When the Toronto police board met [last] week, a lesser-known police initiative called the School Resource Officer program was a minor item buried deep on a packed agenda — and nowhere near the chopping block.

But by the end of the monthly board meeting, the 36 uniform cops assigned to work in 75 schools across the city had nearly been pulled out of class, the program suddenly on the brink of suspension pending consultation with school leaders and community members.

The abrupt turn of events was prompted by impassioned presentations by a group of educators and researchers, who detailed what they said was the detrimental — and in some cases dangerous — impact of cops walking the halls alongside students.

Racialized students felt harassed and surveilled, the board heard. Undocumented students were threatened by officers inquiring about their citizenship status. The presence of an officer criminalizes situations once handled by teachers or administrators, creating a “school to prison pipeline.”

The accounts of the nearly decade-old program directly contradicted the glowing letter that prompted the discussion in the first place — a letter from Toronto Catholic District School Board chair Angela Kennedy calling the program “a cornerstone of our commitment to safe school communities.”

Board members moved swiftly.

“I have a lot of strong feelings about this,” said Ken Jeffers, a member of the seven-person civilian board, in response to the deputations. “I would suggest that we terminate the program immediately.”

“I think we need to do something significant,” said board member Marie Moliner. “I would not be inclined to keep SROs in schools; that’s how I’m feeling today.”

As Chief Mark Saunders cautioned that only one side of the story had been heard, board members opted to put off, until next month, voting on Jeffers’ motion to suspend the program pending further consultation.

Now, concerns that have been mounting within some communities for years have been thrust into the spotlight, setting the stage for a heated debate next month over a polarizing question: Do armed police officers belong in Toronto high schools?

Ten years to the day before this week’s police board meeting, Grade 9 student Jordan Manners, 15, was killed in the hallway of C.W. Jefferys Collegiate, found by a teacher with a fatal gunshot wound to the chest.

His murder, the first in a Toronto school, rocked Canada’s largest board and forced staff to rethink safety within school walls.

Just days after Manners’ death, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) hired lawyer Julian Falconer to lead review of safety inside its schools. The resulting report painted a bleak picture of secondary schools; there were more knives than at “Home Hardware’ and there was a “culture of fear” preventing teachers from reporting students who scared them.

The report made 126 recommendations, ranging from locker searches and gun-sniffing dogs to the hiring of more social workers and child and youth counsellors — but did not suggest bringing uniformed officers into schools.

A few months later, the TDSB, alongside the Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB) and then-police Chief Bill Blair announced the school officer program.

Thirty constables would be placed in schools across the city, a program paid for by police and the province. Blair approached both boards about putting officers in schools, according to Toronto police.

Decisions about which schools would receive a cop were influenced by Toronto’s “priority” neighbourhoods, communities designated as having youth considered to be at risk. Asked how the decision to get an officer is made today, Ryan Bird, TDSB spokesperson said the principal, superintendent and trustee will discuss the idea with parents “and if in agreement, would make the request of Toronto Police.”

The move was embraced by many parents, teachers and school staff as both a necessary security measure and an opportunity for police and youth to build bridges.

But it was also met by opposition, with some parents and school trustees feeling they had little advance warning and felt there were other solutions to school violence. Trustee Sheila Cary-Meagher told the Star the idea to bring armed cops into schools “breaks my heart. It’s so against the principle of education.”

C.W. Jefferys, where Manners was killed, was initially resistant. But the school’s opposition quickly dropped when a teen was stabbed and another student was caught with a loaded handgun. One year into the experiment, Toronto police announced the program would be expanded from 30 to nearly 50 public and Catholic high schools, C.W. Jefferys among them.

Data from the first year of the program showed early signs of success: a 17 per cent drop in suspensions and 16 per cent drop in criminal charges against students. Staff, students and police relayed stories of bonds built and violence averted.

“You want to change students’ image of you to someone who’s not too proud to help,” Const. Gavin Jansz, the resource officer at James Cardinal McGuigan Catholic High School, told the Star in 2009.

The same month Toronto police announced they were expanding to more schools, an organization comprised of students, parents, and educators calling itself NOCOPS (Newly Organized Coalition Opposing Police in Schools) met with TDSB to express concerns about police in schools.

The group felt there were better qualified, caring adults to provide the services and attention youth need. Highlighting a finding in Falconer’s report, the group said racial profiling by police was “a key factor in youth alienation” in marginalized communities.

“In light of this, we know that the presence of armed police in schools will ultimately increase the sense of alienation and climate of fear for many students,” a June 2009 NOCOPS letter to the board states.

