Mandatory background checks could deter TDSB parents from volunteering: trustee

Watch video above: TDSB proposes mandatory background checks for all volunteers. Cindy Pom reports. 

TORONTO – You may soon need a criminal background check to take your kid’s class to the zoo.

Some parents and trustees at the Toronto District School Board are concerned a proposal to require background checks for all volunteers could lead to less parent participation in schools.

The proposed rule is among the dozens of recommendations from the Jeffrey Baldwin inquest and suggests all volunteers at a TDSB school be required to provide a criminal background check.  Baldwin was a five-year-old boy who was starved to death by his grandparents.

If the proposal passes, it would require every volunteer to get a background check once every four years and update it annually.

Right now, only frequent volunteers are required to provide a check. If a parent is just volunteering the one-time, no check is needed.

Anna Ojansivu moved to Canada from Finland two years ago. She volunteers in the office of her son’s school and occasionally goes on class trips.

She says she can understand the reason behind the proposal but thinks it may deter some parents from volunteering.

“If there are these all of a sudden volunteering jobs and you have to go in a short notice and you don’t have that record and it’s hard to obtain so that would make it more difficult,” she said.

Checks with the Toronto Police can sometimes take up to 12 weeks to complete.

WATCH: Toronto’s top cop says he needs more cash to deal with the backlog of police background checks

Trustees are scheduled to vote on changes to the Dealing with Abuse of Students policy at a meeting Wednesday. Some trustees are hoping the proposed volunteering change can be removed and deferred to committee for further study.

“You don’t want to have the policy so stringent that it dissuades parents from volunteering because parental engagement is the number one factor for kids’ academic success and well-being,” trustee Sheller Laskin said. “What we have to do is make sure there’s clarity. If there’s a one-off, is that a different category? If it’s under teacher supervision, is that a different category? If a volunteer is alone with a child or a group of children is that a different category?”

Laskin said if the person is just volunteering once and is under a teacher’s supervision of a teacher, he or she shouldn’t need a criminal background check. She hopes trustees will vote to defer the issue to committee.

Trustee Chris Glover was also worried the policy could make volunteering too cumbersome for some parents, and create a huge burden on the system. He noted that there is approximately 250,000 students in the TDSB and the possibility of some 500,000 parents. That’s a huge number of background checks if they all volunteer.

Instead, he suggested the TDSB partner with the Toronto Police Service to alleviate the time and money needed to get a check.

“I think we need to work out something with the police so that we can do these checks without it taking six months, without it costing $15,” he said.

– With files from Cindy Pom