The Kamloops Thompson School District says significant steps have been made to address seven recommendations from a task force that looked at sexual misconduct in the district.

Superintendent Alison Sidow says one of the biggest gaps they found was that administrators didn’t always know what to do when a student came forward with an allegation.

“It’s not that administration wasn’t able to investigate and come to some conclusion, but where we found that there were some gaps were around their ability to know how best to respond to the victim,” she said.

“What supports do the victim need? How were we caring for the victim? How we were immediately informing and communicating with parents? Those were areas where we felt there were some gaps and areas we could tighten up.”

The task force was created in March 2018 after two separate complaints from parents about unrelated sexual misconduct cases and Sidow says the next steps will be to ensure that SD73 staff are trained on how to respond to complaints of sexual misconduct.

“We’re also planning a social media campaign and an awareness building campaign that would invite parents into the conversation and provide them with additional information,” she said.

“Information about how to have these difficult conversations and how to create safety in the home so that your child feels comfortable to come forward to say, ‘There was an incident that made me feel really uncomfortable. I want to talk about it with you.'”

Sidow pointed out that their new procedures will be survivor-centric.

“In other words, it looks also at the victim and ensures that their needs are met as well as the needs of the perpetrator because of course we need to be administratively fair and we need to ensure that we are looking at the needs of all. But it does attend also and more specifically to the needs of the survivor of the incident.”

She added an online reporting tool has been rolled out where students can report incidents as well.

The recommendations in the superintendent task force’s report include:

• Recommendation 1: Define what constitutes Sexual Misconduct A definition for sexual misconduct has been completed and vetted by all partner groups and
  endorsed by the Advisory Committee.
• Recommendations 2 and 3: Revisit district policies and review response protocols.
• Recommendation 4: Create reporting tools and enhance communication.
• Recommendation 5: Develop a procedure to address sexual misconduct.
• Recommendation 6: Ensure better learning opportunities, starting at the elementary school level.
• Recommendation 7: Inform members of the district community on the procedures and processes that will be used when responding to an issue of sexual misconduct.

You can read the report that went before the School Board on April 29 here.