The Ontario Elementary Teachers’ Federation selected no in a Tuesday vote on a Wi-Fi ban.

The Wi-Fi ban attempt is currently being sponsored by a Collingwood couple, Patricia Naylor and Rodney Palmer, who want the Simcoe County District School Board to shut down Wi-Fi at Mountain View Public School. They continue to claim that Wi-Fi is making children sick despite overwhelming scientific proof to the contrary.

Palmer initially raised an objection to the Wi-Fi network in February. The school board invited Dr. Tony Muc, a University of Toronto public health professor and physicist, to a board meeting. Muc explained in lengthy detail how Wi-Fi and the electromagnetic spectrum works.

This led to Naylor claiming that her children are sensitive to electromagnetic radiation during an April 28th board meeting. Naylor did not provide any proof of this to the school board.

The school board contacted the Ontario education and health ministries for advice and were assured that Wi-Fi wireless was safe for both children and schools in June.

The Simcoe superintendent, John Dance, stated that other districts have installed Wi-Fi without problems. He cited Alberta, Manitoba, and Maine as examples. Dance also pointed out that Maine has been using Wi-Fi for nearly ten years. Dance said that neither Palmer or Naylor had submitted a doctor’s note of any kind for their child’s supposed electromagnetic illness.

Naylor and Palmer formed a group, Safe School Committee, to continue their prolonged fight. School board program committee chairman, Rob North, has written a blog post about them, calling their protestations “bizarre”. North cited their use of a botanist’s study without peer review as evidence. Generally, peer review is considered the standard by which scientific studies are judged. North has said that he believes the school district has spent enough time entertaining Naylor and Palmer’s eccentricities.