Policing-Free Schools holds a rally against Ontario's Bill 33 at Queen’s Park in Toronto on Aug. 27. Bill 33 mandates the return of School Resource Officers, among other changes.Laura Proctor/The Globe and Mail
The authors are all student trustees for Ontario school boards currently under provincial supervision. Lead author Anya Guo, and Nieve Xiao, are with the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, Ahnaaf Hassan is with the Toronto District School Board, Anushka Bist the Thames Valley District School Board, and Ruben Da Silveira the Toronto Catholic District School Board.
When we were each elected as student trustees for some of the largest school boards in Ontario, we envisioned stepping into a democratic system designed to uplift student voices. We expected to have a platform to advocate for our fellow students, who trusted us with their votes. The provincial government’s Bill 33, passed by a majority vote in Queen’s Park last week, has taken that platform away.
Earlier this year, the Ontario Ministry of Education placed all of our respective school boards under provincial supervision, replacing locally elected trustees with a single supervisor under the guise of addressing financial mismanagement. Consequently, we have witnessed not only a loss of transparency and local input in decision making, but also a loss of student voices as official stakeholders. But we refuse to be silenced.
Bill 33, or the Supporting Children and Students Act, does the exact opposite of what its name suggests. Instead of supporting students, the bill threatens the democratic principles that have guided the success of Ontario’s education system for decades by expanding the minister of education’s power to intervene at the school-board governance level.
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Since the province took over our school boards, trustees, including student trustees, have been sidelined and excluded from key decision-making discussions. As the democratically elected representatives for local communities, trustees play a crucial role in ensuring all decisions are made in direct consultation with parents and students.
When trusted community representatives are replaced with a single supervisor, notably one with no knowledge of the communities they serve, the result is a centralized system that completely disregards our diverse communities.
Students deserve representatives who understand their community and can advocate for their concerns. Parents deserve someone they trust – someone they choose – to be at the decision-making table when policies directly affect their children. By strengthening the Ministry of Education’s power to remove elected trustees from boards, Bill 33 undermines the democratic foundations of our education system.
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Another provision that Bill 33 points toward is the reinstatement of School Resources Officers (SROs) into school programs – a move which ignores years of community feedback and student testimony.
In recent years, several Ontario school boards have chosen to reject or end their School Resource Officer programs. A common thread across these decisions was the reported harm SRO programs have caused, particularly for a disproportionate number of racialized students, including Indigenous and Black youth. The Thames Valley District School Board, for example, reported a significant number of these students feeling mistreated or traumatized by the presence of police in schools.
In its report, “Under Suspicion,” the Ontario Human Rights Commission presents testimonials from parents of students subjected to racial profiling in Ontario high schools. These accounts reveal that Indigenous and racialized students are routinely burdened with negative stereotypes that frame them as being disruptive and having behavioural difficulties. Consequently, these students are often denied the margin for error or opportunities for growth that are offered to their non-racialized peers. Within this context, Bill 33’s reintroduction of SRO programs would only serve to intensify existing inequities.
Bill 33 enables decisions that allow students’ education to be shaped without our input, despite the fact that we will be most directly affected by these decisions. We’ve seen firsthand the consequences of sidelining student voices: funding being allocated to initiatives that harm rather than support students, and policies being drafted without consulting students about their daily experiences.
Students deserve equitable representation that reflects Ontario’s diverse student population. To ensure that, we believe that the Ontario government should do the following: Ensure locally elected trustees for school boards remain in place; reject the return of SROs and invest in approaches that make students feel safe, supported, and welcomed, rather than criminalized; allocate funding to school boards to meet diverse local priorities; prioritize formal and meaningful student participation in policy-making; and guarantee full transparency and opportunities for community input in all stages of decision-making.
Bill 33 harms the students it claims to protect. Now, more than ever, we must unite to defend the future of our education system. Student voices deserve to be heard in Ontario.