TORONTO — A culture of silence in which teachers failed to sound alarm bells about the dangerous environment at a troubled Toronto high school cost 15-year-old Jordan Manners his life, the slain boy's mother said Monday.
Lorraine Small made the comments as she responded to a report commissioned in the wake of the May shooting death of her son at C.W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute.
The 1,000-page report, among other things, cited a culture of silence in which students and staff fear to come forward — leading to unreported incidents.
At a news conference, Ms. Small said that finding stood out for her among the report's 126 recommendations to address school safety.
“I sent my son to a school were I thought it would be a better school for him,” said Ms. Small. “He was a gifted child.
“Teachers saw things and they kept silent, and for that my son lost his life.”
Gerry Connelly, director of education at the Toronto District School board, told Small, “there will be change as a result of your son.”
“I have promised that in front of everyone here,” she said. “That is my commitment.”
Last week, the school's former principal and two vice-principals were charged with failing to report an alleged sexual assault on a student in a school washroom in October 2006 even though they were made aware of the incident.
Jordan Manners, a Grade 9 student, was shot and killed in a hallway at C.W. Jefferys, a school located near the Jane-Finch corridor, an area of Toronto noted for years for its high crime rate.
The School Community Safety Advisory Panel's report, released last week, uncovered an alarming number of unreported incidents of violence and sexual harassment at specific schools in Toronto.
The report recommends, among other things, using dogs to sniff out guns hidden in school lockers.
It also calls for closer monitoring of school front doors and ensuring all other doors remain locked from the outside and an end to the zero-tolerance Safe Schools Act and policy measures to deal with gender-based violence and cyber-bullying.
The report concludes that many of the more than 250,000 students at Toronto public schools contend daily with a “culture of fear” that pervades many of the city's secondary-school institutions.
In January 2006, the panel recorded 177 violent incidents in schools across the district, including some involving guns, robbery and sexual assault.
