Transferring Troubled Students To New Schools Ineffective Says Panel
Posted August 30, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A policy in place at Toronto schools could be putting students at risk. That was one of the startling revelations uncovered by a school safety panel examining issues at CW Jeffreys, where 15-year-old Jordan Manners was shot and killed.
Human rights lawyer Julian Falconer announced the panel’s findings on Wednesday, and he found that the Safe School Transfer policy, in which troubled students are merely transferred to other schools, was both ineffective and potentially dangerous.
“A youth is acting out, is violent, has threatened a teacher, has engaged in a violent robbery, that youth is moved out of that school community and moved to the next one,” he said.
And it doesn’t just happen at CW Jefferys, but at schools across the city.
The student who is transferred ends up in a new environment without any supports to help get on the right path.
“There is no formal or mandatory assessment of any kind to figure out what animated the youth’s actions,” Falconer adds.
Many believe the policy is contributing to the increasing number of ‘hallway kids’— students that show up for school but never go to class and instead spend their time disrupting other students and sometimes engaging in criminal behaviour.
The problem, according to the Board, is a lack of money to put programs in place to help the students. However the province has just announced millions more for psychologists and youth workers in the schools.
“We really want that money that was announced last week to go to hire the professionals that are needed to keep our schools safe” said Education Minister Kathleen Wynne.
