Thoughts on the PCPO white paper

The paper came out with some aplomb by the party as it rolls out various policy papers on different issues to build the foundation for any pending electoral campaign. You can read it for yourself here-- though I would recommend downloading the PDF and reading the whole paper as the online version only includes the "paths."
(As an aside, the bulk of this white paper was launched at the Ray Friel recreation centre in the Ottawa suburb of Orleans, which happens to be the very first pool I worked at as a lifeguard/instructor.)
I'm struck by two main thoughts after reading through this white paper.

• Does the party know what the current government is actually doing in education? The paper mentions changes and implementing policies that are already underway -- take community use of schools as an example. Would a PC government do much more than what is already in place? They commit to increasing after-hours use of school buildings yet those policies (and subsidies for non-profit groups) are already in place. Another example is what it says on the Specialist High Skills Major programs-- again, what would a PC government do that's different than what's already being done? There were a couple of other "paths" where I was also left wondering whether the party was admitting it would just continue current practices or setup something dramatically different than what has been developed over the last nine-plus years.
• The money questions could kill any effectiveness in this platform. There are many mentioned in here-- from implementing full-day kindergarten (the party has flip-flopped on this program so many times I've lost count), to class-size averages and programs to the ubiquitous reduction of "non-teaching" staff. Some come right out of the Drummond Report, which made good points that should be addressed but also showed a bean-counter's approach. There needs to be more detail provided by all parties on whether there could be a determination of some standards in staffing levels / non-teaching support levels and then ensure those standards are implemented and staffing adjustments made relevant to declining population. The white paper suggests too many of the increases in spending were irrelevant to improving student experiences and outcomes, but neglects to take into account many of these investments were added after being cut or drastically reduced by previous governments.

Coverage of the launch focused on the "defining a teacher's job" section of the report, given the current state of extracurricular activities in public schools as a result of Bill 115. But like always, there's other substance to this policy paper. From school organization to new standardized tests (Grade 8 science) and new school construction there's enough to chew on here.
I'm curious to see what the other platforms would look like heading into any pending election. As a casual observer of such things, I'd say this is the strongest policy document on K-12 I've seen from the PC Party of Ontario in some time. With former minister Kathleen Wynne set to be sworn in on Feb. 11, I'll be equally curious to see whether any eventual Ontario Liberal Party platform expands on what she mentioned in her leadership platfom.
Which leaves the Ontario NDP-- will they have an education platform? Rather, when will they tell us about it?

Legacies

After the surprise move by Premier Dalton McGuinty Monday, I've been left wondering as someone whose interest in education has come to fruition in years dominated by his mandate, what McGuinty's legacy to K-12 education in Ontario should be.
There are many who were pouring their thoughts onto social media Monday, particularly from the education sector, who were only too eager to take credit for McGuinty's decision to resign and, frankly, crap all over his record on this file. Certainly, 2012 has not been the year where McGuinty has endeared himself to the education sector.

• A budget passed in February that made it clear there would be no increases outside of the government's chosen priorities -- full-day kindergarten chief among them -- and decreases to other budgets to accommodate the necessary growth in spending for those priorities.
• Acrimonious labour relations with sector unions and federations, starting immediately from the first discussions where the government walked in with bankruptcy lawyers.
• A controversial memorandum of understanding with the Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association signed in July. 
• A dubious move to apply the provisions of that MOU across the entire sector through Bill 115-- which, having received Royal assent, does not disappear with McGuinty's resignation. It has been challenged in court by all unions and federations for the limits it places on job action. It would take an NDP majority or a court ruling to rescind that legislation.

To lose sight of what was done by this government under McGuinty's mandate is incredibly short-sighted however and the apparent abandonment of the Liberals by those in the sector should be continually reconsidered depending on what happens in the months ahead.
This government took a sector that was reeling from two terms of Progressive Conservative rule (and still bitter from one term of NDP government) and buttressed it through decisions that saw the education ministry's budget grow dramatically from 2003-12. That's budget growth that continues, by the way, in the face of the provincial deficit and continued declining student populations that have seen an average drop of two per cent per year in the number of bums in seats in schools across the province.
Let's review.

• The Good Places to Learn program invested billions into school renewal projects. Long-deferred building and maintenance projects that school boards had been putting off to solve budget crunches were funded, on a somewhat priority basis. Chances are your neighbourhood school today has up-to-date boilers, windows, life-safety systems and other building elements because of this program.
• The 2003 education platform centred on the primary class size initiative. Regardless of your personal view on the impact of smaller class sizes on student achievement, this was a crucial investment in primary education in Ontario. It allowed many, many elementary school teaching positions to continue to exist at the exact moment many boards across the province were facing a drop in elementary student populations. This initiative also came with capital dollars that led to construction in schools provincewide.
• The province also requested a moratorium (mostly followed) on school closures until its new pupil accommodation guidelines were in place. There's too much to be said about that process to fit into this post, but I argue it's a better, if still at times flawed, process than what was in place beforehand-- where boards who couldn't earn new pupil place funding were strapped to address shifting populations in growth areas and schools were closed to create the pupil-place funding needed to build new ones.
• The 2004-08 teachers agreements, following the first provincial discussion table outcomes, saw investments in things that federations wanted in addition to provincial priorities. Thank this agreement for minor increases in specialty teachers in the elementary panel, increased prep time for elementary teachers, student success teachers in secondary schools, professional development funding and a generous wage and benefit increase.
• The literacy and numeracy secretariat came into its own during this mandate and frankly, so did the Education Quality and Accountability Office. Not to mention the Ontario Teachers' College, which in this mandate not only saw control shift to union-elected members on the board, but also became fully responsible for sanctioning teacher-education programs.
• The New Teacher Induction Program replaced the PC's teacher certification and re-certification initiatives with one built on mentorship and practical application of the skills new teachers need to be successful.
• The 2008-12 agreements for the entire sector cannot be simply ignored now. At a time when the current deficit was in its infancy, the agreements gave good wage and benefit increases. While not necessarily the case for support staff, teachers in this province earn a fair wage given their education and experience and are among the best-paid in Canada and North America. These agreements also built on the improvements from the 2008-12 round.
• Lastly, in the big-stuff roundup, full-day kindergarten. Against the advice of his own adviser, McGuinty chose to have a full-time teacher lead each of these classes (again maintaining and creating positions that continued to be threatened by declining student populations). This continues to be an unprecedented investment in early learning both in terms of people (teachers and early childhood educators) and buildings. Costs will run to $2 billion in capital and almost as much in annual operating and it's unclear heading into a new election at some point where the other parties stand on fully implementing this program.

Which isn't to say they hit all the right notes until 2012.

• The early promise of a whole-scale revision of the education funding formula was never completed. Substantive changes to the formula have been made since 2003, but its foundations weren't dramatically altered.
• A number of omnibus bills were passed that continued to centralize control of education at Queen's Park and the ministry offices on Bay Street.
• A diversion into matters of character education and social engineering that has been controversial and distracted many from other issues in education.

A legacy should be evaluated taking the long view, not the short one. While one's final acts can serve to define a legacy, they don't tell the whole story. For those in K-12, we're now left with the task of weighing the full scale of this legacy against the legacies of others (such as they remain) and the proposals of those who wish to replace this government.

