School issues are everywhere in the 2011 election campaign in delta

I talk to a wide variety of Delta residents every day - from students to young parents to senior citizens.  It has surprised me how often the treatment of kids in schools comes up.  The topic may be bullying, homophobia, racial slurs, special needs students or sex offenders.  There are more, but they generally come under the heading of student safety.  A particularly shocking incident (not in Delta) was when two grade two students held the head of another student in a toilet while a fourth student stood guard to see if anyone was coming.  These kinds of incidents are rare in Delta schools, but they DO occur.  School staff have to deal with minor incidents almost every day.  Fears around bullying cause some parents to choose private schools (at great personal expense) over their local public school.
I was asked if I would support a policy change specifically mentioning homophobia.  The Burnaby board of Education recently did this and drew great public discord as a result.  I haven't seen the Burnaby policy - in seven newspaper accounts, not one quoted the actual wording - but I get the general idea.  "Teach tolerance and acceptance and help students to understand that LGBTQ people are part of our community and are not to be feared."  A laudable goal.
Its true that slurs about homosexuality are a frequent and major component in bullying incidents.  Its also true that a disproportionate number of teen suicides have self identified as gay.  As trustees we need to be very concerned.  The purpose of the policy was also to give an overt message of acceptance to those students. But is writing a policy that singles out a certain group of people the most effective way to teach, "....acceptance....not to be feared."  What happened in Burnaby suggests the opposite.  It brought out crowds of irate parents who, if they didn't fear before, appear to be afraid of something now.  The demonstrating parents are not helping the LGBTQ students to feel accepted either. A media circus seldom brings us closer to understanding.
What we are doing is looking at our policies to make them give clearer and stronger guidance to our staff in the formation of procedures dealing with student safety.  It must apply to all forms of victimization whether the victim is gay, lesbian, overweight, Aboriginal, black, brown or disabled.  Some kids are victimized for no clear reason at all.  Its not OK and any student coming to school in a state of fear needs to know we're behind them all the way.  We teach our students to respect one another.  We will honour the differences between us and teach the kids how wonderful it is that we are not all the same. There are certain behaviours we will not tolerate.  We must have systems in place about HOW we will not tolerate certain behaviours.  We do handle incidents effectively, most of the time, but in this area there is always room for improvement.  As well, the code of silence must be broken and incidents have to be reported promptly.  When the adults are involved these kinds of incidents are usually cleared up quite quickly - but not always.  Our students reflect the society in which they live.  It is up to the parents and teachers to show them, by guidance and example, the best ways to respond.