Toronto District School Board’s Trustees have voted in unison to erase discretional suspensions from the Ontario Student Record and Caring and Safe Schools Database of students that were suspended from Kindergarten to Grade 3.
In the course of their Regular Board meeting, theTrustees also ordered staff to spot systemic work that can be carried out in a bid to continue the Board’s commitment to tackling and stalling bias and discrimination that may put some groups of students at a disadvantage on the basis of student discipline records in student Ontario Student Records which include establishing a retention scheme for the expiration of suspensions/expulsions on Ontario Student Records, initiating a reminder email to principals and to the TDSB Registrar for Student Discipline Hearings for all nearing appeal hearing recommendations by trustees concerning removal of suspensions from OSRs before positive behaviour, and a data-entry column on outcome of recommendations which encourage follow-through, clarity and data collection of appeal hearing recommendation outcomes.
Also, this systemic work would be reported in the Caring and Safe Schools Annual Report.
This decision is in line with the Government of Ontario’s announcement earlier this year that come September 2020, discretionary suspensions of students from Kindergarten to Grade 3 would no longer be allowed.
Grave offences would still be subject to compulsory suspensions for every grade level and these records would still be kept.
