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BRAMPTON, Ont. — A 16-year-old boy was stabbed inside a Toronto-area high school Tuesday, just days after the release of a report suggesting violence and sexual assaults in Toronto schools are happening in staggering numbers.
The victim wasn't a student at Chinguacousy Secondary School in Brampton, Ont., but another 16-year-old boy arrested hours later does attend the school, Peel Regional police said.
Constable J.P. Valade said the victim was stabbed four times in the neck and side before 10 a.m. and was taken to hospital with non-life-threatening, but serious, injuries.
The school was locked down as police searched the area, but that was lifted at noon and classes continued as scheduled.
Last Thursday, a panel formed in the wake of the May 2006 shooting death of Jordan Manners, 15, inside his Toronto high school released a report on school safety urging fresh thinking on how to best protect students.
The 1,000-page report, which uncovered an alarming number of unreported incidents of violence and sexual harassment at specific schools in Toronto, recommended using dogs to sniff out guns hidden in school lockers.
It also called for closer monitoring of school front doors and ensuring all other doors remain locked from the outside, a provincial portfolio dedicated to monitoring school safety, an end to the zero-tolerance Safe Schools Act and policy measures to deal with gender-based violence and cyber-bullying.
In January 2006, the panel recorded 177 violent incidents in schools across the district, including some involving guns, robbery and sexual assault.
Brian Woodland, the director of communications for the Peel District School Board, said Chinguacousy Secondary School, as well as other schools in the district, are safe, with security cameras, Crimestoppers programs and locked doors.
“You never take safety for granted,” Mr. Woodland said.
“We continue to work at it, but this remains as it was yesterday and as it will be tomorrow: a safe place for students to come and learn and for staff to come and work.”
While some schools have experimented with lanyards or ID badges to identify who belongs in the school, Mr. Woodland said they prefer to focus on prevention.
“It certainly will lead us as a board, as it should, and as a school to say, 'Are there things that could have been done and should be done differently at this school and other schools?”'
Annie Kidder, with People for Education, said prevention and social programs are exactly where the focus should be. There shouldn't be a demand for metal detectors or ID badges any time there is a violent incident in a school, she said.
“Sometimes the knee-jerk response isn't the most helpful, the most long-lasting or the one that really results in systemic change,” she said.
“If we think about it just in isolation or just in the knee-jerk reaction way, our tendency has been to figure out more ways to lock up our schools, as if to isolate schools from the reality of the communities in which they exist.”
