| Ontario School Council Network |
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| Police Checks of Parent Volunteers |
| Topics of Requested Assistance |
| "Hi all: How are police checks for volunteers handled in your board? Our board is proposing a revised policy which would require all volunteers (that includes a parent who goes on one field trip in the year, or who goes in one time to hand out pizza lunches, also high school Council members who never have any contact with students and don't handle money) to have a police check every single year at their own time and expense. This would mean an annual police check for all volunteers and would remove any discretion the principal had. It would also be a more detailed kind of police check called a vulnerable sector search which looks for not only convictions but charges pending, charges dropped and pardons with respect to crimes against the vulnerable sector (children, seniors and the disabled). The cost and initiative to get the check would be borne by the volunteer. My concern is that this may eliminate a lot of potential secondary School Council members. Most of these people never have any contact with students, and are never in the school when students are there (except on parent nights when they are there as a parent). It's hard enough to get people to serve on high school council. We can get parents out to meetings but most don't want to be "on" Council as it is. If we add this unnecessary bureaucratic step, it may discourage even more people. Having said all that, I have to disclose that my views are in the minority. I was surprised, shocked really, at the level of support for this among parents when it was presented at our recent regional meeting. I expected an uproar, but instead, there were a few questions then a long series of expressions of support. I think that people genuinely believe that this will protect kids. I don't buy that for a minute. I think that adequate supervision at lunchtime (which we don't have right now) protects kids. Doing police checks of hundreds of mothers of young children every flippin' year is a waste of police officers' time. I have to say that I'm not aware that there is a big problem with mothers of young children (who constitute most school volunteers) molesting school children in schools, so I'm not sure what's driving this. I also find it highly ironic that our superintendents, who seem to think this is a grand idea, are very resistant to discussing the idea of creating standards for lunchtime supervision (since lunch is a time when most school fights, bullying incidents and injuries probably take place. I just wondered if anyone else had a policy like this in force or in the proposal stage? Any thoughts on this? Thanks." |
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| This page was created on February 28, 2004. |
| This page was updated on February 28, 2004. |
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| Response: Thames Valley DSB |
| "Thames Valley does not have any plans in the works of asking for all of our volunteers to have police checks done. Of course, all staff of the board have had to have these checks done. Also, mentors that are working in the schools but have been "placed" there by service clubs have had police checks done by the service club. I recently asked if there was any plans of having parent volunteers do these checks but was told no." |
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