Dysfunctional board axes safety program

Canada’s largest school board, one of the biggest in North America, appears poised to scrap a decade- old program that put armed police officers into some high schools after Grade 9 student Jordan Manners was shot dead inside C. W. Jefferys Collegiate on May 23, 2007.

This comes as no surprise.

The Toronto District school board effectively made its decision to end the school resource officer ( SRO) program when, under pressure from a few small activist groups, it suspended the SROs at the start of this school year, pending a review by board staff.

That review recommended scrapping the program.

This after it found most students and parents surveyed said they believed the presence of the SROs in 45 high schools last year made the schools safer for students. Yes, you read that correctly.

To understand how this can happen, you have to understand that in the 10 years since 15- year- old Jordan Manners was murdered in broad daylight inside C. W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute in 2007, in a case that remains unsolved, two independent inquiries found the Toronto school board is dysfunctional.

After the Manners shooting, the board commissioned a $ 680,000, six- month task force headed by civil rights lawyer Julian Falconer.

It found a “culture of fear and silence” with regard to reporting and addressing school violence, starting at the top.

Teachers trying to control violent students and trespassers complained of a lack of support from school administrators, superintendents and trustees, some of whom interfered in student disciplinary cases and violated confidentiality.

The task force found the school board hierarchy didn’t want to hear about problems of violence in schools. Staff who tried to address the issue said they feared “political reprisal” — career derailment — for not being perceived as team players.

A second task force in 2015, appointed by the province and headed by Margaret Wilson, a former teacher union leader and registrar of the College of Teachers, reached many of the same conclusions, using the same phrase as the first inquiry, a “culture of fear,” to describe the board.

That this board is now scapegoating SROs as a cover for its failures to address school violence effectively, along with a host of other problems, is unsurprising.

Indeed, it’s par for the course for this school board, for anyone who knows its sorry history.