Mother of all aggregation posts

Here's what's been coming across the desk in the last month.
Capital

• The Thorold News on the high school closure review in St. Catharines and points southwest, a review also touched on in this St. Catharines Standard coverage regarding the Town's letter to the province, a columnist's take on the issue;
• The Kenora Daily Miner and News covers an early school-closure review meeting;
• Owen Sound Sun Times on the closure of four tech centres for full-day kindergarten;
• St. Catharines Standard on an elementary public school-closure meeting;
• The Barrie Examiner on whether the Simcoe County DSB retrofits/renovates or rebuilds an old, inaccessible school building and the Orillia Packet and Times on the decision to ask for funds to rebuild and seeking partnerships for the build;
• The Tillsonburg News covers the first meeting of an elementary school-closure review committee -- before and after;
• The Sudbury Star unveils the new Sudbury Secodnary School;
• The Fort Erie Times on the DSB Niagara's consideration of a school-closure report for the town;
• The Hamilton Spectator on a Hamilton-Wentworth DSB decision to close a school;
• The Simcoe Reformer on the Norfolk County mayor weighing in on the high school closure review, the release of an internet survey, and on how religion might save PDCS;
• The Goderich Signal-Star on a new-rural-school option considered (again) by a school-closure committee;
• The Peterborough Examiner on doctors' calls for PCVS to stay open (joined recently by mental-health professionals), a silent protest that stopped a Kawartha Pine Ridge DSB meeting,
• The Sault Star on a new Catholic high school's name;
• The Barrie Examiner on a citywide Catholic school-closure review; and,
• The Lake of the Woods Enterprise on speeding up a school-closure review;

Governance / Curriculum

• The Mid-North Monitor on a sharing agreement with the Town of Espanola and all local boards;
• The Owen Sound Sun Times on the Bluewater DSB's commitment to outdoor ed and an expansion of abilities for its student trustees and new concerns over declining enrolment with an eye on the Catholic board;
• The Peterborough Examiner on there being no Ojibway-language classes in local schools;
• The Pembroke Observer explains what Parent Involvement Committees are;
• The Observer again, as the Renfrew County DSB boasts of its strategic planning;
• Wifi coverage galore-- from the Peterborough Examiner on the board of health's opinion and trustee's response/discussion, St. Catherines with an early piece on the Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Assocation anti-wifi moves complete with response from the local Catholic board, CBC Ottawa on parents' concerns in schools there and the Petrolia Topic on its Catholic board not backing down on wifi;
• The Ottawa Citizen on the rejection of a failed candidate's call for religious policy review;
• The Citizen again with a fantastic three-part data journalism on out-of-area high school attendance-- part one, part two, part three;
• The Gananoque Reporter gets an Upper Canada DSB trustee's perspective on newsletters;
• Globe and Mail editorial on bullying being confronted yet acknowledged;
• The Barrie Examiner on a school-safety related teacher walkout;
• The Citizen again on the Ottawa Catholic board's charges in a school explosion; and,
• The Belleville Intelligencer on a complaint a two-year disciplinary process for a teacher takes too long.

Happy reading. No Drummond here-- still saving that more a separate, in-depth post.

Looking in both directions

Here's to looking back at 2011 and looking ahead to 2012 in the world of K-12 education in this province, as well as a chance to reflect on what's been in this space in the last 12 months. As I wrote about for my employer, 2011 was a year of change from the fellowship back to my former job to a new post starting in August.
In the past year this space has seen just over 3,800 visitors, a slight majority of whom had been here at least once before. Traffic was highest in the winter and early spring when the fellowship granted lots of time for posting and waned throughout the rest of the calendar year as I went back to work (bad blogger, bad).
Here were the posts that drew the largest audiences:

1. Full-day kindergarten = ECE shortage? (a post from 2009)
2. Keep those EQAO envelopes sealed
3. Mapping our Full-day Kindergarten
4. Bil 177 (another post from 2009)
5. Ontario's next education minister is (noting my guesses were all wrong)
6. On teaching (from 2010)
7. A thought on teacher education and the job market (another from 2010)
8. DSBN Academy coverage keeps growing
9. My long goodbye to OISE
10. Defenders of the faith(-based)

When 40% of the most-viewed posts are not from the immediate past year, it's a signal to me I need to be posting more in this space. Alas, I have been negligent in living up to the promise of its purpose when it was launched in early 2009. I've reflected on just how I was able to do it then-- I would come home at whatever hour and commit to writing at least one new post a day. If it wasn't comment on coverage elsewhere, it would be original opinion, analysis or outright reporting. My posts on Bill 177 and Bill 242 are among very few that look at the legislation that are out there, and both keep drawing traffic.
Here's my cut of the top issues in K-12 Ontario education of 2011:

• Bullying became the worst thing ever about any school system this year. Unfortunately helped by a number of well-publicized suicides where this harassment was either known or suspected to be the primary cause, along with the politicization of Gay-Straight Alliances as some sort of bullying cure-all, bullying has been on everyone's tongue throughout the year. I'm curious as to whether it will result in meaningful action in 2012.
• School accommodation / demographic shift continues, though not as noisily in most areas of the province as it has in the last few years. Many boards outside the GTA have tackled their first few rounds of school-closure reviews, petitions and post-review openings. The Toronto boards also began tackling this, though not as assertively as they probably need to in order to keep up. Towards the end of the year the Peterborough Collegiate and Vocational School decision raised eyebrows (and the dander of many) showing accommodation issues are by no means ever a dead issue.
• A new minister came to the portfolio in October after the scrappy Leona Dombrowsky was sent into political retirement by the voters in Belleville and area. Laurel Broten was appointed minister to the surprise of many (or maybe just me) after previous stints in Environment and Children and Youth Services. She's been pushed with the reaction to Bill 13, but like every minister since Sandra Pupatello and her predecessor Gerard Kennedy, the steps out of the spotlight to allow Premier Dalton McGuinty to fulfill his "education premier" desire.
• Full-day kindergarten continues to drive the education agenda provincially. Though the 2011-12 crop of new schools is the smallest cohort of the five years, the issue of before- and after-school care for four- and five-year-olds isn't settled across the province. Its popularity even drove the PC Party of Ontario leader Tim Hudak to do a 180 on the program, going from labelling it another Liberal Cadillac program to saying he would support implementation as proposed. While the components of the original Pascal Report flowing from FDK for 6-12-year-olds were part of the Liberals' election platform, rollout timing is indeterminate in this minority Parliament.

In a similar vein, here are some thoughts on what should be tracked in the coming twelve months:

• Money will be key to everything in 2012-- the province's debt and deficit will become a focus of the pending provincial budget. While no one in opposition would likely defeat a budget based on health care or education spending (which will likely be almost 3/4 of all provincial spending), those in the know are well aware that every passing year will be a bigger budget challenge. New spending on capital projects will by and large be to support implementation of full-day kindergarten. There will likely be a kitty to tap into for employee contracts (more on that below) and some token amounts to keep up with rising utility and other non-staffing costs, but the years of pilfering to support old buildings over programs and people in those buildings are coming to an end and boards that are supporting too many older buildings or vacant pupil places will have a tough time tackling 2012-13 budgets in June.
• The bullying theme will stubbornly stick around-- a Liberal minority in the legislature may very well capitulate on controversial sections of Bill 13 in committee if it wishes to see the bill come back for third reading before the legislature rises for the summer break. This will serve as the next step in the premier's initiative to get character development further entrenched into the curricula.
• Just for kicks, it might be worth tracking whether election-campaign promises, such as the wraparound programming for 6-to-12-year-olds, the two-year teachers' college and the one or two others get implemented in the coming year.
• Finally, I do think the contracts will be an issue in this year. They do expire on Aug. 31, after all. I would have a litter of kittens if any agreements of significance were ratified (at provincial discussion tables or locally) before the end of this calendar year however. I don't believe any of the parties have given big signals on priorities for the next agreement -- other than the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario trying to reach the parity their executive pissed away in the standoff over the 2008-12 agreements. The back half of this year will likely, particularly after annual meeting season in the summer, feature an entrenchment as the various unions and federations stake out what they think a minority Liberal government can get them and the Liberals mark their turf. I wouldn't expect any battle stations to be manned until some time between March Break and summer vacation 2013 though.

