Category: Focus

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.

Every year, during the first week of class, Peter Giuliani would collect his students’ money for book orders and field trips. He’d tuck it away in his desk drawer for safe keeping, along with the emergency scholastic fund. He was always upfront with the students and told them: here’s where the money is kept, if you’re going to steal it, you’ll do it.

Ontario is the only province in Canada that has a zero-tolerance school policy, or province-wide criteria for suspensions and expulsions. Here is a brief look at what other provinces are doing with regard to school safety.

Constable Sue is a celebrity at St. Clare Catholic School in Orleans. In the playground during morning recess, a pack of seven and eight-year-old girls crowd around the uniformed cop for hugs. Some even ask for an autograph.