The primary goal of Toronto’s SRO program, as it has grown to 75 schools, has been safety.

In a handful of high-profile instances, the school resource officer has been praised for averting serious injury, or worse. In January, a 17-year-old boy was stabbed in the cafeteria of Etobicoke’s Thistletown Collegiate Institute, and the school’s resource officer was called “instrumental” in containing the incident.

But not all violence can be avoided. In September 2014, Hamid Aminzada, 19, became the second student to die in a TDSB school after he was stabbed inside North Albion Collegiate Institute. The school had two resource officers, but they also worked in other high schools and neither was there at the time.

At this week’s board meeting, Saunders said surveys of nearly 5,000 TDSB and TCDSB students conducted since 2011 show 58 per cent felt safer because of officer presence in their school.

“That leaves 42 per cent who are not safe,” responded board member Dr. Dhun Noria. “Do we have a report on that?”

The lack of a recent and independent review is, indeed, one of the biggest criticisms of the SRO program. Toronto police have published two reports — one in 2009, another in 2011. Saunders told the board Tuesday he was already in the process of arranging an independent review of the program, potentially by researchers at Ryerson University.

“Our question is, why are cops able to access our students with such limited evaluation?” asked Silvia Argentina Arauz in an interview this week.

As co-chair of a group of teachers, parents and students called Latinx, Afro-Latin-America Abya Yala Education Network (LAEN), Arauz has been organizing events to oppose officers in schools, including a community consultation last year attended by TDSB school trustees.

As a parent, she is concerned what the officer does in the school, whether their interactions with students are recorded in any way, and why officers — who have little specialized youth training — are sent in to work with students.

Toronto police would not make a SRO available for an interview for this story or answer questions pertaining to the program, including its current cost. Spokesperson Mark Pugash said those questions will be addressed at the upcoming board meeting.

“The Toronto Police Service knows, firsthand, the value of the School Resource Officer Program. We will provide evidence, not anecdotes, at the Police Services Board meeting on June 15,” Pugash said in an email.

Gita Rao Madan, who studied Toronto’s SRO program for her master’s thesis at University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), said the program’s stated goal of safety provision needs to be examined.

“When you talk about safety you have to ask, safe for who?” said Madan, who is also a member of the group Education Not Incarceration, a group of parents, educators and youth. “Certainly, for many people in the city, police are actually the antithesis of safety.”

Alison Fisher, a TDSB high school teacher and PhD student, is working on a five-year study of safety and schools rooted in interviews with 63 youth in the Greater Toronto Area and 48 youth workers.

She told board members Tuesday that one interviewee described being “tackled” by her school’s SRO, who then kneed her in the back.

“Her knees and hands were bloated from the force used,” Fisher told the board. “She was taken to a police station and held for 14 hours. She was 15.”

The allocation of officers can also make certain schools and students feel criminalized, Fisher said. She and fellow researcher conducted an analysis of TDSB schools with SROs in 2014-2015, finding seven TDSB schools in the Jane and Finch area have a full-time resource officer in the school. In other parts of the city, one SRO works in up to eight schools, while some schools have none, the research found.

Last month’s York University study on race equity in education noted Black students and parents worried school boards were more likely to place officers in schools with large Black student populations “because of the stereotypes about Black students.”

Katie German, who has worked in schools in Rexdale and Scarborough, told the board about a young Black student who, in addition to getting stopped by police going to school, then surveilled by an SRO in the halls, now has an officer at every one of his hockey practices.

“There is no school space in which this student is not policed,” she said.

But at C.W. Jefferys — where there is a large population of racialized students — principal Monday Gala says the school’s SROs are building genuine relationships with students.

He cites an example that occurred just last week: a huge alumni basketball tournament at the school, partly organized by the school’s SRO, which included alumni, students, staff and police teams.

“If you come into Jefferys today and see the positivity that is going on organized by this partnership with the police, you can’t deny the fact that there is a place for the police in the school,” he told the Star this week.

He also knows of “ample examples” of youth going to the SRO for advice — or the officer intervening with an alternative approach when staff were ready to call police or suspend a student, he said.

Likewise, finding an alternative approach was why Toronto Police Const. Cheryl Tomlinson-Thompson recently received the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police’s annual SRO award.

In addition to her many activities within her school, Tomlinson-Thompson was recognized for her effort to tackle gangs and drugs problems at Albert Campbell Collegiate Institute.

She established a Scarborough court youth justice diversion program within the school, brought staff and parents on board, and was central in “facilitating an intense counselling and training program,” Tomlinson-Thompson’s supervisor said in a letter nominating her for the award, which she won in 2013.

