Safe Schools – It Starts with You!
When you are at school, we want you to feel safe, valued and respected. We also want to help you and your friends grow and prosper in a way that promotes your spirituality and faith.
Promoting a safe and respectful school environment starts with you! As a member of a Catholic school, it important that you live and act the way Jesus taught us. Respecting and caring about your parents, classmates and teachers is a good place to start. For many challenging situations, you will often hear your teachers or principals say, “What would Jesus do?” You can also extend your positive attitude out into the community – reaching out to those in need and promoting peace and social justice.
Safe Schools Projects
One of the ways that we work to provide you with a safe and respectful learning environment is by becoming involved with projects and programs that focus on preventing certain behaviours from happening in the first place. We look for ways to promote peace and respectfulness in our classrooms.
We are involved with programs like:
Programs like these help us maintain a positive learning experience for you. You may talk about issues like bullying and violence in the classroom or you may have an opportunity to work in the community on projects that promote peace and compassion. Whatever the case, projects that promote positive attitudes go a long way in helping to ensure that everyone is valued, respected and safe while they are at school.
Every day in our schools we see students showing compassion and consideration for others. Although most of our students show respect without having to be told about the rules for appropriate behaviour, our schools have developed procedures and guidelines that everyone should follow.
Code of Conduct
Our schools promote responsibility, respect, Catholic moral teachings, spirituality, civility and academic excellence in a safe learning and teaching environment. We recognize that conflict is a part of all human relationships and resolving conflict in a respectful way is important. And we also know it is critical to be proactive to ensure that our Catholic beliefs are preserved and promoted.
We encourage students to become familiar by looking at our Policy and Procedure section of our website under Learning Environment (Code of Conduct) for more details. You can also review procedures that have been put in place specifically for your school in your student agenda, handbook or website.
Suspension and Expulsion
Getting suspended or expelled from school is something that we take very seriously. The Ministry of Education has established guidelines that are followed when suspending or expelling a student. We understand that there are often unique circumstances and we take great care to use discretion and to make sound and fair decisions. Expulsions and suspensions can be either mandatory or discretionary. It is important for you to understand that we follow provincial guidelines when a school makes a decision about the consequences for certain actions or behaviours.
Please take a look at our Policy and Procedure section of our website under Learning Environment (Student Discipline) for more details.
Appropriate Dress
Our appropriate dress procedures reflect our commitment to promoting and nurturing safe, positive and respectful learning environments. We worked closely with parents and students to develop our appropriate dress guidelines and followed recent legislative, regulatory and policy initiatives introduced by the provincial government.
Students in each of our nine high schools are required to wear uniforms. Please visit the Dress for Success section of this web site for more information.
You should check with your school to learn what you can appropriately wear to school and we also encourage you to learn more about our Policy and Procedure section under Learning Environment (Appropriate Dress Policy for Students) .
Police School Protocol
We have worked together with the various local police services of our school communities to develop a protocol to deal with school related incidents. The focus of the protocol is to promote and maintain a safe environment for you, your peers and staff and to demonstrate a commitment to collaboration, cooperation, effective communication and partnership – in particular with police services.
Any questions or comments about promoting safe schools, should be directed to your teacher or principal.