Task Force on Safety and Supervision in Toronto Schools

Summer 2007

The Ontario Principals' Council thanks the members of the Task Force for this opportunity to address the issue of safety in schools.  While we have no specific knowledge of the issues at C.W. Jeffery’s and therefore cannot make comment on them, we believe we can meaningfully contribute to deliberations on the third part of the Panel’s mandate, that of “improving practices in TDSB schools with regards to school supervision, discipline and security to create positive, safe and welcoming school environments.”

The OPC was established in 1998 when the government of the day removed principals and vice-principals from the teacher unions.  As part of the management team, school leaders can no longer be union members.  We are the professional association representing 5,000 principals and vice-principals in Ontario’s publicly funded elementary and secondary schools.  One thousand of these school leaders are employed by the Toronto District School Board.

Over the past several years, the amount of time that teachers have been required to supervise before, during and after school has decreased dramatically.  

In 2005, an agreement reached between the government, ETFO and the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association capped the number of supervision minutes per teacher per week, decreasing it further in subsequent years. 

In the secondary panel, supervision minutes have been decreasing for several years.   In many Toronto schools, hall monitors have been hired to replace the supervision that was previously carried out by teachers.

However, in both panels, this decrease in teacher supervision has not been adequately filled by any other trained adults.  In Toronto, the challenge to ensure a safe school environment is made more complex by the pressure to reduce suspensions and expulsions arising out of the recent settlement with the OHRC.  This leaves kids who need additional supervision in schools but leaves the schools without the supervision resources to adequately provide it.

In April of 2005, principals began to report a number of negative consequences in schools as a result of this reduced supervision.  We began to gather data and approached the government with our concerns.

Since that time, we have continued to hear from principals across the Province who are concerned about the impact of learning, climate and safety in schools.  Polling data gathered from over 1400 school leaders has provided us with quite a disturbing picture of the state of our schools.

While we have shared our concerns with the government and our education stakeholder partners, we remain without a real solution.  Right now, principals in Toronto and throughout Ontario are struggling with inadequate resources. Many do not have the ability to adequately supervise their schools since they are so limited in the number of minutes or “on calls” they can assign to teachers.

One of the biggest concerns we have had over the past two years has been the lack of any kind of supervision standards in schools.  Surprisingly, there are no standards in place that principals can refer to when assigning supervision in hallways, playgrounds, lunch rooms/cafeterias, bus zones, libraries and gymnasiums.  While we encouraged both the government and school boards to develop such guidelines, nothing has been done to date.

In February of this year, the Ontario Principals’ Council developed and released a set of standards in response to practices that are taking place in schools today that we do not consider safe.  We released these standards publicly, encouraging the government to endorse and fund the standards so that school boards could put them into place.   A copy of the standards has been provided for your information and review.

We wanted the standards to encourage everyone involved in public education to sit down and take a hard look at exactly how we supervise schools.  We wanted to put in place practices that would guarantee at least a minimum level for schools to consider.

Unfortunately, those standards remain only ours to date.  They have not been endorsed or funded by the government and cannot be implemented in schools without the appropriate funding.

In June, a concern was raised that there may be lead in municipal water systems throughout Ontario.  Within days, the government issued a directive that all schools and daycare centres must immediately begin testing their water systems.

While we do not disagree with this directive, we are puzzled as to why no directive has been issued around supervision to ensure an appropriate learning environment and to protect the safety of Ontario’s two million students.

The death of Jordan Manners was a tragedy.  Although some people have linked his death to an increase of guns and violence in our society, it is very disturbing that it took place around a school during a school day.

While no one can predict what might have happened under different circumstances, we do believe that schools would be safer if there were a stronger and more visible adult presence in our schools.  The ratios we have proposed in our standards would do just that.

Conclusion

Appropriate adult supervision is an important component of school safety.  A strong adult presence in schools not only makes students, staff and community members feel safe, but it also acts as a deterrent to young people who may choose to bring their issues into the school.

The supervision gap that has developed over years of teacher supervision reduction in collective agreements has not been adequately filled.  We have encouraged the government and boards to adopt and fund our supervision standards to close that gap.

Although adopting the standards cannot reverse the terrible tragedy that occurred, it may prevent other tragedies from taking place in the future.  And it is our responsibility – collectively – to do all we can to make safe learning environments our number one priority.