After eradicating cops from its faculties, the Greater Victoria School District has submitted a trio of proposed security plans to the province in time for a Jan. 6 deadline demanded by the province’s education minister.
The transfer comes after Training Minister Lisa Beare rejected a previous plan in December, which the province had ordered in September.
The district scrapped its college liaison police officer program final yr over considerations police on college grounds had been having a destructive affect on Black and Indigenous college students. The province subsequently demanded the protection plan, elevating considerations about rising gang exercise in faculties and deteriorating relations with police.
In December, Beare appointed a particular advisor to transform the district’s security plan, and urged the board may very well be changed by a trustee if the protection plan was insufficient.
A draft plan spearheaded by the advisor, former Abbotsford Faculty District superintendent Kevin Godden, is among the many three plans put ahead, however the board mentioned Monday it will desire the province select one of many two alternate plans it authored itself.
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In a memorandum, the board disputed the ministry’s jurisdiction to demand the protection plan however mentioned it was complying with Beare’s order to keep away from dismissal.
Beneath the board’s preferred plan, Victoria-area police would have the ability to assign officers to every college within the district.
These officers can be required to “work with a trauma-informed lens to work with susceptible and or high-risk youth populations,” and assist and take part in cultural sensitivity, restorative observe and trauma-informed coaching.
If the province rejects Plan A, the board asks the province to approve a Plan B, which might solely see officers on college grounds in non-emergency conditions when invited “to current school-wide on a related matter, comparable to gang recruitment, cyber/social media on-line security and exploitation” or to help households by offering sources.
Within the occasion the province rejects each plans, the board asks it to approve Plan C, the plan authored by the particular advisor and the district.
This plan would additionally see police working with a trauma-informed lens deployed to varsities in non-emergency conditions.
Nonetheless, in its memorandum, the district argued the advisor’s plan was “problematic in numerous respects,” together with that it was “much less detailed” than the district’s personal November plan, failed to incorporate enter from academic companions, and didn’t meet a number of the necessities of the ministry’s personal order.
The district additionally pushed again on the province’s claims of an absence of coordination with police and of accelerating gang exercise in faculties, saying “no empirical knowledge was cited or offered to assist” the assertion.
In a press release, Beare mentioned she had obtained the trio of security plans and the ministry was “working by reviewing them.”
“My precedence continues to be scholar security, and I’ll have extra to share when our opinions are full,” Beare wrote.
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