Regulated Sectors
Lawyers for Private & Independent Schools in Ontario
Employment, Investigation and Safeguarding Counsel for Ontario Schools
Private and independent schools in Ontario are private-sector employers operating inside a distinct regulatory framework. They are not school boards. Bill 101, Putting Students First Act, 2026 governs trustees and directors of education at publicly funded boards, not heads of school and boards of governors.
At Greenwood Law, we act for the school. We conduct independent workplace investigations, advise heads of school and boards of governors on employment, safeguarding and misconduct matters, and provide counsel to independent schools across Ontario, day schools, faith-based schools, Montessori programs, boarding schools and Ministry-inspected credit-granting institutions.
The Greenwood Law Team
Greenwood Law provides employment law, workplace investigation and crisis counsel to private and independent schools in Ontario. When an allegation surfaces, how a school responds in the first seventy-two hours often determines everything that follows.
Legal Services for Private and Independent Schools
Our lawyers advise school owners, heads of school, business managers and boards of governors on the full range of workforce and institutional legal matters, including:
- Workplace Investigations – Independent, third-party investigation of harassment, discrimination, boundary violation and misconduct complaints, conducted by a certified workplace investigator
- Safeguarding & Duty to Report – Advising on CYFSA s. 125 obligations, reporting thresholds, and how to preserve an investigation while a children’s aid society and police conduct their own
- Board of Governors Advisory – Counsel to the board when an allegation involves the head of school, a governor, or the institution itself
- Crisis Response – First-seventy-two-hours counsel when an allegation surfaces, including evidence preservation, interim measures, communications sequencing and regulatory notification
- Employment Contracts – Drafting and reviewing agreements for teachers, heads of school, coaches, chaplains, residential and boarding staff, including enforceable termination clauses that comply with the Employment Standards Act, 2000
- Terminations & High-Conflict Exits – Managing mid-year teacher terminations, head of school departures and exits that carry reputational or community consequences
- Employment Classification – Assessing whether coaches, instructors, tutors and contract staff are properly characterized as employees or independent contractors
- Workplace Policies & Compliance – Codes of conduct, boundary and safeguarding policies, harassment and violence programs meeting Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA) requirements
- Human Rights Complaints – Defending HRTO applications arising in both employment and services, including accommodation of students and staff
- Systemic & Cultural Reviews – Independent reviews of school culture, historic conduct and institutional practice, where the issue is broader than a single complaint
- Training – Boundary training, safeguarding training, and investigation-readiness training for administrators and department heads
- Historic Allegations – Advising schools when former students or alumni come forward about conduct from prior decades
Workplace Investigations for Private and Independent Schools
This is the work we are known for, and it is where independent schools most often get into trouble.
When a serious allegation surfaces at a school, three processes can run at once: your workplace investigation, a children’s aid society investigation triggered by your CYFSA duty to report, and a police investigation that may lead to criminal charges. They have different rules, different standards of proof, and different consequences for getting the sequence wrong.
Schools routinely make the same three mistakes. They interview a student or a respondent before reporting, contaminating a child protection investigation. They pause their own process indefinitely because “the police are handling it,” leaving a respondent in place and the school exposed under the OHSA. Or they ask a senior teacher or the HR manager to look into it internally, which is how confidential information ends up in a staff room and a defensible process becomes an indefensible one.
Greenwood Law is built for exactly this. Jessyca Greenwood is a certified workplace investigator (AWI-CH) and a criminal defence lawyer with appearances at every level of court in Canada, recognized among Canada’s Best Lawyers and currently serving as Vice President of the Criminal Lawyers’ Association. Very few firms in Ontario can run a defensible workplace investigation while understanding, from the inside, what a parallel police investigation requires and how a criminal proceeding will unfold.
Independence is not a formality. Your own HR department cannot credibly investigate your head of school. A board member cannot investigate a colleague. If a finding is ever tested, in litigation, at the HRTO, in the press, or by a parent community, the first question asked is who conducted the investigation and whether they were genuinely independent of the people involved.
Hear From Our Clients
Protecting Your School, Your Students and Your Community
We act for private and independent schools across Ontario, conducting independent workplace investigations, advising heads of school and boards of governors through allegations and misconduct complaints, and coordinating the parallel child protection, police and regulatory processes that follow, to protect your students, your staff, and your school’s standing in its community.
Table of Contents
Hear From Our Clients
Protecting Your School, Your Students and Your Community
We act for private and independent schools across Ontario, conducting independent workplace investigations, advising heads of school and boards of governors through allegations and misconduct complaints, and coordinating the parallel child protection, police and regulatory processes that follow, to protect your students, your staff, and your school’s standing in its community.
