NDP RIPS SAFE SCHOOLS ACT

Hampton Urges Grits To Reverse Zero Tolerance

Ontario's "experiment with American-style" zero-tolerance school policies
has been a total failure, New Democrat Leader Howard Hampton said Monday as
he urged the province to repeal the Safe Schools Act.

The law, introduced four years ago by the previous Conservative government,
imposes automatic suspensions and expulsions for offences such as assault,
drug trafficking or selling or carrying weapons or alcohol.

Students can also be immediately suspended for threatening to harm another
student, vandalism, swearing and possessing or being under the influence of
alcohol or drugs.

"The so-called Safe Schools Act is really a Gang Recruitment Act," Hampton
told a news conference at the Ontario legislature in Toronto.

"It has driven youth at risk out of our schools, on to the streets and into
trouble."

Hampton called the statistics "startling," noting the number of suspensions
in Ontario shot up 40 per cent to 24,238 in the 2001-02 school year, the
first year the law was in force.

The numbers have stayed that high ever since, even in the two years since
Premier Dalton McGuinty was elected, said Hampton, who accused the
governing Liberals of doing nothing to provide alternative programs for
students who were suspended or expelled.

"The McGuinty government, despite all the statements of, 'We feel your
pain,' hasn't done a damn thing to address that issue," Hampton said.

"You don't just throw them out on the street and say, 'To hell with you.'
You have to work with them."

Mary Jean Gallagher, director of the Greater Essex County District School
Board, said local public elementary and secondary schools experienced a
similar jump in suspensions and expulsions when the act was introduced.

In the 2002-2003 school year, the GECDSB handed out more than 6,700
suspensions, and Gallagher said that annual figure has only increased --
without necessarily making schools any safer.

"I think our schools were safe before the Safe Schools Act, and they still
are now," Gallagher said.

Gallagher said the GECDSB supports a provincial government review of the
act, and she criticized some of the act's parameters as an excessively
"legalistic framework" for handling discipline problems.

"I believe it's time that the act should be reviewed to really gather a
sense of whether it achieves what it was supposed to achieve in the first
place," Gallagher said. "The act is so 'one-size-fits-all' ... and I don't
know if that's necessarily going to serve our school communities the best."

But Gallagher added she doesn't entirely agree with Hampton's comments.

"I think Mr. Hampton phrases it much more strongly than I would. I don't
believe it's a 'Gang Recruitment Act.'"

Gallagher pointed to the GECDSB's Turning Points program as a measure that
reaches out to public school students who come under discipline. Instituted
locally just before the Safe Schools Act, the program helps students under
suspension to stay in touch with educators.

Gallagher said she'd like to see legislation that gives principals a
greater degree of discretion with at-risk students.

Hampton also said the majority of the students suspended or expelled were
disabled or visible minorities.

Keelon Featherstone, 16, a student at Ascension of Our Lords Secondary
School in Brampton, said he was suspended for 20 days on Sept. 28 after
being wrongly accused of stealing a can of pop and a bag of potato chips.

The family went to court and a Superior Court judge said it was okay for
Keelon to return to school, but an hour after he went back, police took the
teen out of class, slapped on handcuffs, loaded him into a patrol car and
took him to the station, where he was strip-searched -- all without calling
his parents or a lawyer.

In the legislature Monday, Agriculture Minister Leona Dombrowsky, who sat
in for McGuinty during question period, said the government would begin
public consultations on the Safe Schools Act within the next few weeks.