Pubdate: Fri, 20 Feb 2015
Source: Ottawa Citizen (CN ON)
Copyright: 2015 Postmedia Network Inc.
Contact: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/letters.html
Website: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/326
Page: C5

TRUST NOW BROKEN

Sending a child off to school is one of those seemingly innocuous,
everyday things that actually requires adherence to a profound social
contract. Parents put their trust in the government to provide safe,
clean infrastructure and implement smart, effective administrative
policies; they put their trust in school officials to adhere to those
policies and foster a strong learning environment; and they put their
trust in teachers to enlighten and protect their children for six to
eight hours per day.

That we give barely a thought to turning our kids over to adults we
barely know (or don't know at all) in this way speaks to the excellent
work that many of the aforementioned officials do on a regular basis.
For the very same reason, however, rare cases like the strip-searching
of a 15-year-old girl by school officials in Quebec last week are all
the more shocking.

The teenager, who'd apparently sent a text message to a friend that
joked about selling marijuana, told a Quebec newspaper that staffers
at Neufchatel High School in Quebec City ordered her to disrobe in
front of two female staffers so they could search her clothes for
drugs. The girl also said she was denied the opportunity to call her
mother before the search was carried out. The school board has since
called the case an "exceptional" one that is subject to internal review.

Although drug dealing on school property is a very serious matter -
parents also trust that schools will stay on top of that kind of thing
- - under no circumstances should staffers be allowed to order kids to
remove all of their clothing. Ever.

As if that wasn't bad enough, parents' trust was again broken, this
time by Quebec's Education Minister Yves Bolduc.

"It is permitted to do strip searches, on one condition: it must be
respectful," he said, adding there is a legal framework that allows
for the practice.

How any child can respectfully be ordered to get naked in front of
educators, with no external oversight whatsoever, is beyond us.

Officials may have genuinely believed that they were simply protecting
the institution and its students, but if they had legitimate reason to
believe that a teenager was dealing drugs on school property - which
would be a criminal matter - the simple solution would have been to
call the police.

The public furor following Bolduc's comments have suddenly convinced
the Quebec government that it needs to review the rules governing
strip searches at schools. If that review suggests any remedy short of
an outright ban on school strip searches, parents' trust will have
been broken yet again.
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MAP posted-by: Matt