Lorrie Asks The Question; "Who is speaking up for those students, and defending their interests?

I would remind him and those that voted for change of the name Mike Harris and the opposition he got from the unions, school boards and leftists when he tried to reform the school system.

School board's lost touch

Shouldn't need to bring in Julian Falconer, $100,000 panel to tell it what it should already know

By Lorrie Goldstein

Why does the Toronto Board of Education need human rights lawyer Julian Falconer, or anyone, to inform it about safety issues at C.W. Jefferys Collegiate, where 15-year-old student Jordan Manners was shot to death last month?

Surely it's not too much to ask of a school board that it knows what's going on inside its own schools. Isn't that why we have trustees, bureaucrats, superintendents, principals?

Or is the board's underlying attitude, since it initially described Jefferys as a relatively safe school, "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil"?

I'd suggest the answer is found in the board's appointment of an outsider to head a three-person panel, at a reported cost of at least $100,000, to tell it a month from now what it ought to have known all along.

Why Education Minister Kathleen Wynne, a former Toronto trustee, praised this move, instead of addressing the fact it suggests a failure of the board to do its job, is deeply worrisome.

Given the extensive comments by three teachers at the school in the wake of Jordan's murder, led by Sandra Fusco who taught at Jefferys last year and who first wrote about her hair-raising experiences in the Sun, it seems obvious what was happening.

Fusco was followed by long-time Jefferys' teacher Dave Plaskett, who is retiring at the end of this year, and Jordan's homeroom teacher, Bruce Miles, who later spoke to the Star. They told depressingly similar stories of a school where a small minority of students and intruders was allowed to run amok, harassing and intimidating teachers and students.

Meanwhile, they said, the administration downplayed problems or looked the other way.

If this was the atmosphere, then comments by board officials that if there were problems, teachers should have reported them, are either naive or disingenuous.

If teachers see their employer won't back them on disciplinary issues and in fact, doesn't want to hear about them, then expecting them to report problems is absurd. Report them to whom, especially if, as Fusco noted, even contacting the police wasn't encouraged?

No school can prevent a random act of violence. But ignoring violence, if this is what happened, is unacceptable.

On Friday, Falconer praised positive aspects of C.W. Jefferys after meeting with students, staff and parents. Fair enough, but that's not what is at issue here.

Prior to Jordan's murder, the big focus on student discipline in Ontario was backing away from the Safe Schools Act, passed in June 2000 by the previous Conservative government under Mike Harris.

Ironically, amendments to the legislation unanimously approved at Queen's Park last week, after Jordan's murder, water down the so-called "zero tolerance" policies toward school violence in the original legislation (a misnomer, since the act doesn't use the term), replacing them with something called "progressive discipline."

This was largely due to a complaint by the Ontario Human Rights Commission that the original law disproportionately impacted on "racialized" (visible minority) and disabled students, when it came to expulsions and suspensions for disruptive behaviour.

The Toronto board in 2005 reached a settlement with the commission, promising to be more sensitive in the application of the act across its system.

To imagine that in this atmosphere, it would be enthusiastic about acting upon disciplinary complaints reported by teachers, particularly if the problems involved black students, defies logic and common sense.

We need less political correctness and more resolve to deal with the problem.

Never mind colour

Less attention paid to the colour of troublemakers, more attention paid to the harm they inflict on schools, students and teachers.

It is outrageous, and racist, to discipline, suspend or expel any student in any school because he is black. Any teacher, principal or administrator who does so should be fired.

But it is equally outrageous, and irresponsible, to ignore a troublemaker because he is black, and to allow him to disrupt the school and to threaten staff and the vast majority of students who want to learn, many if not most of whom in a community like Jane-Finch, where Jefferys is located, are also black.

Who is speaking up for those students, and defending their interests?

lorrie.goldstein@sunmedia.ca