Why Private Schools Choose Greenwood Law
Counsel Built for Independent Institutions
We advise schools, professional practices and regulated organizations across Ontario on workplace investigations, employment law and crisis response. That work has given us a practical understanding of how independent schools actually operate, small communities, close governance, and reputational stakes that don’t stay inside the building.
Investigation and Criminal Capability in One Firm
Independent schools rarely face a purely employment problem. A single complaint can engage the Occupational Health and Safety Act, the CYFSA duty to report, a police file and a regulatory college all at once. We conduct the investigation, advise on the employment consequences, and understand the criminal process running beside it, so a school is not left coordinating three sets of counsel during its worst week.
Discretion at Community Scale
Independent schools are small, tightly connected communities where a mishandled process travels fast. We understand that reputational management and legal defensibility are the same project, not competing ones.
Safeguarding First
A defensible process is a fair one. We advise schools to protect children properly, because there is no version of this work where a school’s interests are served by anything less.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does a private school have to investigate a harassment complaint?
Yes. Under the Occupational Health and Safety Act, every Ontario employer must ensure that an investigation appropriate in the circumstances is conducted into incidents and complaints of workplace harassment. Private schools are employers. This obligation applies regardless of school size, funding model, or whether the school is Ministry-inspected.
The harder question is usually scope. A complaint about a teacher’s conduct toward a colleague is a workplace harassment matter. A complaint about a teacher’s conduct toward a student may simultaneously trigger the OHSA duty, the CYFSA duty to report, a potential police investigation, and, if the teacher is a voluntary OCT member, a College proceeding. Determining which processes are engaged, and in what order, is the first piece of advice a school should get.
What do we do first when an allegation involves a student?
Report. If there are reasonable grounds to suspect a child is or may be in need of protection, s. 125 of the CYFSA requires an immediate report to a children’s aid society, and it is not the school’s role to investigate first to satisfy itself the concern is well-founded.
This is counterintuitive for school leaders, who reasonably want to establish facts before escalating. But attempting to verify first can contaminate a child protection investigation, compromise a police file, and expose the individual who delayed to personal liability under s. 125(9). Get advice on interim measures and on sequencing your own workplace investigation, but report first.
Can our own HR team or a senior teacher conduct the investigation?
They can, but in serious matters they should not. Nothing in Ontario law requires an external investigator. What the law requires is a process that is prompt, thorough, impartial and conducted in good faith.
Where the respondent is senior, where the complaint involves a student, where the allegations are of harassment or sexual misconduct, or where the outcome may be scrutinized publicly, internal investigation creates a structural independence problem that no amount of good faith fixes. Delegating a sensitive investigation to an untrained employee also creates real risk of privacy breaches and of a defensible complaint becoming an indefensible process.
Do our teachers need to be certified by the Ontario College of Teachers?
No. Certification by the Ontario College of Teachers is not required to teach at, or serve as principal of, an Ontario private school. Many independent school teachers hold OCT membership voluntarily, and many schools require it as a term of employment.
The employment consequence matters. If your teacher is an OCT member, the College can investigate allegations of professional misconduct against that member independently of anything the school does. Your school may be managing a regulatory proceeding it cannot control, on the same facts as its own investigation, with different timelines and a different standard. Employment agreements should address what happens to the employment relationship if a member’s certificate is suspended or revoked.
Does Bill 101 apply to our school?
No. Bill 101, Putting Students First Act, 2026 amends the governance, oversight and collective bargaining framework that applies to Ontario’s publicly funded school boards, trustees, directors of education, board finances. Private and independent schools are outside that regime.
What does apply to you is s. 16 of the Education Act, the Employment Standards Act, 2000, the Occupational Health and Safety Act, the Ontario Human Rights Code, and the CYFSA. The practical risk is that school leaders read board-focused legal commentary, conclude that education law does not describe their situation, and then assume, incorrectly, that they are lightly regulated. The regulation is simply different, and in the areas that matter most, the personal exposure is higher.
What should we do about allegations from former students about conduct years ago?
Take them seriously and get advice before responding. Historic allegations raise a distinct set of questions: whether the CYFSA duty to report is engaged (it can be, if a child may currently be at risk), whether the individual is still employed or connected to the school, what records still exist, what the school’s insurers must be told, and whether a single complaint indicates a broader institutional issue that warrants a systemic review rather than an individual investigation.
Schools that respond defensively to historic allegations tend to compound the original harm and the eventual liability. Schools that respond with a credible, independent process are in a materially better position, legally, and with their community.
Contact Greenwood Law
Whether your school is responding to a complaint, reviewing its safeguarding and employment policies, managing a head of school transition, or facing an allegation that has reached parents or the press, early advice changes outcomes. Contact Greenwood Law for a confidential consultation with counsel who acts for independent schools.
Areas We Serve
At Greenwood Law, we proudly serve clients across Ontario & throughout Canada, including:
