Simpson unveils violence-free school plan

After having consulted with staff, students, and parents since September, and facing one potential “crisis” in November, principal Ian Simpson revealed a plan for making Fort High safe to the public school board at Tuesday night’s regular meeting.
“Fort Frances High School has taken a pro-active stance towards creating a safe environment,” Simpson told trustees. “It’s been my goal to create a violence-free school plan for some time.”
While he noted the plan is “more of a framework” than anything else right now, it’s purpose is “to keep [high school administration] focused on school violence.”
The plan consists of three goals, including to effectively reduce the risk of violence at the high school, to create a safe school environment, and to manage responses to threats and incidences of violence.
Noting the approach involves nine strategies, some of which are already in place, Simpson stressed the most important aspect of the program is to “create a positive and nurturing school climate.”
“I think it’s paramount. If you want a safe school, you have to have a place where students are happy,” he reasoned.
Means to create this climate include developing staff-student relationships, improving student attachment to Fort High, activity days, a strong commitment to academic excellence, and maintaining a strong co-curricular program.
“Everything has run at Fort High this year and students are participating,” Simpson noted. “I’m not saying it’s the same as last year, because of the teachers’ situation, but kids are getting involved.”
Teachers Andrew Hallikas and Mark Kowalchuk, who were on hand for the meeting, agreed focusing on student and staff achievement as opposed to negative student activity also could be key to improving school spirit.
“Fort Frances High School seems to get a bad rap. But it has no more violence than any other school its size,” noted Hallikas. “And the violence is coming from a very small part of the student body.
“We have an excellent administration who have been doing a great job. And I’m happy to be a teacher there,” he added.
Kowalchuk, who has taught at Fort High for more than 30 years, mentioned times have changed but it doesn’t mean new methods won’t work.
“I think the way administration used to handle problems many years ago was very corporal, to say the least,” he said. “But now, we’re much more prone to talking things out.
“You have to understand that this is a big high school, with a great cross-section of people,” he continued. “And there’s bound to be somebody who might have family problems, who might come to school angry from something that happened at home.”
A second step is to develop and maintain a school code of behaviour, which will be reviewed annually and publicized well. “We have to make sure we have consequences severe enough to discourage violent accidents, threats, or acts,” said Simpson.
The third step is to further a violence prevention curricula, such as assemblies (of which there has been two so far this school year) and teacher advisory program sessions.
The fourth step is to establish conflict resolution programs, such as training selected teachers in mediation techniques, and a peer mediation program which should be in pace by the end of June.
The fifth strategy is to increase school-community programs, such as Crime Stoppers. Simpson noted he already sits on the Rainy River District Violence Prevention Team, and not only does the O.P.P. have a liaison office at the school, but they visit it every day to build a rapport with students.
Intervention strategies makes for the sixth step, which includes alternate education and TAG programs, as well as in-school suspension, which see grade nine and 10 students remain under supervision on school grounds if they misbehave.
The seventh step is to provide school staff with knowledge to provide a school-wide approach to preventing and dealing with school violence.
“Training staff is another area where we’re behind right now, for no other reason than teachers are super-saturated with work,” noted Simpson.
Site security, an issue since the school was opened in 1999 with its security cameras and dress code, will tighten up.
Besides greater enforcement of sign-in procedure for visitors, Simpson said administration will continue to be highly-visible and involved, and continue to keep close contact with each other and the main office via walkie-talkies and cell phones.
And as the ninth step, emergency and crisis action plans are in place, but will be reviewed yearly with staff, while current emergency evacuation and fire plans will be reviewed with the fire chief.