While Chinook's Edge School Division officials have always prided themselves on ensuring that its students receive their educations in safe and caring schools, a newly-adopted division-wide procedure aimed at making all stakeholders aware of their respective duties and obligations is a good step forward.
Adopted this month, the new “Welcoming, Caring, Respectful, Safe and Inclusive School” procedure applies to students, staff, administration, and parents and guardians.
Its principal purpose is to promote safe and caring learning environments that “respect diversity, equity, human rights and fosters a sense of belonging among all members of the school community.
“It is an environment wherein everyone is accorded respect and dignity, and their safety and well-being are paramount considerations.”
The procedure outlines ways stakeholders can help address issues such as bullying, discrimination and intimidation.
Under the procedure, principals must, among other things, ensure that all staff members share responsibility for proactively creating and maintaining learning environments that “acknowledge and promote understanding, respect and the recognition of the diversity, equity and human rights of all students and families within the school community.”
Also under the procedure, students must “refrain from discriminating, intimidating and/or bullying behaviour by any means, directed toward others in the school building, on school board premises, or during any school or board sponsored or supported activity.”
For their part, teachers must, among other things, ”Create and maintain learning environments that are conducive to student learning wherein students feel physically, emotionally, intellectually and psychologically safe.”
Kurt Sacher, the superintendent of the 11,000-student Chinook's Edge division says the new procedure brings several former procedures together into an updated document.
“We are deeply committed as a school division to creating a safe environment for students, physically, emotionally and socially,” Sacher told this newspaper. “We had a number of different procedures, but we didn't feel that they were clear enough or cohesive enough.
“We wanted it to be really user-friendly (for anyone) who wants to know what we believe in and what do we value and what are the processes for creating a safe and caring environment.
“One of the other reasons for putting it together is there has been so much media attention around the notion of bullying and the misunderstandings about what bullying really is and the difference between that and social conflict.”
By putting the obligations and duties of students, teachers and staff down in writing through this new procedure, the school division is continuing the long-standing and worthwhile practice of making sure students here receive instruction in safe and caring learning environments.
