Toronto board votes to remove police from schools
Activists applaud decision to scrap program
A group of activists called on the Ontario government to ban the practice of stationing uniformed police officers at high schools across the province after the Toronto District School Board voted to permanently end the program.
The decision by the country’s largest school board to scrap the controversial School Resource Officer program was met with loud applause Wednesday night. The vote came a little more than a week after TDSB staff released a report recommending the elimination of the program because it left some students feeling intimidated or uncomfortable.
Phillip Morgan, a member of Education Not Incarceration, called the decision “a huge victory” that has been 10 years in the making.
“It has been years of writing to trustees, teach-ins, public deputations and various other strategies to get the TDSB to listen to folks who have found themselves most harmed by the SRO program,” Morgan said Thursday at a news conference with several other community organizations.
“We know that with the TDSB there has been a history of racism and discrimination, we know that with policing in Toronto there is also a history of racism and discrimination, so the folks who find themselves at the intersection of these two institutions through the SRO program have been particularly affected.”
Morgan said there is still work left to do because the program is in place at the Toronto Catholic District School Board and other school boards in the province.
“This is an important first step, but not the last step,” he said.
In an email Thursday, Toronto Catholic District School Board spokeswoman Emmy Szekeres Milne said the SRO program will continue to operate in its 21 schools across the city.
Andrea Vasquez Jimenez, co-chair of Latinx, Afro-Latin America Abya Yala Education Network (LAEN), commended the TDSB’s “bold stance of centring on the voices and lived experiences of our most marginalized and vulnerable students and youth.”
Vasquez Jimenez, who also spoke to reporters outside Toronto police headquarters, said the Ministry of Education should step in to make the same decision for all Ontario schools.
Education Minister Mitzie Hunter said while school boards may partner with police for a variety of reasons, including community building, the ministry does not provide funding for or have involvement in the programs.
“All school boards are different, with each having a unique set of circumstances, which is why school boards remain in the best position to determine the format of partnerships with local police, so that the local needs of students are prioritized,” Hunter said in a statement.
The School Resource Officer program, which the TDSB suspended at the end of August, saw police officers deployed at 45 of its high schools in an effort to improve safety and perceptions of police. It was implemented in 2008 after 15-year-old Jordan Manners was shot and killed.