The Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF) says the government should provide funding for anti-violence training programs and the hiring of mental health support in the wake of a rise in school violence.
“We’re looking to have all the adults in the building who would be available to support students so that we’re taking a much more proactive approach,” OSSTF President Karen Littlewood said in an interview with Now Toronto on Friday.
This all-hands-on-deck approach would include everyone in the building – from the entire education team to custodians and secretaries to make sure they are aware of potential risks. This would ensure that students’ needs can be supported in a proactive way instead of a reactive one.
“The whole education team (would be involved) so that we’re able to support the needs of the students in a proactive way as opposed to just reacting but right now we’re in a situation where we need to react. We need to make sure that our members are reporting incidents, and that they’re adding to that data that’s being collected,” Littlewood said.
Training for school principles and vice principles, following the government’s Health and Safety Act, would also be another way these programs can be implemented.
Littlewood, whose union represents teachers, education assistants and other education workers, stated the administrators and principals, and vice principals have to follow up with reports as well, and that data needs to be collected.
She says she wants to work with the government to look at what kind of training there should be, and that many of the mental health support and child youth workers have great ideas that would be helpful too.
“The problem is we don’t have enough of them. And that really poses a problem when either job isn’t being filled, because education is not the best place to be working right now. Or there just aren’t enough people who are applying for those jobs either.”
School violence has been on the rise in Ontario since the onset of the COVID pandemic, but Littlewood says it was at an elevated rate before.
“…Violence really was an issue before the pandemic too. So it’s not like this is brand new. Unfortunately, we’re hearing a lot in the news right now about GTA and what’s happening there. But there’s also been violence across the province and it’s not just high school students, JK up to grade 12. It’s hard to predict but the better prepared we are, the better-prepared administrators are to deal with it, I think the safer everyone will be.”
Police data presented at a Toronto District School Board meeting in Dec.2022 shows 622 young people between the ages of 12 and 29 were victims of stabbings and 586 were accused of stabbings between Jan. 2021 and Nov.2022.
