Safe Schools

I just saw on the website for the National Post that the Toronto school board has released a report which paints a bleak and depressing picture of safety in Toronto area schools.

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/toronto/archive/2008/01/10/
report-paints-bleak-picture-of-toronto-school-safety.aspx

When I was a child I went to schools which were safe and it never occurred to me that not all children might have this same experience. To me it is fundamental to learning that children need to be safe and secure while at school. According to the report, at one school 12% of students have been threatened with guns or shot at while on the school's property. This is absolutely unacceptable and needs to change.

In order to create a safe learning environment for students, the schools need to make sure that anyone who would threaten this principle is not allowed into the school or onto any of its property. There is no place whatsoever for weapons at a school and the school and its board must be firmly committed to ensuring this stops. More of an emphasis must be put on security in order to stop problems like this. Guns, knives, and other weapons must be searched for and discovered before they are brought onto school property. If students/visitors know that their weapons will be found, they will be less likely to bring them to school and commit crimes. And any weapon confiscated cannot be used to harm another student or a teacher.

Some people might say that policing and searching students will appear harmful to freedoms and individual privacy.. However, when children's lives are at risk, we must do the utmost we can to ensure that their schools are safe and violence free. Offenders must be punished and expelled from the schools. Anyone who would harm another individual at a school does not deserve the right to go there!