But interventions to help at-risk youth do not necessarily have to be provided by a police officer, says Kathy Bickmore, professor at the University of Toronto’s department of curriculum, teaching and learning.

In researching the impact of officers in Canadian schools, including in Toronto, Bickmore has met school officers “who were good people who like kids and who make a real effort to build healthy relationships.”

Yet she doesn’t recommend cops in schools. Their presence, she says, discourages solutions that can help young people learn, including conflict resolution meetings, counselling or mentorship.

“Treating conflict in a school as a security problem — even when they are doing it gently and lovingly, where it’s all about building community relationships — rather than as an education or a community actually has a tendency to make schools less secure.”

Toronto police board member Shelley Carroll, too, lamented the fact that school community members once provided security — not police. She cited changes in 1997 that eliminated much-needed eyes on the hallways— including the loss of 800 caretakers and changes to teacher contracts that meant less time patrolling the halls.

Police in schools were an “emergency fix,” Carroll said at Tuesday’s meeting. Now they’ve become so established school leaders have forgotten there were other solutions.

“Just like mental health on the streets now, just like so many problems, we eradicate all the things that, in a nice way and in a healthy culture way, create society,” she said. “And when a problem is there, we say: ‘Police officers, fix it please.’”

Wendy Gillis wgillis@thestar.ca

The political drama that’s been unfolding at the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) over school closures and tight funding is totally avoidable, says the author of a new study from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ Ontario office (CCPA-Ontario).- See more

The weight of evidence provided by this research clearly favors smaller schools. Students who traditionally struggle at school and students from disadvantaged social and economic backgrounds are the major benefactors of smaller schools.

Elementary schools with large proportions of such students …no more that about 300 students.
Elementary schools serving economically and socially heterogeneous or relatively advantaged students…500 students.

Secondary schools serving exclusively or largely diverse and/or disadvantaged students …about 600 students or fewer.
Secondary schools serving economically and socially heterogeneous or relatively advantaged students…about 1,000 students.
Here is the link:
http://www.cupe4400.org/pdf/2012/leithwood_and_jantzi_2012.pdf

With thanks to Katie McGovern
Recording & Corresponding Secretary
Toronto Education Workers

It just doesn’t add up!

The Education Minister’s demand for a plan which would close schools that are less than 65% full jeopardizes 130 schools. But the Minister’s figures just don’t add up!

TDSB’s staff have publicly admitted that the sale of the average school site brings in around $6 million.  According to the board’s own documents the replacement cost of a school and the land to build it on would be well over three times the amount generated by the sale of one school property.  The figures just don’t add up.

Instead of recklessly selling off Toronto’s publicly-owned school property -held in trust by our school board for future generations- the Government should be supporting the existing daycares and adult education programs in schools that they currently classify as “under capacity” and then expanding the community use of school spaces.

If the Ontario Government really wanted to cover TDSB’s $3 billion maintenance deficit – a result of 17 years of inadequate provincial funding for education programs and maintenance – it would take immediate steps to fix the Ministry of Education’s own fatally flawed funding formula – a formula that the Government had promised but failed to review by 2010, unless the plan has always been to free up prime real estate for developer friends.

It just doesn’t add up!

In response to a demand by the province to address declining enrolment, the Toronto District School Board released a list Wednesday of 130 schools that are operating at below 65-per-cent capacity – the province’s threshold for whether a school is “underutilized.”

“It’s bogus, because many of the schools are being used in other ways for educational purposes,” said Campaign for Public Education co-ordinator Stephen Seaborn, an advocacy group made up of parents and teachers.

The province’s formula measures each school’s enrolment as the total number of public-school students, but does not include others in the community who use the school, such as adult education programs or members of community groups who lease space.

Nilani Logeswaran, a spokeswoman for Education Minister Liz Sandals, said the ministry does recognize some of these uses – like adult education – but that funding for that is provided through a separate grant.

And in measuring capacity, the province looks at the number of students who could possibly fit in the total space of a school – meaning such non-classroom areas as cafeterias, libraries and gymnasiums are counted as empty space.

“The ministry has a really skewed way of listing capacity,” TDSB trustee Chris Glover said in an interview.

“If you’re an adult, you don’t count as a student.… if we’ve got a school that’s leased out to government agencies, or portions of schools to community agencies, that’s not considered space that’s utilized.”