 This space has been less in 2011. All the same, thanks to those who stop by searching for something and those who continue to read and comment on the posts. At some point in the coming months the blog will see its 30,000th visitor and though small as far as the web goes, that's better than I could have predicted when I started doing this.

New Year's browser-tab dump!

How seasonal!
Here's what I've been clicking on these last few weeks:
Capital

• The Thorold News on a school-closure review involving the school there and a few more in St. Catharines;
• The Peterborough Examiner's continuing PCVS coverage on trustees voting not to delay closure, a response to the Kawartha Pine Ridge DSB's petition response and nabbing alum Serena Ryder to play the coming benefit, a call from former trustees for more "dialogue";
• Equal-opportunity PCVS coverage from Metroland Kawartha Region;
• The Goderich Signal-Star on a proposal from a school-closure review committee to keep rural schools open and bus town students to them;
• The Owen Sound Sun Times on plans in the Bluewater DSB for schools in Kincardine;
• The Sault Star on an Algoma DSB report in response to a school-closure review recommending closing one city high school;
• A Simcoe DSB / Simcoe-Muskoka Catholic DSB capital-plan update run in the Collingwood Entreprise-Bulletin; and,
• The Hamilton Spectator on the Hamilton-Wentworth DSB's move to sell property

Governance

• The Welland Tribune on how the Niagara Catholic DSB handled some after-semiformal dance destruction;
• The Ingersoll Times on a push for busing to a new school;
• The Hamilton Spectator on a trustee arguing a probe into her own conduct was unjustified;
• An Op-Ed from the Windsor Star on the role of principals;
• The Goderich Signal-Star with an Avon Maitland DSB chair preview of the year ahead;
• The Spec with a survey piece on working conditions for local trustees;
• Moira MacDonald previews what she believes will be the battle ahead with contract negotiations in The Toronto Sun;
• The Belleville Intelligencer with a look at the "stormy seas" ahead; and,
• The Sault Star on a lawsuit settlement between the Huron-Superior Catholic DSB and a former director of education.

Curriculum / other

• The St. Catharines Standard on the (mandated) school-climate surveys being undertaken by the DSBN;
• The Toronto Star on a pilot project for at-risk students;
• How a two-year B.Ed means more training on diversity, inclusivity from Xtra;
• The Owen Sound Sun Times on a review of the Bluewater DSB gifted program (the oft-neglected end of the special-education spectrum);
• A great little nugget of a feature on Sec. 23 schools from Metroland Kawartha Region; and,
• Two from the Welland Tribune with a 1/3-year checkin at the DSBN Academy.

A good smattering of items. I remain bemused by the campaign around PCVS, which with every ready seems more about saving a building than it is saving programs or students. The suggestion in Goderich to reverse the flow of students from urban to rural is interesting.
I really liked that Metroland Kawartha tackled the Sec. 23 schools. I've written about alternative schools before, but never Sec. 23 schools. Nor do I remember reading about them elsewhere.
While I do predict a battle ahead on teacher contracts, I don't see that happening in 2012 based on how long it's taken in previous rounds to settle contracts.

Not pretending GSAs are panaceas

The introduction of Bill 13 by the government last month (along with the introduction of Bill 14 by PCPO education critic Elizabeth Witmer) has led to weeks of continuing discussion, angry opposition and name-calling by all those who have a stake in trying to reduce bullying in schools.
The contentious clause in Bill 13 reads:

303.1  Every board shall support pupils who want to establish and lead,

  (a)  activities or organizations that promote gender equity;

  (b)  activities or organizations that promote anti-racism;

   (c)  activities or organizations that promote the awareness and understanding of, and respect for, people with disabilities; or

  (d)  activities or organizations that promote the awareness and understanding of, and respect for, people of all sexual orientations and gender identities, including organizations with the name gay-straight alliance or another name.

The 303.1(d) is the clause that people have either manned the gates to defend (often over-interpreting it to mean every school must support the creation of create gay-straight alliances) or storm the gates to destroy by making the same interpretation. Which of course, has led media coverage on this, some examples:

• Waterloo Region Record editorial
• Canadian Press coverage
• Belleville Intelligencer checks with the local Catholic board

And all the big players chipped in as well. I was particularly impressed by the night-after-night coverage given by CBC Radio's As it Happens, which had the opposition on one night, Minister Laurel Broten on the next, a student who pushed for a GSA at her Catholic school and then the subsequent response from the president of the Ontario Catholic School Trustees Association.

All the coverage that I've seen neglects to mention the related Policy and Program Memoranda 144 from 2009, upon which Bill 13 adds a legislative and regulatory framework.

So what can we determine from all this?

• LGBTQ kids get bullied in school due to their differences from a perception of what 'normal' should be.
• Lots of other kids get bullied in school regardless of their race, ethnicity, religion, gender, fashion sense, etc. for the same reasons.
• Lots of bullying happens at school because that's where kids spend most of their day.
• Schools reflect our culture in how well or poorly they've responded to bullying.

I've never believed that GSAs (or whatever the hell you end up calling them) are a panacea because they're not. They can be instrumental in helping build a culture within a school community that's more accepting of all students regardless of sexual or gender orientation, but we shouldn't be so naive as to believe that the mere presence of those three words to a club in a school fixes all bullying. It doesn't and it won't.

Does that mean they shouldn't be part of Bill 13?

The Liberal government has hit the right tone with Sec. 9 of this bill, which amends Sec. 303 of the Education Act. It allows students to decide what sorts of student groups they'd like to have in their own schools. It (deftly?) allows the innate conflict of funding a faith-based school system that is outright against promoting any sexual/gender behaviour that doesn't lead to procreation (and, of course, even then not until you're duly married) and the requirement to accept all students to continue. As I've written in the past, until we get a government that wants to tackle the Catholic board question, we should stop being surprised when Catholic schools behave in a manner consistent with the tenets of their faith.

My worry? In our preoccupation over whether or not some kid at a Catholic school can name their club a gay-straight alliance, we're taking our eye off the ball. We're becoming obsessed with three words that in and of themselves don't do that much to change our culture-- one built upon bullying in so many different layers. The people in that club, whatever it's actually called, are the ones that will act to change others' behaviour. That can happen regardless of the name of the club -- heck, it can happen regardless of whether there is a club to begin with.

