Is Loreen Small In Denial And Are We Getting Conned???

Busted' school system failed Jordan Manners, teacher says
Officials in denial played down violence, says special-ed chief who saw warning signs
June 02, 2007
Iain Marlow Staff Reporter

The very day Jordan Manners was shot and killed, his homeroom teacher was anxious to call Jordan's mother and warn her about her son – again.

"I was going to call his mother that day," said Bruce Miles, a special education teacher at C.W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute, where Manners was gunned down 10 days ago, the first fatal shooting inside a Toronto school.

Hours before Manners was shot he had told Miles the world would be better off without police. One week before that, the same teacher recalled Manners flashing a wad of bills in class – one of many that earned him the nickname "Stackz."

And in early May, Miles had called Loreen Small for the first time to warn her that Jordan was heading down the wrong path – professing admiration for violent behaviour at Jefferys and disrupting classes.

Manners had already seen guns pointed at him "a couple of times" and could distinguish the different types, his teacher said.

But Miles thought the 15-year-old could make it through high school. The head of Jefferys' special education department, he had worked intimately with Jordan from the day the Grade 9 student arrived – with a warning attached from Brookview Middle School that he was defiant and out of control. Miles stressed this week, though, that Manners didn't deserve this, that the school had failed him.

Miles said he has been too sickened by Jordan's death to return to teaching at Jefferys.

"The reason I'm taking this so hard is because it was preventable," he said from his home. "I can't walk into that school right now. I can't think of a lesson plan. A lesson in what? How to bring people back from the dead?"

The special education department deals with 120 of the 845 students at the high school near Keele St. and Finch Ave. W. The number of special-needs students at the school is up from last year, when there were 90, even as Miles lost one part-time worker, he said.

Courtney Betty, the family's lawyer, stressed there were no concrete associations between Jordan and gangs. Police said they have ruled out gang involvement.

Manners' mother, Small, said she received a call in early May from a teacher who "seemed very interested and encouraging towards Jordan."

"It was birthday money," Small said about the wad of bills Jordan had flashed before his death.