School safety measures were once only a precaution

When Operational Procedure PR695 (Threats to school safety) was adopted by the Toronto District School Board in 2005, I believed the possibility that staff and students would ever have to use hold and secure or lockdown skills “for real” was remote. I thought, like fire drills, it was better to be safe than sorry but that for most, experience with them would be limited to drills and false alarms.

That belief started to change a few years ago, but events of recent weeks have me reeling.

Images of parents waiting outside of a school to be reunited with children as they were released after a lockdown were on the news again before Christmas break. This time, the students were young — ranging from kindergarten to Grade 5.

Around 3 p.m., police had been called to investigate reports of a shooting just outside Firgrove Public School. I listened in horror as an eyewitness described a parent trying to shield his child from the gunshots being fired from a passing car.

In 2005, I thought instruction 4.4j from the procedure — “Everyone should lie on the floor if gunshots are heard” — was self-evident but unlikely to be enacted. On that recent afternoon, I was hoping every person still in the school was flat on the floor.

A few weeks earlier, staff and students at Western Technical Commercial School were in lockdown for five hours as police searched for an armed intruder. Several of my son’s friends are students there and I’m friends with some of their parents so when I heard the breaking report, I called a friend to let her know. At first, we hoped it was a false alarm, but as the hours stretched on we realized it was serious. No shots were fired, but the police were still looking for the suspect.

At dinner that evening, my son showed me photos his friends had taken of the Toronto Police tactical unit searching WTCS. I had seen similar images on the news but looking at the photos taken by children we knew really affected me.

If my son had made a different decision about high school, it could just as easily have been his pictures. We talked about the situation and how terrifying it would have been for everyone inside and for the parents waiting to discover if their children were safe.

Then, there was another “hold and secure” called at my son’s school. I found myself taking comfort knowing that if the threat was in the immediate vicinity of the school, it would have been a lockdown.

No school is perfect. Drugs, bullying and cliques have always been present in one form or another. But parents haven’t worried school could be the place their child would be raped or shot. Recent events have shaken us.

These days I find myself telling my son, “Stay alert and be aware of your surroundings” as he leaves each morning and breathing a sigh of relief when he returns. But I still hope it’s the start of a better year.

Catherine Little is a Toronto-based educator, consultant and writer.