Random tab roundup

Browser-tab dump! In the following groups:
Capital / accommodation

• Owen Sound Sun Times on the MP and MPP getting involved in an accommodation review;
• The Sun Times on the vote to keep the school in question above open;
• The Hanover Post on another school-closure review in the Bluewater DSB;
• The Stratford Beacon Herald on Avon Maitland DSB's search for French immersion accommodation;
• The St. Catharines Standard on the Thorold high school review and its report being delayed;
• The Sudbury Star on French immersion accommodation within the Rainbow DSB;
• The Peterborough Examiner on the Kawartha Pine Ridge DSB 'phasing out' a Grade 7/8 school, along with the followup on the decision not to;
• The Sarnia and Lambton County This Week on the Lambton Kent DSB using international students to boost enrolment;
• The Petrolia Topic on the LKDSB tracking French immersion enrolment post-review;
• The Peterborough Examiner on another attempt to reverse the PCVS decision, as well as a Halloween protest and direction given to teachers on the pending closure;
• The Goderich Signal-Star on an elementary school-closure review;
• The North Bay Nugget on the realization of a moved French program's subsequent impact on enrolment;
• The Shoreline Beacon on a Kincardine / Port Elgin review that didn't get the same attention as the one in Chesley, with subsequent coverage of the vote by the Sun Times and the Kincardine News;
• The Kincardine News had a good followup to the above on a new high school for the village;
• The Simcoe Reformer on a Grand Erie DSB rural high school review, the shrunken campaign to save Port Drover Composite; and,
• The Chatham Daily News on finding a home for French immersion in Chatham.

Full-day kindergarten

• The Waterloo Region Record on the impact before- and after-school programming could have on childcare centres;
• The Sault Star on the same issue in that area of the province;
• The Ottawa Citizen's scoop, exclusive at the time coverage of Minister Laurel Broten saying wraparound programs don't have to be offered by school boards; and,
• The Sudbury Star on the Rainbow DSB's first contract with its early childhood educators;

Safety in schools

• The Cornwall Standard Freeholder on the Upper Canada DSB keeping wifi networks in its schools;
• The Sault Star on the Algoma DSB pondering surveillance cameras in some of its high schools;
• The Peterborough Examiner on the Kawartha Pine Ridge DSB's wifi study and implementation in its schools; and,
• The Welland Tribune forshadowing a recent visit by Broten to a local elementary school.

Fiscal / governance

• The Belleville Intelligencer on 16 layoff notices that didn't turn into callbacks;
• The North Bay Nugget on the suspension of a trustee in the Near North DSB;
• The Hamilton Spectator on a breach-of-conduct investigation at the Hamilton Wentworth DSB; and,
• The Timmins Daily Press on local schools' review of new fundraising policies (a little muddled in confusing fundraising with a convicted thief who stole from athletics programs).

It feels like I just cleaned house. Will do better with this sort of aggregation in the weeks ahead, promise.

Let's move from awareness to change

Welcome to the second day of bullying awareness week.
From statements from ministers to pledge drives, to twitter hastags we keep talking about bullying-- a term that is so overused it's lost some meaning as what it truly is: harassment.
With schools often leading the way, boy have we taken on bullying. Well, awareness of this form of harassment. I think every kid in any of our school systems has most certainly heard what this behaviour is, even if they weren't listening or understanding it.
But, as Moira MacDonald asked this past weekend, the evidence on the impact of these many awareness programs and activities is scant.
While revisions to the Education and Safe Schools acts now require board in Ontario to conduct periodic scans of their student body to look at where students feel safe and don't, I'm only aware of one board that took it to the extent the Thames Valley DSB did back in 2004-05, after the death of 14-year-old Strathroy student Joshua Melo.
That board surveyed every high school student in its (then) 30 high schools, some 17,000 or so kids, asking them where they feel safe, where they don't. It identified a definition and then asked several questions on how teens responded to this behaviour.
Overall (and going from memory) the responses could be troubling. In this first survey, the responses showed one in 10 students didn't feel safe at school. Social and peer acceptance along with a fear of recrimination were the leading answers for why students didn't report being bullied or witnessing it.
Remarkably, the board also surveyed every one of its Grade 4-8 students the following year. Then, it surveyed everyone in all age groups again-- spotting some slight improvements in the responses received. Some of the programs put into place were credited with helping, most notably the TRIBES program which is now widely used across Ontario.
Now some will continue to be critical of this board and others because students are still being harassed and the overall culture within some schools and communities hasn't moved. Rightly so in those cases where an appropriate, reasoned response isn't being put in place by the school and supported by the larger community around it.
As mentioned earlier in this space, changing this behaviour of harassment is going to require more than words and pledges, as well-intentioned as they may be. It means accepting that this behaviour is prevalent across our entire society. That it's woven into our fabric, particularly in sports, political and business worlds.
Is this the generation we're raising that will guide its children away from these attitudes and behaviours? It'll take 30 years to know.
So take your pledges (I did), learn your lingo, wear your ribbons (where available) and tsk tsk in shame every time you hear of bullying. Then ask yourself whether you're actually prepared to do more. Ask whether you'd be willing to accept a consequence
Look around you for this harassment in your circles-- I guarantee you'll find it. Would you do something to change it? Would you be accountable for your own actions and behaviours if you were the harasser?
Until more of our answers start changing on those questions, I fear all the awareness in the world won't effect the change we all say is needed.

Always plenty of fault to spread around

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I've been mulling what the appropriate post could be on the death of 15-year-old Ottawa teen Jamie Hubley and the reaction to this tragic event across various media.
It's been inspiring to read things like the op-ed piece by Ottawa Citizen education reporter Matthew Pearson — who I had no idea was from Woodstock. He sent the piece to the Sentinel-Review on the weekend and it ran as the line item on Oct. 24. The Citizen later ran it as part of an op-ed package.
Then the online world has simply been buzzing since Tuesday's airing of the Rick Mercer Report, where Mercer (who is gay but has never been, quite appropriately, "the gay comedian") ranted about Hubley's suicide. He flushed out his thoughts on Thursday morning's The Current on CBC Radio, where the podcast of that segment is sure to be linked from the show's website. It was posted Thursday afternoon.
That a person — of any age, sexual orientation, gender identity or ethnic background — would choose to take their own life because of harassment, intimidation and sheer feelings of insurmountable loneliness and an inability to survive it all is wrong. Period.
Things that irk me however, are the predictable rushes to assign fault to the school and/or school board. Schools have, in my opinion, been quite responsive to these issues— the quantity and quality of programs, clubs and initiatives have vastly improved since I was a middle- and high-school student in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Let's talk about our culture though.
Despite how tolerant we all say we are, our continuing actions and inaction speak louder than our words, ribbons, clicks and pledges. While many out there have made Gay-Straight Alliances the hill upon which tolerance won't die on, I'd like to see the hard statistics on whether reported harassment at those schools has changed.
High school culture is, if you're not popular, is a horrible phase of life. It just plain sucks. Personally, until I hit Grade 11/12/OAC and stopped caring about what others said and thought, these years weren't good ones for me either. Homophobia was rampant (as it remains today) and even if you were straight but not as masculine in your stance, the jump to the world of being called every homophobic slur under the sun was quick, short and brutalizing.
Ironically, I always found the taunts tended to be harsher and more frequent from those who in hindsight came from well-educated, middle-class families.
The homophonic undertones of our teen and youth culture haven't changed. Being openly LGBTQQ is such an obvious difference from "normal" that it puts a target on your back. It bleeds through our popular culture, the culture of our athletics and youth culture.
Since youth spend a majority of their day in school, it's only natural to expect it's through schools that much of this harassment will take place. Those schools who can't change the culture in their student and staff bodies will continue to struggle with ending harassment and holding the perpetrators accountable.
Schools are no different than the rest of our society on this mark though. We need to understand that it happens in our schools because it's embedded in our culture. Harassment is a learned behaviour. While some of it may be learned in a school setting, a lot of behaviours aren't.
Something to think about the next time a tragedy strikes a harassed youth and everyone rushes to blame the schools for not doing enough.

