By Tara Carman
The Ontario Safe Schools Act has done little in the last three years but increase the number of suspensions and expulsions in the province,Education Minister Gerard Kennedy said in a recent interview with Centretown News.
The act was conceived by the Conservative government and came into force in September 2001.
The legislation is based on a zero-tolerance approach to school discipline, meaning that certain offences warrant automatic suspension or expulsion.
Ontario is the only province in Canada that has mandatory, province-wide criteria for suspensions and expulsions.
But Kennedy expressed scepticism about the impact the act has had.
“I don’t want to go so far as to say that (the act is) window dressing…but I don’t think that students or staff feel fundamentally safer than they did before,” he said.
The Ministry of Education will launch a public committee on the Safe Schools Act later this fall, Kennedy said. The group will consist of people from the education community, non-profit organizations, and will be headed by Guelph –Wellington MPP Liz Sandals.
It is mandated to look at how the Safe Schools Act is interpreted at the school level and what more can be done in terms of improving school security.
“Punishment is one part of the program, but it’s certainly an inferior part,” Kennedy said. “If we’re going to keep schools safer, we have to be in the business of prevention.” This means looking at ways to bring the number of suspensions and expulsions down, he said.
“I don’t think anyone agrees you can run schools by remote control.”
The suspension rate within the Ottawa-Carleton board doubled between 1998 and 2002, partly due to cutbacks in staff and services, noted a November 2002 memo from the Ottawa-Carleton Assembly of School Councils.
“This is a province-wide phenomenon that may be of concern to many parents locally and provincially,” read the memo.
Under the act, swearing at a teacher, possession of alcohol or illegal drugs or uttering a threat to inflict serious bodily harm warrant automatic suspensions.
Possession of a weapon, committing physical or sexual assault or committing robbery are supposed to result in an automatic expulsion.
The legislation also empowers teachers to suspend students for a day, and principals to expel for up to 20 days.
The Conservatives advocated a zero-tolerance approach to school discipline as part of their education platform in the 1999 election.
Former education minister Janet Ecker emphasized the need for a centralized approach to school safety, arguing that it is important for the government to send a strong message on offences like bringing weapons to school.
She also claimed to have received letters of support from parents, teachers and students in bringing in tougher punishments.
Kennedy, then the education critic, opposed the act and the Liberals voted against it.
He called the legislation an election ploy that did little to address the root causes of school violence.
“What does (the act) actually provide to the students of this province?” he asked in June, 2000.
“Does it offer some possibility of preventing a violent outbreak? Does it do that? Does it even deal with any way of mitigating the behaviour that’s starting to flare up, say, somewhere in the early grades? It doesn’t. It doesn’t even begin to address that.”
Kennedy expressed hope that the public review committee will address what he identified as some of the shortcomings of the Safe Schools Act.
Under the legislation, a kindergarten student in Toronto was recently threatened with suspension for hugging and kissing his classmates.
Dan Wiseman, coordinator of safe schools and community outreach for the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, agrees with the zero tolerance approach, but feels it is poorly understood by the public.
“I hear a lot of criticism about zero tolerance. Some people think (the) term means a rigid response,” he said.
In practice, the Safe Schools Act is more lenient. “We need to do everything possible to tailor the process to individual circumstances.”
Wiseman offers the hypothetical example of a student who hits someone with a baseball bat during a fight. The aggressor student would be expelled immediately.
But if the principal suspects drugs and alcohol may be a factor, he would then conduct an inquiry, talking to the student, the victim, parents, witnesses, the police and anyone else with relevant information.
The principal could then decide whether the expulsion stands or the student returns to school.
The biggest problem with the act, according to Wiseman, is that it doesn’t provide enough support services, such as risk assessment, clinical and educational support, for children and youth with behavioural problems.
“We need the legislation. It may have limitations. We need it balanced with the opportunity to provide resources to meet the needs of these students…we’ve got about half of them in place,” he said.
These are some of the things the review committee will look into, said Kennedy, adding that he hopes to move away from the Safe Schools Act as the guiding policy for school safety.
Asked what the biggest threats to school safety are today, Kennedy said bullying is at the top of the list, an issue not specifically addressed in the Safe Schools Act.
Youth violence and intruders in schools are also of concern, he said, adding that heis hopeful that the review committee will be able to recommend and implement policies to address these issues.