7 years after Jordan Manners’s death, what has TDSB changed?

When Jordan Manners, 15, was shot in the halls of C.W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute in 2007, his death sent a community reeling and a school board looking for answers for how to protect its students.

In the wake of the murder, the first ever at a TDSB school, the board implemented a series of changes stemming from a lengthy review and report lead by human rights lawyer Julian Falconer.

The School Community Safety Advisory Panel, a four-volume behemoth of a report, was released in January 2008.

It included 126 recommendations, including locker searches, more counselling staff, and gun-sniffing dogs.

On Tuesday, a second TDSB student was killed at school: Hamid Aminzada, 19.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday in the wake of the murder, TDSB Director of Education Donna Quan said changes had been implemented since Manners’s death.

All TDSB schools now have security cameras and numbered doors to coordinate more easily in emergencies.

There are also “safe schools committees” set-up in each school. Quan stressed it is these committees that must be on the forefront of tackling violence in the schools by encouraging students to confide in school officials and fostering strong relationships across the school community.

Many schools — including North Albion Collegiate Institute, where Aminzada was killed — have armed, uniformed police officers stationed as school resource officers.

North Albion usually has two officers but a third was added Wednesday indefinitely.

The school resource officer program was launched in 2008, but the school board avoids the association with Manners’s murder.

Board Superintendent Anne Seymour said at the time the program was implemented that the killing of Manners wasn’t what sparked the idea of having officers patrolling the halls.

“The pilot project actually came out of Chief [Bill] Blair’s experience in Regent Park, that had to do with building positive relationships with youth in the community through having an interaction with the police officers in the school and the positive effect of that,” she said.

Click here to read Falconer’s full report on school safety.

With files from Toronto staff

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