The Catholic quandary

Been quite a bit of noise late last week and this after a Catholic high school in Thunder Bay sent a student home who, on a pro-life kind of day at school (what day isn't at a Catholic school?), wore the word 'choice' on her clothing.
The Globe and Mail picked up the issue this week, though I believe Thunder Bay's Dougall Media news site broke the issue last week with a pair of articles here and here.
Of course, we're all suitably outraged at how a publicly funded school could be so discriminatory. It's the same concern and anger that was seen in the fall as the Halton Catholic District School Board fumbled the issue of how it handles gay-straight alliances at its high schools. It had prohibited them and now doesn't, not that this has led to an explosion of new gay-straight alliances at Halton Catholic schools or any others around the province. At the time a commenter here was insistent I was passing on the only important story in education in Ontario at the time.
I did pass. And with few exceptions I will, but more on that in a few paragraphs.
Of course, I'm aware the province required schools boards to pass their own equity and inclusive education policies, even punching out a guide on how to do so. One that would, in theory, allow for the sorts of student-, staff- and community led initiatives such as gay-straight alliances to exist in every school and help establish that school and community as a safe space for all.
Yes, it's patently unfair that both these things have happened in Halton and now in Thunder Bay. It does conflict with the larger goals of a mostly-secular, mostly urban province.
And yes, I, on a number of occasions in this space, have disclosed that while I graduated from a Catholic high school, I support the establishment of a single publicly funded system demarcated only by whether the school is English-language or French-language.
So here's the deal. As the guide itself states fairly early on:

For Roman Catholic and French-language boards, development and implementation of equity and inclusive education policies will take place within the context of the denominational rights of Roman Catholic schools as set out in section 93 of the Constitution Act, 1867 and the Education Act, and the language rights of French language rights-holders as set out in section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Education Act. (8)

So there you have it. Legislated equity and inclusion, but only so far as the legislated ability for Catholic schools to be Catholic.
Last time I checked, the Catholic faith was far from inclusive when it came to the question of any sexuality that doesn't lead to heterosexual marriage and the subsequent and frequently repeated pitter-patter of little feet. Changing that is a matter for those within the faith and their faith leaders.
Last time I checked, particularly since it was a disastrous issue in the 2007 provincial campaign, no political party in this province is ready to do what's been done in Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador-- abolish the separate (Catholic in Ontario's case) school system.
So until one of the two things above happens, it's never going to be a surprise that a Catholic school will discriminate and promote pro-life initiatives over pro-choice ones. Duh. Also not surprising that a Catholic system would be less-than-welcoming towards any person who's not heterosexual. Again, duh.
Upset these are happening at your local Catholic school? Don't enroll. Go to a public school.
Until Catholics are ready to tackle these issues within their faith or the province is ready to move towards a single publicly funded system, these disagreements and discriminatory practices will continue because they're permitted. You can't have your cake and eat it too on this one. You can't allow a faith-based system to receive public dollars and practise its dogma in publicly built and operated spaces and then turn around and ask them to go against their beliefs.
Until that question is solved or a move to do either of the two resolutions above gains any real traction, these news items may be worth a few days' attention and then, really, not much more.

WiFi - safe, right?

The Simcoe County District School Board is attempting to bury the hatchet on this issue that arose last summer as parents within several of its school communities protested the use of wireless technologies in its facilities.
The parents claimed the radio-frequency waves were causing illnesses in their children.
It caused a kerfuffle, that led to the use of the technologies being suspended in some schools and the delay of implementation in others.
The board received a report this week, as reported in the Collingwood Enterprise-Bulletin, indicating the RF levels present in the facilities with equipment are below health standards set by the Canadian government.

(Trustee Caroline) Smith said the report updated the board on the Wi-Fi safety debates that have been ongoing for months now.
"An evaluation of radio frequency (RF) and microwaves levels at Mountain View Public School and Collingwood Collegiate Institute (CCI) was conducted by Dr. Tony Muc & Radiation and Health Consulting," she said.
There has been a great deal of talk and opinion around the subject of Wi-Fi," said Smith. "This report (attached) helps clarify that the levels of RF within SCDSB schools are safe. Muc's report scientifically measures the RF levels within two schools within the SCDSB."
...
Muc's conclusions state "the RF and microwave electromagnetic field levels in a representative sample of areas normally accessed by students at both MES and CCI are a factor of least 25 below the exposure limits specified in Health Canada Safety Code 5. All the observed levels are far below exposure limits currently established or proposed by the major international or national agencies or organizations for public (including children) or occupational exposures."

That won't satiate those who brought their concerns to light last year however.
Others have taken note, as seen in this coverage out of Peterborough on the Kawartha Pine Ridge DSB's plan on implementing wireless technologies at its elementary schools.
I don't think this is the best hill upon which to wage this war.
Low-power wireless frequencies are so completely a part of our first-world lives. We're surrounded by these frequency waves-- in our workplaces, in our public spaces, even in places where we may not be aware of their existence. Not to mention our homes (I'd be curious to see if any of the people protesting WiFi in schools have wireless technologies at home), which are becoming increasingly wireless to suit our demand for convenience.
Though time will ultimately tell, we're also not seeing any epidemic of illness across society as a result of all this exposure. We consciously or subconsciously assume that risk every time we buy into a wireless technology or participate in it.
We should want our schools to give students access to the latest technologies (WiFi being far from  a "latest" technology) and teach them how to use that technology to enhance their learning.

The politics of safety

The article here is more than a week old, but the Toronto Sun did several days' coverage of a six-year-old's injury sustained in a schoolyard mishap. In this one piece, they featured a lawyer willing to take on the school and the world, it seems, because the student didn't receive appropriate care after her injury.

Irene (Cao), a Grade 1 student at the Martin Grove Rd.-Eglinton Ave. W. area school, broke her leg in two places in November after colliding with another student. Irene needed to have a brace with four screws drilled into her shinbone so it will mend.
Cao’s parents accuse school staff of forcibly dragging a screaming Irene into the school, and then not calling an ambulance. Cao has since sought legal advice.
“It comes down to negligence,” said Dave Messam, a lawyer with the Cariati Law firm. “The younger (the kids) are, the more the onus is on the school to keep them safe. From the time children are dropped off, until they are picked up, (school staff) are responsible for their well-being.”

The Toronto District School Board response is that only one staff member per school is required to have standard first aid training.
There are separate issues at play here, which means the implied correlation between standard first aid training for all school employees and the way this girl was treated is not as strong as what the article suggests. First is the issue of standard first aid training and schools. Second is the way this particular student was treated.
As a first aid / CPR / AED instructor for 15 years, I think I can speak knowledgeably about at least one of these issues, if not both.
The TDSB spokesperson is entirely correct. Legally, schools are considered workplaces when it comes to staff members' requirements for first aid training. Under the WSIB legislation in Ontario, the number of people in any workplace who must have first aid training is regulated based on the number of employees. For schools, that's the number of school staff members, as students are not considered employees. In many schools, only one person in the building requires first aid training.
This, I don't agree with, but it requires legislative change. Given the work politics, it would also require serious cash as many current teachers (more likely their federations) would insist on completing this training during class time, requiring substitute teachers, and to be paid for it. Perhaps a solution lies in the Ontario College of Teachers making changes to its initial certification processes -- candidates requiring standard first aid training before being admitted for the first time as college members.
The other issue here is how this girl was treated. Many who've read or heard about this incident would easily say, using common sense, that dragging someone with a leg injury anywhere isn't the best thing to do in most circumstances. It may have aggravated her injury. Broken bones don't necessarily always require an ambulance response, but they don't make casts in school first aid rooms, so a hospital visit was also a common-sense decision.
All of which is my tepid way of stating that even if every adult in that school had a first aid certificate, that still may not have prevented the lack of common sense that appeared to be on display with this incident.

