Volunteers monitor school’s unlocked doors
Parent ‘greeters’ at Hopewell Avenue ensure visitors report to the office
Parents in Ottawa South are so concerned about the security buzzer being turned off at their children’s elementary school that they’ve organized volunteers to watch over the unlocked front door of Hopewell Avenue Public School.
The parent “greeters” remind visitors to report to the front office — and watch to make sure they do.
Parents decided they needed to step in to ensure their kids were safe after the latest labour disruption at Ottawa’s public elementary schools. The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board unlocked the front doors on Oct. 5 at the 60 schools that have front-door security, after support staff on a partial strike refused to operate the buzzers.
On Tuesday morning, two parents sat at a table just inside the front door of Hopewell Avenue school. Within a few minutes, a woman arrived late with two children in tow, another came running in with a lunch box, and a dad they recognized breezed by and waved. The volunteers declined to give their names for publication.
“For most of us parents, safety is first, and (unlocking the door) is compromising safety,” said one mother. The safety buzzer acts as a deterrent, making it harder for an intruder to enter the school unnoticed, the other mother said.
The 19 parent volunteers who signed up for one-hour shifts at Hopewell don’t quiz visitors or prevent them from entering the school.
“Your role is to greet visitors and send them to the office,” said an email sent to parents. “If you have any concerns about a visitor or someone doesn’t go to the front office, please alert office staff, who will find the principal or viceprincipal quickly.”
The school is in a high-traffic area a few steps from Bank Street, noted school council co-chair Daphne Gilbert.
The buzzer did not provide complete security, she said. But at least office staff were aware when someone entered the school and would notice if the visitor failed to show up at the office a few seconds later, she said. Visitors at all the board’s elementary schools — just more than half don’t have buzzers — are supposed to report to the office.
“Now, anyone who wants to can just walk in, and there’s no way you would even know they were in the building,” said Gilbert.
Premier Kathleen Wynne has criticized the support-staff union, saying it’s using student safety as a bargaining chip, and Education Minister Liz Sandals says she asked the union to reconsider its decision to stop operating security buzzers.
Officials from the union did not return a call Tuesday. But in previous interviews, union reps have said they don’t believe the job action compromises the safety of students. It’s the school board that unlocked the doors, the union says, and if administrators are concerned they can ask principals or other staff to operate buzzers.
Gilbert said that would not work at Hopewell, a large school with lots of visitors. “The idea that the principal could sit there all day and operate the buzzer is totally unrealistic. Nor would I want my principal to not do all the things they are supposed to do at the school and operate the buzzer.”
A spokesperson for the school board said she didn’t know if volunteers were helping with security elsewhere, as it would be up to individual schools.
Support staff at Ottawa’s Catholic and public French-language school boards are also staging job actions, but they belong to another union that has not asked members to stop operating buzzers.
“All of our elementary schools remain locked during the school day as usual, the doors monitored as usual,” said a statement from the Catholic board. Secondary schools in the public and Catholic boards don’t have security buzzers.
At the French public board, elementary and high schools are both locked, a security measure that has been phased in over the past five years or so, said Jean-François Thibodeau, who is in charge of security and student well-being for the board’s 38 schools across Eastern Ontario. He’s not aware of any cases in which doors were left unlocked because of the labour disruption.
Elementary teachers in the public board have also been on an escalating a work-to-rule campaign since the school year began. Retired principals have been brought in at some public elementary schools to help principals, who have had paperwork piled on them because of the job actions.