Principals from throughout Living Sky School Division were to get together today, Thursday, to talk about bullying.
Included on the agenda was a harassment protocol document developed by the Prairie Spirit School Division as a possible model for a policy for Living Sky.
Brian Quinn, superintendent of schools, curriculum and instruction told board of education members last week, "Right now what we have is a procedure that references either six or seven other procedures under student safety, student discipline, student climate, student handbook."
He said, "It's not so much that I don't think we're doing the right thing, we need it to be consistent, we need it to be seamless and people can find out what it is and understand it in plain language and know what to expect."
He sees the Prairie Spirit document has having promise, particularly as it uses the word "harassment" instead of "bullying."
"The word bullying is a loaded word and is often misunderstood, and what it is in my idea and what it is in yours may be different things," he said.
The Prairie Spirit protocol establishes three levels of severity in four kinds of abuse, physical, verbal, social and sexual. Action recommended to targets range from ignoring the harassment at the low end of severity to making a formal complaint in the most severe.
At the low end of severity, the accused aggressors are encouraged to reflect on their behaviour. At the highest level, disciplinary action could include suspension, transfer to another school, or expulsion.
Quinn said what he liked about the approach was that it meets the actions at the levels they occur and, by responding appropriately each time, it also builds capacity.
His comments were not met with approval by board member Richard Hiebert of North Battleford, a former principal, as is Quinn.
"I'm sure it will come as no surprise to you that we are ideologically polarized in this matter," said Hiebert. "I do not agree with this document."
He said he wants to see a discussion take place at another time.
"This is not the time to discuss it," said Hiebert, "but I would like to see a discussion, without prejudice, a free and open discussion at length in an out of camera situation, where everybody says exactly what they think."
Despite numerous agencies, websites and preventative programming, he said, "there are still going to be bullies, and it will be primarily the principal who's going to have to deal with it."
He said, "When it gets down to the bottom line, I'd like to know how this is going to work."
Quinn said, "I couldn't promise you that any measure we're going to adopt will eliminate bullying," to which Hiebert responded, "I think that's the best statement you've made so far."
Quinn countered with, "I can promise that if you don't do anything different, nothing will change."
At the meeting of principals, two other items were to be on the agenda, in addition to the Prairie Spirit protocol. One was to consider the 26 recommendations or actions laid out in the recently released provincial document on bullying. Although many are actions that have to be taken at a ministerial level, he suggested the principals would be considering two or three actions that could be undertaken over the next 16 to 18 months.
"We don't want to just sit back and say, 'let's wait to see what the province does.'"
The third item, said Quinn, was whether Living Sky should adopt one program as a minimum standard. Currently there are about a dozen different programs operating in the division's schools, he said, and more programs are coming out all the time.
"There's almost an anti-bullying industry, so what we need to consider as Living Sky, is there a minimum standard [where] we'd say all schools use this program as a baseline."
He added, however, that schools shouldn't be restricted and should be able to also use any other programs suitable to their schools.