2010 year in review

Ah, the joys of a scheduled post. I'm somewhere in Europe on fellowship and/or personal travel as this post crosses the wire, but I did this in 2009 after seven months of blogging and wanted to do it again this year after a full year of blogging (despite doing it less frequently).
The past year has seen some of the issues from 2009 carry on, as well as others enter into the fray given the fall election.
Some of the constant top issues:

• School accommodation: School-closure reviews, their committees, reports, discussions, disagreements, impacts, unsuccessful court challenges and moving on. Many of the first reviews completed after the guidelines were reintroduced by the provincial government that led to school closures were acted on this year-- new and expanded schools opened in September and the old schools closed in June. What didn't happen? Coverage of students and families in their new schools-- talking about how they hate it or love it or whatever.
• Help not wanted: Yet another year where with a startling few exceptions publicly funded school boards barely needed to hire any new teachers. Yet our teachers colleges continue to admit thousands of prospective candidates (it's OK, they're training them to teach the world).
• Sunshine: Still surprised at how surprised / upset people get when the annual list comes out. The contracts were signed. The dollars were crunched at the time. Simple math tells us exactly how many more people in education will get added to the 100K list based on the jobs they have and the contract their employee association and school board (with financial backing from the province) signed.

Stuff that came of age in 2010?

• Full-day learning for four- and five-year-olds / early learning program / full-day kindergarten: Whatever the heck you call it, this program saw some meat put on its bones this year. Decisions to staff classrooms with teachers and ECEs, to setup a before- and after-school program component and then later allow boards to exempt themselves from it. Then, finally, the launch of the first classrooms in hundreds of schools across the province. Lots of coverage in early September. Still waiting for the second part of that promised Globe feature that committed to checking in with a handful of families across the country with four- and five-year-old kids. Or anything similar from any other media. With plenty of ECE contracts left to finalize and another round of bargaining for the whole sector just around the corner (sort of), this one should continue its prominence in 2011.
• Moaning about fundraising: With a h/t to two of my fellow education reporters at the London Free Press, this one makes my list for 2010. People for Education helped as well, with two separate reports that spoke to the amount of school-generated funds in our publicly funded education system. Can't wait, hopefully, in 2011, for people to actually speak about this issue properly and separate fundraising for school items and activities from all that other cash that flows through a school before heading elsewhere outside the system.
• A new minister: After several years of stability in the portfolio with Kathleen Wynne, a cabinet shakeup moves Leona Dombrowsky into the education slot. A feisty member of cabinet, it doesn't feel as though that talent has really been brought out. However, under her watch we've seen the FDK implementation, as well as another budget year of increases in education in a deficit fiscal climate where overall school enrolment continues to drop. The provincial-interest regulations and a provincial election lie around the corner. I expect to hear and see more of Leona.
• Bullying: It's always been an unfortunate facet of life and school. It seems despite earlier suicides, etc. this year was a breakout year for everyone to hate bullying and start talking about its presence in the school system. There are few shining lights on this, however encouraging efforts are coming out of the London area as well as in Ottawa.
• EQAO opposition: This could just as easily go in the 'constant issues' list (really, when have teachers' federations ever liked EQAO?), but the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario ramped up a campaign surrounding its annual meeting on the tests. When are we going to stop talking about this as though the tests might ever go away? They're reality.
• Now for more of the same: Trustee elections result in changes, but no real sweeps across the province.
• Community Schools what?: Oh, the Community Schools Alliance and how, despite a few agreements with one school board, it's faded from our consciousness.

In 2011, we'll have to see how some of the issues above continue to play out. With an 'education premier' gearing up for another provincial election in October, it will also be interesting to see how this government faces its opposition on education, and whether that opposition will actually come out of the hole it's been hiding in when it comes to educational issues.
As of the day this post was drafted, the blog has seen just over 18,700 visits since inception -- about 11,800 of those in 2010, with a grand total of just over 28,000 individual page views. With the drop in posting frequency, it's been averaging about 30-40 visitors a day. Small,  but still better than I expected given fewer than half as many posts in 2010 compared to seven months of 2009. I don't IP-snoop, but have been told this page is read across district school boards, in the ministry and among other education reporters in Ontario. As an aside, as I posted last year, here were the top-10 posts measured by unique page visits (metric doesn't include over 6,600 hits to the front page). Which to me is a more interesting measure since it means the hit came from someone searching for the post's topic or arriving at the post because they were led to it.

1. Bill 177 (Still! Second year! Which just goes to show how it is among the few things out there on this legislation) - 708 views (1,240 since it was posted in May 2009)
2. Full-day kindergarten = ECE shortage? (another one from 2009) - 686 views
3. Bill 242 introduction (showing another piece of legislation where there has been little written) - 442 views
4. A thought on teacher education and the job market - 272 views
5. ETFO goes after ELP ECEs - 251 views
6. ELP's impact on childcare providers - 234 views
7. On teaching - 185 views
8. Reflections on a week I'll not soon forget - 177 views
9. CUPE first out of the gate? - 166 views
10. Busy days in NOTL - 154 views

 Thanks for stopping by. I don't completely know what the next 12 months will bring in terms of my employment situation and the time I have to dedicate to this blog, but it will survive.

FOI success at LFP

I was so happy to see this hit the web Friday night, and it fronts today's London Free Press. Education reporter Jen O'Brien submitted a request under the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act for e-mails relating to an online security breach of the Thames Valley District School Board's student portal earlier this fall. A 15-year-old wunderkid, whose own questions and warnings were apparently ignored by the board, broke the security on the portal and then posted the full list of usernames and passwords on Facebook. The move caused some ruckus at the board as the portal was first taken down and then tens of thousands of students were forced to change their other online passwords to protect themselves. The teen is now facing charges.
Having fought this particular board on previous FOI requests and served in an advisory capacity on at least one other request, this release is fantastic. It appears that in its urge to line up all the public relations and internal ducks before publicly releasing and responding to the security breach, administrators likely didn't think someone outside the board would end up reading those e-mails.
This no doubt will embarrass some at 1250 Dundas St. in London, starting with the public affairs and community relations people (both prominent former journalists from London media) who, per the e-mails, were shaping messages instead of calling the cops.
Given a fairly significant slip by this same department at the very beginning of the Tori Stafford disappearance in 2009 (she was abducted and murdered after leaving a Thames Valley school to walk home) and how this breach was handled, part of me wonders if the new board of trustees might not be left wondering about its communicators.
In the meantime, I'm sure other boards have taken note. School boards, though not subject to investigation by the Ontario ombudsman (that's an entirely different issue) are subject to freedom-of-information requests. They have to comply with the legislation. When you cough up your $5 you need to be prepared for a fight, but your tenacity is often rewarded.
As school boards become aware of this it's a double-edged sword-- the very e-mails that so compellingly form the foundation of the Free Press' article today would start to disappear as people learn they can be requested and must be released. While the ultimate goal of the release might be to change behaviour, it may only end up changing it to the point it moves even further into the shadows.
Already shared my appreciation with O'Brien earlier, but it fully deserves mention in this space as well.

