When people say “school safety,” they might think of lockdown drills and visitor sign-in sheets. I’m glad we have those systems, but they only cover one kind of risk. One that’s important to me is whether a student feels safe in their everyday interactions from using the washroom between classes to being excluded or harassed by peers.
It’s also not only about what happens between students. When an educator or support worker is threatened or assaulted at school, the kids in that classroom feel it too, even when they aren’t directly involved.
The data suggests we’re losing ground in these areas of safety and wellbeing and it’s one of the reasons I have highlighted it as a priority in our schools.
The trend is heading in the wrong direction
Every five years, the McCreary Centre Society surveys tens of thousands of BC students in Grades 7 to 12 through the BC Adolescent Health Survey. It’s the largest, longest-running study of youth health we have in this province, and the most recent results, released in 2024 from data collected in 2023, don’t paint a positive picture.
The share of BC students who said they felt safe at school dropped from 78% in 2013 to 63% in 2023 over 10 years. Feeling safe in school washrooms fell from 86% to 68% in just five years. Changing rooms went from 85% to 72%. Even hallways and cafeterias, the spaces that used to feel routine, saw declines.
The same survey found physical sexual harassment reported by 25% of students in the past year, up from 18% a decade earlier and 22% in 2018, and cyberbullying continuing its slow climb to 15%. This survey isn’t specific to SD43, but it’s the closest thing we have to a consistent measure of what students are experiencing day-to-day. You can read the full results from McCreary Centre Society here.
The people working in our schools are seeing it too
According to WorkSafeBC data reported by CBC News, education is the second-highest sector in BC for workplace violence claims, behind only health care and social services. Between 2013 and 2022 there were 2,638 claims from the education sector, and both the claim count and the injury rate in K-12 schools have climbed steadily over the years WorkSafeBC has tracked it.
I don’t think you can separate these incidents from student experience. When teachers and education assistants are managing escalating situations without the supports or training they need, students feel that instability.
What the district is doing about it
To SD43’s credit, the incoming strategic plan, Directions 2030, directly names safety instead of just folding it into language about wellbeing. The SD43 strategic plan commits to embedding social-emotional learning and restorative practices into school culture. This includes expanding calm rooms and mindfulness spaces, training staff in de-escalation, and scaling prevention programs across all schools rather than leaving it to individual schools to address.
Those are the right commitments. But the board needs to ensure these commitments are followed through by focusing on what’s working, protecting funding during budget cycles, and treating this data with the same seriousness we give literacy scores or graduation rates.
Why this is a priority for me
The more I consider the provincial numbers and from what I am hearing from SD43 families and staff, the more I see that this is a pervasive issue that needs attention. A student who doesn’t feel safe in their learning environment can’t successfully learn or participate, no matter how good a program is.
As school trustee I will consider this data and the real stories of families and educators and advocate for appropriate funding to make sure this issue is moving in the right direction. Everyone in our school community deserves to feel safe and supported so students can thrive.