Commentary
School board elections in Ontario, held Oct. 24, have been heated. Many candidates ran to replace trustees obsessed with critical race theory and radical gender ideology. Another issue, no less contentious, deserves closer scrutiny: police presence in schools.
The School Resource Officer program (SRO) was inspired by the 2008 shooting death of a student at a Toronto school. With student safety the (then) uncontested objective, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) placed police officers throughout their system. Since then, anti-racism—and anti-police—activism in the United States, spilling over into Canada, has complicated the matter.
Well before the May 25, 2020, killing of George Floyd, which propelled anti-police animus through the roof, Black Lives Matter allies in Canada had been protesting SRO programs. In 2017, the TDSB decided to suspend their SRO after activists claimed some 10 percent of students said they felt “watched” and intimidated by police presence….