The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Jonathon Naylor Editor Blaine Veitch is taking a wait-and-see approach to proposed provincial legislation that would require all serious student misconduct be reported to the school principal. The Flin Flon School Division superintendent welcomes the goal behind Bill 28 but wants to ensure it is implemented in a way that does not overburden principals. "If every little act [or] students making [inappropriate] comments has to be reported to the principal, we are going to have very busy principals, perhaps," he said. "So I would have to see how that works out in practice." Veitch said school divisions already address intolerable student behaviour. "I'm not sure that elevating it [to the principal] for every instance is really going to produce the result that we all want, which is schools to be safe and students interacting appropriately with each other," he added. Bill 28 would require all employees of a school division, and those in charge of students during a school-approved activity such as a field trip, report unacceptable student conduct to the principal as soon as possible. Unnacceptable conduct According to the province, unacceptable conduct includes physical, sexual, psychological, verbal and written abuse. It also includes repeated or deliberate bullying of a serious nature, including cyberbullying. After an investigation, if a principal believes that a student has been harmed as a result of such conduct, he or she would have to, as soon as reasonably possible, notify the student's parent or guardian. The proposed amendments to the Public Schools Act were introduced in the legislature last week by Education Minister Nancy Allan. "This builds on the great work being done at the grassroots level by parents, by teachers, by principals and by school divisions," she said in a press release. "This legislation is meant to support and complement those efforts and to ensure they are happening across the board." Naomi Kruse, executive director of the Manitoba Association of Parent Councils, applauded the move. "The parental voice is essential to addressing all matters relating to school safety and bullying including during the process of incident reporting," she said. Suspected cases of abuse will continue to be reported to Manitoba Child and Family Services and criminal activities will be reported to police as required by law.
