Board reviewing safe schools policy amid rising violence in schools

A plan by the region’s largest school board to review its safe schools policy comes at the urging of labor unions amid concerns over rising violence in schools, a local labor leader says.

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The Thames Valley District school board will start the review of the policy created 25 years ago with “significant and meaningful consultations” with the board’s labor and advisory groups, Warren Zavarella, system principal for safe schools and wellbeing, said this week.

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“Our goal in Thames Valley is to create positive school climates,” Zavarella said during a presentation to an advisory committee on Tuesday. “Policy and procedure plays a key role in establishing school climate; this means everyone feels they are safe, welcome and respected.”

Local union officials have reported a sharp rise in reported violence in London-area schools, in a post-COVID learning environment.

Most of the incidents – which occur across the entire Thames Valley region – took place in elementary schools, said Craig Smith, president of the Thames Valley district of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario.

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“Obviously, violence in schools is an issue in the system as a whole,” he said. “At the central bargaining table there were discussions about various aspects of violence in schools and safe schools policies.

“The review was kick-started by that process.”

Also part of the process, Smith said, is new legislation for cell phone use in the classroom, vaping and signing in classrooms.

Thames Valley’s safe schools policy first came into effect in 1999, and has seen revisions in 2002 and 2009. A second procedure piece was added in 2017 with revisions in 2018 and 2019.

“We know that some students and their families have been greatly impacted by the safe schools policy and procedure,” Zavarella said. “We know that students who are Black, Indigenous, or have special education needs or identifications have been significantly at a higher risk for suspension across Canada and in Thames Valley.”

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Consultation will continue throughout the fall and winter, with a goal of having the new document in place by the fall of next year, he said.

The review is also being applauded by those who represent students with special needs.

“This is something that is really, really important to us because we want to know that special education students have appropriate responses when they are unable to manage their behaviors and we know different students need different kinds of supports,” said Alison Morse, chair of the Thames Valley school board special education advisory council. ”We also hope those are in place to avoid incidents so we can see the disproportionate number of students in special education in stats be reduced.

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“That is certainly our goal.”

Zavarella said the review will look at bullying prevention and intervention, progressive discipline and promoting positive behavior, suspension of students, suspension appeals, expulsion of students, the expulsion process and decision or an appeal to expel a student.

“It’s a fairly comprehensive procedure that contains a lot of important things for everyone to be aware of because they have a significant impact on our students and their families,” he said.

Smith said he hopes the review will make a difference in the number of violent incidents the board sees.

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“At the end of the day, signage and policies don’t mean anything unless they are part of something on the ground that sets the framework for things to happen,” he said. “The question is, ‘Is there the will to make those policies and procedures real, concrete things that help address these multiple concerns?’”

Smith also points to funding concerns “given the changes made to the funding and the challenges boards face.

“Will there be resources to actually support the actions that are required to make schools safer places?” he said.

The review comes in the wake of a request by Thames Valley trustees for more data about school safety in 2022 and 2023 including the number of safe school incident reports and the number of students they represent, and the number of suspensions, expulsions and violent incidents, as defined by provincial policy, that occurred on school properties.

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As well, they asked for the number of times a student has been suspended during a school year.

“We are all committed to school safety, I am absolutely convinced of that,” trustee Marianne Larsen said. “One way we can do that is to collect data on school safety, to find out what we are doing right, where we are succeeding and where there is room for improvement.

“Our decisions need to be data-informed.”

Ultimately the motion was postponed until the May board meeting until concerns over privacy violations of using the information – despite not containing any identifiable student information – for purposes it wasn’t intended to be addressed.

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