Ombudsman'ing it

So wish I had something to link to here -- this is the best I can do -- but the London Free Press had a full-page feature today by education reporter Jen O'Brien on the move by NDP MPP and education critic Rosario Marchese to get school boards included among the agencies the provincial ombudsman's office can investigate. Will link or post once the bill is tabled, as well as if the Freeps posts the article online. The Freeps posted the article online Monday.
Marchese intends to introduce the private-members' bill on Monday.
The Freeps' treatment was nice-- full colour page in its Saturday A section, with a photo of four London-area women involved in parents' groups. Their groups support Marchese's efforts, as it would add an additional outlet for issues parents feel are not resolved by school boards. The article has some pullouts with details about some of the incidents the Freeps has received information on over the years.
Marchese's move got some press earlier this week as well.
The current ombudsman, Andre Marin (who has a son named Hugo... great name!), has long been on the record in saying his office would welcome any additional agencies into its investigative portfolio. It's one element of oversight that's missing-- financial oversight through the ministry and the auditor general already exists. I haven't heard, and the article doesn't speak to this, whether school board and trustee associations would support the bill. One might hope they would as they shouldn't really be worried if they're responding to and dealing with complaints in an equitable manner.

Is it ignorance? Or poor promotion?

The Ottawa Citizen has an article today coming out of a school board committee meeting Monday night, where a trustee expresses a desire to have every student be exposed to swimming lessons through school before Grade 3. Admirable goal.

Some schools already offer students a chance to take swimming lessons, but (Zone 11 trustee Riley) Brockington says the program should be implemented across the board.
“We should agree that this is a critical life skill that all students should have, and, if we agree that’s the case, then the board should be providing any funds to cover the cost,” Brockington said, adding the program would be of particular benefit to many new Canadians who don’t know how to swim.

This could be happening today in all Ottawa schools, so it's surprising to me that this trustee, and this board, doesn't know that. It's called the Swim to Survive school grant program and it's been around for three or four years. The program centers on doing a forward roll (disorienting entry), treading water for one minute and then swimming 50 metres or yards without stopping. As most drownings occur within 50 metres of a point of safety, the underlying principle is that someone falling into water unexpectedly can right themselves, break the surface of the water, tread water long enough to find the closest point of safety and then be able to swim there.

Full disclosure: I am a lifeguard and swimming instructor, and when in Woodstock work part-time at the Woodstock YMCA. As such, we have taught well over 1,000 Grade 2-4 students from area schools as part of the Swim to Survive program over the past four or five years. It's become my absolute favourite program to teach.

The grant program provides funding (from the Ministry of Education, but flowing through the Lifesaving Society) to school boards to help get their Grade 3 students to area swimming pools during school hours for three hours of swimming lessons. School boards must apply for the grants and in the application show they've partnered with a local swimming pool (municipal, non-profit, YMCA, private, etc.) to work out a fee structure. In many boards, the grants cover the cost of busing to the facility-- which was the cost that caused swimming to be dropped from the roster at many schools.

Three hours doesn't teach a non-swimmer everything s/he needs to know to swim and survive, but it makes a huge difference for those children who would never take formal swimming lessons. Even having a better idea of what they're comfortable doing in and around the water makes a critical difference.

First surprise was already listed above-- that the trustee wasn't aware of this program (especially since I highly suspect there are schools in the board that already receive the StS grant). As you can see from the comment below, Brockington is aware of the program and wants to see it in every school. Second surprise was that the journalist, who took the time to look up the statistics and information from the Lifesaving Society, didn't keep clicking to learn about this program.

To be fair in my final point, it's also the society's issue. This past year the organization held its AGM in Tillsonburg, which is in the southeastern part of the Thames Valley District / London Catholic District school boards' area. Those two boards were the only ones to send 100% of their eligible students to a Swim to Survive swimming lesson in 2009. They even were awarded the Swim to Survive award (page 16) in recognition, yet no one at the society thought to invite someone from the boards to receive the award as it held its own annual meeting in that very district.

Small-claims justice?

A frequent if anonymous tipster sent this to me Monday, after it was picked up by the Waterloo Region Record. Driving the next morning, I heard the issue taken up on CBC Radio One's Ontario Morning program, heard throughout Ontario outside the GTA (but ironically, not in Kitchener-Waterloo, which gets the Toronto Metro Morning show).
Parents in K-W, upset and no doubt at wit's end, are taking to small-claims courts to seek justice (retribution?) for what they claim is inaction on the part of local school boards to address their concerns with bullying.

Since a Kitchener mother sued the Catholic board in January over bullying against her son — the suit, believed to be a first in Ontario, was settled out of court — many parents have come forward with similar complaints.
Hundreds have joined a Facebook group formed by another local mother, where they’re given advice on how to use Small Claims Court to sue, at a cost to the plaintiffs of as little as $75.
John Shewchuk, senior manager of public affairs for the Catholic school board, said school officials are worried the case, at Canadian Martyrs school in Kitchener, has opened the floodgates for similar lawsuits against schools. They want the Ontario Attorney General to intervene to prevent an onslaught of legal action. School officials will raise the issue with the province once the March break is over.
“We want to raise an alarm bell with the government . . . we think they’ve got a little bit of a problem on their hands,” Shewchuk said. “You can just see the herd coming over the hill. You’re going to find more people who quite frankly just don’t like the answer they got, so they’re saying ‘fine, I’m going to sue you.’ ”
Only one of the three latest lawsuits filed in Small Claims Court is against the Catholic board. In that case, parents of an eight-year-old autistic girl allege that St. Teresa Catholic School in Kitchener has failed to protect her from bullies and give her the specialized, in-school therapy they believe she needs. 

I'm not sure what to think about this just yet. While Shewchuck makes a reference to people with dollar signs in their eyes, some of the cases cited (and I'm no lawyer) appear to provide an opportunity to address a lack of action or a protocol/procedure that wasn't being followed. At the same time, this tool should be the one of last resort, no?
We already live in an increasingly litigious society (though still far less litigious than our neighbours to the south), do we really need to add this fear of small claims court to the mix? This shows a failure of a lot of things around the bullied child (inside and outside school), and other than getting the board's attention in a judicial forum, I don't know what a small-claims suit actually does to help the bullied child recover and ensure the bully and bystanders are given a consequence for their actions and/or inactions.