The city’s chief planner, Jennifer Keesmaat, meanwhile, said the province needs to recognize that schools fulfill a greater purpose within their communities than simply classrooms for school-aged children – for example as daycares, gathering places for seniors and greenspace for neighbourhoods.

“The challenge is that I think we have a funding approach at the provincial level that is difficult to rationalize with a view of schools as a broader community amenity, as opposed to simply serving school-aged children,” she said.

Trustee Tiffany Ford, meanwhile, called the province’s system of measuring capacity “outdated.”

She said in an e-mail that she was “shocked” to see a school in her ward, Emery Collegiate, on the province’s list at 45-per-cent capacity.

“I was just in that school and I could hardly walk through the halls because it was so crowded,” she said.

Part of that reason, TDSB trustee Pamela Gough said, is that the province’s measurements do not take into account each school’s individual architecture or use of space.

Ms. Gough pointed to an old elementary school in her Etobicoke-Lakeshore ward that was built originally as a high school.

With its narrow hallways and early 20th-century design, she said, the school feels “absolutely crammed. The lunchroom is phenomenal. They have to have the kids come in for lunch in shifts.

“You can’t have them all in one room at one time.”

Yet, she said, the list only shows the school at 80-per-cent capacity.

Ms. Gough said she also questions the province’s use of the 65-per-cent figure as a threshold.

“As far as I know, it was just a figure they pulled from thin air,” Ms. Gough said.

Ms. Sandals’ spokeswoman said that the 65-per-cent figure “is a rate that is used by the ministry to provide operational and renewal funding to support schools that are operating below capacity.”

Ann Hui Globe & Mail Jan 30, 2015

Education Minister Liz Sandals has given the TDSB just weeks to spell out plans for closing schools over the next three years that are under-used by the province’s reckoning — which counts only full-time K-12 students, not extras such as child care and parenting programs that may share space.

“It would be a disaster if we closed Burnhamthorpe Collegiate, for example (only 35 per cent full with teenaged students),” said trustee Chris Glover, “because the building is absolutely packed with almost 1,000 adult students going back to get high school credits. But the ministry doesn’t consider this space as being used, because they’re adults.”

Sandals has ordered the TDSB to start offloading excess space, after a damning report by veteran educator Margaret Wilson criticized trustees for dragging their heels on school closings, when 130 schools are considered less than 65 per cent full.

But when staff released the list of under-used schools Wednesday, many warned against snap decisions based on “utilization rate” numbers alone.

“I don’t think it tells the whole story,” warned trustee Ausma Malik. “The minister herself and the premier have talked about our schools as community hubs, and so many of our schools are being used in that way,” but they appear near-empty under the ministry’s formula.

“Blake St. Jr. Public School is listed as 45 per cent full, but we’ve just added French Immersion and it’s projected to grow to 86 per cent,” said trustee Jennifer Story. Eastdale Collegiate may be only 32 per cent full, but many of its students have been referred from larger schools that couldn’t meet their needs.

“Some schools focus on life skills,” said Story; “but we could lose this kind of site by strict adherence to the province’s utilization guidelines.”

An exasperated Sandals said Thursday that she realizes that being listed as under-utilized doesn’t necessarily mean it must close. But with Ontario spending more than $1 billion a year on under-utilized schools province-wide, “we need more detailed information about what their plans are (by) Feb. 13.”

Trustee Chris Tonks said the board has situations where secondary schools “are dying … and now push is coming to shove,” he said. But elementary enrolment is starting to bounce back, “and when that plays through, we are going to have to have a look at where we are going to need space,” he said.

Tonks said he’s surprised the ministry is telling the board to close schools, given the number of provincially funded child-care centres, Best Start preschool programs and family literacy centres housed in unused classrooms.

“We need to say, ‘Wait a minute — these schools aren’t under capacity,’” he said. “And if we close them, what are we going to do with all the programs (the government) is funding?”

TORONTO’S MOST ‘UNDER-UTILIZED’ SCHOOLS  As the province asks the Toronto District School Board to offload excess space, here’s a look at some schools that on paper are under-used, and what actually goes on in them. 

Low-enrolment high schools

Eastern Commerce Collegiate (near Danforth Ave. and Jones Ave.)  Enrolment: 62  Capacity: 903  Utilization: 7 per cent  Reality Check: School houses a child care centre, the TDSB’s archives, a resource centre for teachers and was the first to pilot the 10 a.m. “late start” to suit the sleepy morning teenaged brain. While it stopped accepting new students last fall, there are plans for what trustee Jennifer Story promises will be “an exciting new program at Eastern that we believe the public and the ministry will be very supportive of.”

