By Michael Zwaagstra
How much do you learn when you don’t feel safe? For most people, the answer is “not much”.
Which means there’s unlikely to be much learning going on right now at York Memorial Collegiate Institute. This Toronto high school was hit by multiple incidents of violence over the past few months. Violent assaults, drug dealing, almost daily fights and verbal harassment have become part of normal life for students and staff. Things got so bad that 14 members of staff recently refuse go to work, citing unsafe working conditions. Three of them even expressed concern about being included in a “jump list” (a list of people targeted for attack) that was allegedly circulated by college students.
York Memorial is obviously an extreme case. But it’s far from the only school where students and teachers don’t feel safe. Saunders High School in London, Ontario has also acquired a reputation for violence, with students regularly challenging teachers to fights. Again, violence this extreme is rare, but students and teachers across Canada often feel unsafe during the school day.
Why? Because many school administrators adopt lax disciplinary policies that keep the consequences of misbehavior as light as possible. For example, the education principal of the Thames Valley District School Board (which includes Saunders Secondary School) wants reduce the number of student suspensions and focus instead on “responsive, fair and restorative practices.” As a result, students who misbehave face little or no discipline.
The director of education for the Toronto District School Board has an equally myopic view. In her last report, she pledged to adopt “an intersectional perspective that seeks to eliminate disproportionate outcomes for students.” This kind of woke bafflegab is the last thing students need right now.
To make matters worse, Toronto school trustees recently excluded reviving their old school resource officer program, which means that unless school administrators call the police to report a crime, York Memorial (home to the “jump list”) will not have no police presence in the school.
In some schools, the situation is clearly out of control, thanks in part to school board policy. If school administrators cannot make their schools safe, parents and students will soon seek other options. Unfortunately, for many Ontario parents, educational options are limited. Ontario is one of five provinces that still refuses to allow public money (ie taxpayers’ money) to follow the student. If a student leaves a public school and enrolls in an independent school, their parents must cover the full tuition fees – in addition to paying their regular school taxes.
In effect, these parents are paying twice for their children’s education: once to the district that let them down and once to the independent school that took over the education of their child. Not surprisingly, independent schools in Ontario are largely the purview of upper and upper middle income households. This must change. At the very least, every province should make it easier for parents to enroll their children in schools that are safe and offer better education. All parents, not just the wealthy, should be able to choose the right school for their children.
If Ontario were to inject more choice in its public school system by letting the money follow the child, complacent administrators and counselors could finally listen to parents’ concerns and instill more discipline and common sense in the province’s public schools, which these days these are making headlines for all the wrong reasons.
In the meantime, school trustees should think more seriously about who they hire for key administrative roles. Far too many school administrators embrace a woke ideology that promotes a lax disciplinary approach and a divisive curriculum. Schools plagued by violence need a major shift in direction. Ensuring the safety of students and teachers at school is an absolute necessity.
Michael Zwaagstra, principal investigator at the Fraser Institute, teaches at a public high school.
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