G&M goes a little deeper on bullying and schools

This tripped across the e-mail alerts this AM as I was getting ready for work. I think it nicely reinforces some of the points I've been trying to make here about a school's role in identifying and preventing bullying from becoming a bigger challenge than it should be. Given the platform of the Globe and Mail should help make the point among many who likely never could have believed the bullies were among their own. The educators and parents quoted here show the complexity of tackling these behaviours when (or if, even) they're first noticed. From the piece, with the ellipses indicating where I've skipped some paragraphs:

The evidence suggests that reacting strongly to bullying when kids are still kids is essential to stopping the behaviour before it progresses from “I don’t want to play with you,” to public humiliation in high school.
Such a response can possibly avoid situations like that in St. Thomas, Ont., where a 13-year-old girl was charged with criminal harassment this month after allegations of bullying at her elementary school. And it can prevent the pain suffered by the victims, who, too often, struggle with depression and anxiety, and even suicidal thoughts. But educators and experts says that’s not always a parent’s first reaction when the call comes. More often, it is denial, or, especially in the early years, dismissal.
“Most kids have engaged in some kind of bullying behaviour in elementary school,” says Wendy Craig, a Queen’s University psychologist who studies the issue. According to one study involving the early grades, only 36 per cent of girls and 17 per cent of boys said they’d had no involvement in bullying over the course of the school year.
“The message for teachers and parents is to identify them early,” Dr. Craig says. “If you get a call twice in the school year, you need to be vigilant.”
And yet, says Cindi Seddon, a principal in Coquitlam, B.C., most parents don’t react like the Marins. Ms. Seddon says she’s had to hang up the phone on abusive parents or leave the room when meetings turned hostile – often with their child watching mom or dad’s own bullying behaviour. (my bold emphasis) “Parents are incredibly upset,” she says, when they learn their child is being accused of bullying. They don’t always agree with the school’s interpretation of events.
...
“They are the kids who are nice to their parents, and have good social skills with their teachers and peers,” Dr. (Tracy) Vaillancourt says. “But they are also really mean.” Their bullying is done with sophistication, such as excluding people from their social circle and spreading rumours, often sneaking under the gaze of adults around them.
Hollywood rules apply, even in Grade 1: “You can get away with murder when you’re hot,” Dr. Vaillancourt says.
The good news, however, is that these are the bullies most easily stopped, since they respond to discipline. But, she says, “parents need to attend to it right away, and take it seriously.”

This is an important piece because it takes us away from the focus on the bullied, and how various people in their lives have failed to support them and call out the inappropriate behaviour they've witnessed. It places it on the bully-- and the wider range of bullying behaviours that can be seen everywhere, every day, in a multitude of different social situations. We need to learn more about that side of the equation, as this piece has laid out.

LFPress goes deeper on bullying

I believe this is set to publish in Saturday's paper, but it went online Friday afternoon so I'm linking it now.
Kudos to Jennifer O'Brien and to her editors for allowing her the time to do the research, contact the sources and do the interviews. In a busy newsroom, this is any reporter's largest challenge-- to be assigned the story (whether editor-generated or reporter-initiated) and more importantly, be given enough time to give it justice. It's a great example of how a newsroom and a journalists takes an immediate-impact article (the recent death of a high school student) and comes back to it after taking a breath and keeps asking questions.
I think it hits all the right notes I was trying to sound myself last week when I posted on Elizabeth Witmer's resolution for a November anti-bullying awareness week. It correctly points out that while schools and their staff members cannot be excused from their role in observing, reporting and enforcing meaningful consequences for the bullying that continues to occur within their domain, crapping on the school system won't bring the panacea families of bullied children are so desperately looking for. I contrast O'Brien's piece with a full-pager in the Toronto Sun today by Michelle Mandel on a 13-year-old being kept home from school by her parents because of repeated bullying.
From the LFPress piece:

You can find a parent in almost every Canadian city - many, in this one - who blame school boards for allowing bullying to continue, blame teachers for turning a blind eye. The London Free Press receives calls regularly from parents who say their kids are being bullied and the board isn't helping. Many applaud Ontario's just-imposed requirement that any school staffer or volunteer report bullying behaviour to the principal, while others question why that wasn't required in the first place.
Other social ills - smoking and drunk driving, for example - have lost some of their harsh edges from years of public awareness campaigns, many of them focused on school-age kids. But after a generation of similar treatment, bullying remains such a persistent problem that Ontario, for example, recently had to beef up its legislation meant to help tackle the problem.
Why?
While experts point to a variety of factors, and note school boards aren't off the hook, many say the wider solution needs to start at home.
With the mean behaviour continuing, even growing through Internet technology such as social networking sites that leave victims vulnerable online, 24-7, even in their own homes, anti-violence researchers across the board say it's time parents, themselves, addressed what's become a national in-your-face culture that supports bullying.
"Parents want the schools to handle bullying. But how do you handle treating hired help? How do you handle it at a family gathering, when someone makes a racist or a sexist joke? If you say something, you've taught your children to stand up and speak out when something isn't right," said Barbara Coloroso, a best-selling U.S. author and anti-bullying consultant.

Coloroso is eminently quotable and always finds the exact place to stand on when it comes to the issue of bullying. Her landmark text  was the first to find headlines across media to educate on the concept of the triangular relationship that always exists in bullying. I would take every one of her quotes and scream them from a mountaintop if I could.
See for yourself:

"We've come a long way, where kids and schools are recognizing this is not a part of growing up, not normal and necessary. However, we are dealing in a culture where, on one hand, we say be kind and loving to others, and then, here are our TV shows that kids watch. . . where they learn to laugh at somebody else's pain," said Coloroso, who pointed out reality TV shows and aggressive celebrity gossip programs are contributing factors.
"Kids are swimming in a culture of mean."
Coloroso firmly believes school staff and all other adults must hold bullies accountable. That includes those who join in or support the behaviour, through laughter or comments on Facebook.
Bullies, she said, should never get off with just a warning.
"Bullying is never a (simple) mistake," she said.
She said schools need to enforce what she calls the three Ps: strong anti-bullying policies, strong procedures in place and strong programs in place.

So, there is no easy answer. There is increasing realization that ending bullying requires cultural change at a level that goes far beyond the walls of a school or the employees in a school system. We live in a culture of mean, where those who bully get ahead and are often rewarded for their actions. Until society is prepared to realize that, we'll never do justice to tackling the problem.

Feel-goodery from Witmer

I've received numerous invitations to participate in today's announcement by former education minister and Kitchener-Waterloo MPP Elizabeth Witmer regarding the creation of an anti-bullying week in November.
The press release is full of endorsements from anti-bullying coalitions, teachers' federations, etc. If it passes through to its eventual end, it would create an awareness week in the third week of November and mandate that activities take place in every school across Ontario during that week.
So what?
You can wear pink, label a week and parade against bullying all you want. It'll make you feel great -- particularly if people who bully get behind it and add their weight (imagine being bullied into anti-bullying activities?). But what does Witmer's resolution do to actually improve the social conditions in our schools?
Does it direct any increased funding to safe-school programs?
Does it encourage adults in schools to use their common sense and step in when they see any signs of behaviour that lead to someone being bullied?
Does it teach parents how not to make bullies of their children?
Does it change our society as a whole to reward the meek and punish the aggressive?
Does it do anything to address the deep-rooted sentiment of not "ratting out" bullies?
Does it eliminate the bystander? You know, when we stand by and watch it happen but do nothing?
If it doesn't move any closer to answering yes on any of the above, then this resolution is just empty platitudes.
Bullying is a societal problem that extends well beyond schools. I always hesitate to join the masses slamming schools and school boards for 'not doing enough' to stop bullying. Ending it requires more than just teachers and principals. The first place to look is in the home, then in the peer group. Solve that conundrum first.
To add to this, I always cringe at media coverage of bullying. Those who are most successful in media are type-A personalities-- aggressive, dominant, stubborn. Read: bullies. So someone whose bully qualities have been honed to the benefit of their craft is now writing about someone who was bullied. I saw journos I respected bully a school board through coverage and public opinion into taking unprecedented steps to address why people weren't reporting what they witness.
I cringed when I read this today, almost a repeat of what happened in Dec. 2004 and I do hope we're able to take a breath, count to 10 and consider the bigger picture prior to blaming any school involvement.