The two private schools in the Okotoks area are taking an ‘if it’s not broke don’t fix it’ approach to its policies regarding sexual orientation and transgender students and staff at schools.
Strathcona-Tweedsmuir School and Edison School made little or no changes to their policies, which have been submitted to Alberta Education.
“We have submitted our documents and updated our mutual respect policy and our student code of conduct to reflect the requirements of the government and to ensure we are protecting all the safety of the kids in the school,” said Trevor Julian, STS assistant head of schools.
Alberta Education released Guidelines for Best Practices: Creating Learning Environments that Respect Diverse Sexual Orientations, Gender Identities and Gender Expressions in mid January, as recommendations school boards could follow in establishing its policies.
A draft proposal of policies from all school boards in the province is to be submitted to Alberta Education by March 31.
Maintaining STS’s guiding principles was the driving force behind its draft.
“The school has certainly identified values such as safety, respect and integrity and all of these align really well with these diversity guidelines,” Julian said.
He said a committee will study the guidelines and determine how they will be used at the K-12 school about eight kilometres northwest of Okotoks.
“We don’t have an issue with them, we think they are great, it is just in terms of what is the best fit in terms of our school,” Julian said. “With regards to the washrooms, we will have a gender neutral washroom here pretty quickly, that’s not a difficult one to implement.
“If that helps a student feel safer, that is not a big deal.”
The guidelines recommend washrooms choices for students with “diverse sexual orientations, gender identities and gender expressions.”
Julian said that shouldn’t be an issue at STS.
“We haven’t had a transgender student that we are aware of,” he said. “For us, our concern is what if there are students who haven’t told us?
“We want to make sure we have a school environment that is safe for them. Having that washroom, that bathroom might help them feel safer, so we will do that.”
The Jim Prentice-led Progressive Conservative government legislated in 2015 schools must allow for gay-straight alliances if there is a request by a student. At present, there is not a GSA at STS.
“We have never had a student come forward to request one, but if we ever had a student come forward, we would establish one,” Julian said. “We would have done so prior to the legislation as well.”
He said the school has held Diversity Week in which LGBQT, cultural and religious concerns are discussed.
“With students that have come out in the past, we have offered to create a GSA for them,” he said. “They said they felt the school was safe without it.”
At present, all of the high schools in the Foothills School Division have GSAs.
Edison head mistress Beth Chernoff said the school just north of Okotoks has made no changes to its policies.
“We made zero changes,” she said.
“We have two staff washrooms on site, so if somebody asked us to use a washroom that they were not a sex of, we would send them to one of those washrooms.”
Edison School, which has an enrolment of less than 100 high school students, has not had a request for GSAs in the past.
“As far as anyone asking if they wanted a club (GSA), go for it,” she said. “We will provide them with the space.”
The Foothills School Division has made a draft of its policies and is now assessing public input before submitting it to the Province.
The public school system’s draft and questionnaire for the public can be seen at its web site at www.fsd38.ab.ca
Christ the Redeemer Catholic Schools in currently working on its policies for the March 31 deadline.
To see the Alberta Education guidelines go to education.alberta.ca and scroll down the news link on the right side of the page.