Nelson A Boylen Collegiate (near Jane St. and Highway 401)  Enrolment: 71  Capacity: 531  Utilization: 13 per cent  Reality check: Two years ago, just nine students registered for Grade 9, so board staff redirected them to other schools, says local trustee Chris Tonks. Last year, Grade 9s were also redirected. Tonks said an area review “should have been started a long time ago; instead we’ve let it become so compromised” the Grade 12 students now also have to be moved. Tonks is trying to make sure a program for developmentally delayed students can remain on-site, maybe by renting out empty space “so we don’t have to move those kids.”

Vaughan Road Academy (near Oakwood Ave. and Vaughan Rd.)  Enrolment: 349  Capacity: 1,179  Utilization: 30 per cent  Reality check: The school has two specialized programs — International Baccalaureate (IB) and Interact, which provides flexible timetables for elite athletes or artists. It has served a number of cast members from the Canadian TV show Degrassi, says local trustee Jennifer Arp. The school, which also has a child-care centre, is also a victim of demographics, given the neighbourhood has seen a decline in the number of teens, she added.

Danforth Collegiate and Technical Institute (near Danforth Ave. and Greenwood Ave.)  Enrolment: 930  Capacity: 2,118   Utilization: 44 per cent  Reality check: School offers auto mechanics and culinary programs, said trustee Jennifer Story, which take more space than regular classrooms. It also has a popular math, science and technology program (“MaST”) for which applicants compete through a two-hour exam and essay, a program some suggest could be expanded.

John Polanyi Collegiate (near Allen Rd. and Lawrence Ave. W.)  Enrolment: 651  Capacity: 1,410  Utilization: 46 per cent  Reality check: School houses a program for expelled students that uses at least two classrooms, 10 adult English-as-a-second-language classrooms, a classroom for literacy and basic skills, space for staff training, and the North York Harvest Food Bank leases space — none of which count towards its utilization rate.   “When I do go into the school, it’s a pretty busy place,” said trustee Jennifer Arp.  Opened in 2011, it offers enriched programming in science, math and technology/robotics and is growing as it gets a profile in the community, Arp added.

Low-enrolment elementary schools

Kensington Community School (near Bathurst St. and College St.)  Enrolment: 113  Capacity: 447  Utilization: 25 per cent  Reality check: School was part of an area review just last fall that did not recommend it close, said new Trustee Ausma Malik. Kensington is expecting an influx of students from a neighboring school that is switching to French Immersion. It houses a day care, two adult English-as-a-second-language classrooms and local artists also work at the school. “It is envisioned as a community hub when it was built and the school maintains that in so many ways,” she said. A permits office with 23 staff members is also expected to move into the school.

Lucy McCormick Sr. School (near Dundas St. W. and Dupont St.)  Enrolment: 67  Capacity: 171  Utilization: 39 per cent  Reality check: School serves students with developmental disabilities from 12 to 21 years of age. Professional teams that support students include teachers, educational assistants, child and youth workers, blind/deaf intervenors, a horticulture instructor, continuing education staff, social workers, psychologists, speech and language, physio- and occupational therapists.

Nelson Mandela Park Public School (near Shuter St. and Parliament St.)  Enrolment: 331  Capacity: 804  Utilization: 41 per cent  Reality check: Stunning new building opened in 2013 after a three-year, $30-million facelift and expansion, and is likely only under-enrolled while some Regent Park students are living elsewhere during the reconstruction. The school is projected to be 102 per cent full by 2024. “In three or four years we’ll be back at capacity, with a growing mix of children from both Toronto Community Housing and market-value housing,” said principal Jason Kandankery. “No way we’re closing; I’m not worried.”

Wellesworth Jr School (near Rathburn Rd. and Highway 427) Enrolment: 169  Capacity: 330 Utilization: 51 per cent  Reality Check: It may be half-empty now, but trustee Chris Glover said a new development is coming nearby with 900 new units that could generate some 200 students. “The closest school to that development is full,” said Glover, “so the closest school that has space for this new development project is Wellesworth.”

Queen Alexandra Middle School (near Queen St. E. and Broadview Ave.) Enrolment: 249   Capacity: 485  Utilization: 51 per cent    Reality check: A nearby housing development in the West Don Lands will bring new families to the area, said trustee Jennifer Story, “but there are no plans yet to build a school for that area, so Queen Alexandra is being planned as the school where they will go.”

thestar.com  By: Louise Brown GTA, Education Schools, Kristin Rushowy Education Reporter, With files from Robert Benzie  Published on Thu Jan 29 2015