In February, the Ontario government passed Bill 157: Keeping Our Kids Safe at School Act. There’s a lot of information contained within the bill (which you can learn more about here) but here are the major pieces:

• It is now mandatory for  teachers, school staff, and administration (principles and vice-principles) to intervene in all forms of bullying, including homophobic and transphobic bullying (you can find out more about what we mean by those terms in our “Homophobic and Transphobic Bullying” section of the blog). That means if you hear homophobic/transphobic language, or are being bullied phyiscally or verbally, and you tell a teacher, administrator or someone else who works at your school, they must take action.
• If a teacher, administrator or member of the school staff sees or hears homophobic/transphobic bullying, they must intervene. The staff member that witnesses the incident has a few options of how to handle the situation. Their intervention may be telling the person who’s committing the bullying action that their behavior is inappropriate, explaining why and requiring further learning on the part of the person. In other cases, where physical violence is occuring, more serious disciplinary measures may be taken.
• In all cases, they MUST intervene (unless their safety is at risk) and they must make the principle of your school aware of the incident as soon as possible.
• All schools are also responsible for making sure all of their staff is trained in how to intervene in cases of homophobia, transphobia, gender based violence, and sexual harassment. Many of your teachers have gotten this training in the past few months.
• This legislation applies to all elementary and secondary schools in Ontario (Public and Catholic).

It’s important that you, as students, know about this new legislation so you can know what tools you have to make your school safer- so check out the following links (these are intended for teachers, but they contain useful information) and spread the word!

Information from ETFO (Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario)

Information from OSSTF (Ontario Secondary School Teacher’s Federation)