounts. The student said the incident began after other students found TikTok videos made by the teacher, as well as posts, disparaging her students.

McCaskill said the teacher was put on administrative leave again and, after her term position ended, she was not rehired.

But, the lawsuit alleges in the months since, up until March 30, the woman has “intentionally and/or maliciously published untrue and defamatory statements concerning the division, its employees, and/or its students.”

The division has more than 40 schools scattered across about 75 per cent of the province’s land mass, mostly in central and northern areas.

No statement of defence has been filed and the matter hasn’t been tested in court.

It’s the same school division where last week it became known that a teacher who also worked as a principal agreed to be stripped of all teaching and administration certificates after admitting to giving cannabis and alcohol to a high school student last fall. The information became public through a consent resolution agreement between the teacher and Bobbi Taillefer, the province’s commissioner of teacher professional conduct.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca