The Canadian Press: Punishment no deterrent to guns, sex abuse in Toronto schools: panel chairman

The Canadian Press: Punishment no deterrent to guns, sex abuse in Toronto schools: panel chairman
Punishment no deterrent to guns, sex abuse in Toronto schools: panel chairman

15 hours ago

TORONTO - The problem of violence in Toronto's public schools has become so serious and so widespread that it cries out for fresh thinking and a revamped approach to how best to protect students, the head of an advisory panel said Thursday.

Julian Falconer, chairman of the School Community Safety Advisory Panel, punctuated the early release of the panel's massive final report by tearing a strip off how society as a whole deals with troubled or marginalized students.

"This took more than days to create as a problem and it will take more than days to fix," Falconer told a news conference.

"We miss the point if we believe that the road to health involves punishing or using enforcement methods to try to re-engage youth. It doesn't work. We suspend in droves; it fails."

The panel's 1,000-page report, which uncovered an alarming number of unreported incidents of violence and sexual harassment at specific schools in Toronto, recommends - among other things - using dogs to sniff out guns hidden in school lockers.

It also calls for closer monitoring of school front doors and ensuring all other doors remain locked from the outside, a provincial portfolio dedicated to monitoring school safety, an end to the zero-tolerance Safe Schools Act and policy measures to deal with gender-based violence and cyber-bullying.

The report concludes that many of the more than 250,000 students at Toronto public schools contend daily with a "culture of fear" that pervades many of the city's secondary-school institutions, and identifies a community-wide "crisis of confidence" in the board's ability to ensure a violence-free and weapons-free environment.

At Westview Centennial secondary school, near the infamous, crime-riddled intersection of Jane Street and Finch Avenue in northwest Toronto, the panel found one out of every three female students reported some form of sexual harassment in the past two years.

Nearly 30 per cent of female students reported experiencing unwanted sexual contact during the same time frame, but aren't getting the protection they need from the school board because of their reluctance to report incidents, Falconer said.

"It's high time that we recognized that this is about taking responsibility for our weakest links," he said. "You can't suspend a youth and send them home to learn a lesson if their home consists of a shelter."

The panel was convened in the wake of the May shooting death of 15-year-old student Jordan Manners at C.W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute.

The school's former principal and two vice-principals were charged this week with failing to report an alleged sexual assault on a student in a school washroom in October 2006 even though they were made aware of the incident.

Falconer also said the board itself, while expected to take on responsibility for "complex-needs" students, doesn't get anything like the necessary funding to deal with the problem properly.

Education Minister Kathleen Wynne was non-committal about giving school boards more funding, saying she wants to examine all the recommendations in the report. But Wynne, a former Toronto District School Board trustee, said she doesn't like the idea of sniffer dogs in Ontario schools.

"It's not my experience that there is an invasive culture of fear" in Toronto schools, she said in an interview.

"I don't think anything that's going to make our schools into fortresses or fearful places is the right way to go. I'm very supportive of preventative measures, but I'll have to look at the specific recommendations."

In January 2006, the panel recorded 177 violent incidents in schools across the district, including some involving guns, robbery and sexual assault.

That November, the board, which comprises 560 schools and 266,000 students, surveyed all pupils in grades 7 through 12 and found that the vast majority felt safe in the classroom and on school property.

Having dogs sniffing for guns may send the wrong message to the community, said Harvey Newman, who for 14 years was the principal of a school in New York, where some schools have security guards and metal detectors.

"It sends a message of a lack of trust," said Newman, a senior fellow at the Center for Educational Innovation with the Public Education Association in New York.

"It is an overreaction and it probably won't even achieve the objectives. If somebody wants to get into a school and do some damage, they won't go in the direction of the dogs or detectives.

"Forget all the book learning. The real message that you're sending to children is that that's the way a society must operate to be effective - a lousy social message.

"I wouldn't want to send my kids to a school where dogs are sniffing them up."

Conservative education critic Joyce Savoline said Ontario's governing Liberals ignored earlier warnings from principals about school violence, and should act quickly on the report by increasing funding to all boards.

But Savoline agreed it's too soon to consider using sniffer dogs in schools.

"I think it's premature to talk about any one particular option," she said. "I'm sure it's not going to be the same for every school community."

New Democrat Michael Prue blamed cutbacks by previous Conservative governments for the violence plaguing some schools, but said the Liberals must give boards adequate funding to cope with such problems.

"I'm not asking for special treatment for Toronto," Prue said. "But I am saying that school boards have to have discretionary funding, whether that is for aboriginal youth in northern Ontario, or in rural Ontario for better access to buses, or whether it's in Toronto for social workers and programs to keep youth out of trouble."
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