Ontario’s new Bill 33, what the province calls the Supporting Children and Students Act, gives Education Minister Paul Calandra sweeping authority to take over boards. It also mandates boards to work with local police to implement school resource officer programs where they are available and opens the door to removing school board trustees entirely.

When Ontario passed Bill 33 last week, the government framed it as a necessary intervention to “put school boards back on track” and strengthen “our ability to keep our schools safe” and “students’ ability to succeed.”

Earlier this year, the education minister took over over five school boards using earlier versions of these powers, citing financial mismanagement. He’s now signalled more boards are in his sights under Bill 33.

Read more: Attacks on school boards threaten local democracy

As an education scholar, educator and parent with children in Ontario’s public schools, I am alarmed by the repercussions this bill will have on student safety and the future of equitable and democratic schooling in the province.

I am far from alone. Student trustees, advocacy groups and the NDP warn the bill will silence local voices and erode the democratic oversight that is central to public education.

Teacher unions criticize this legislation and the steps taken towards it as an attempt to centralize control while avoiding the real issues: chronic underfunding, understaffed classrooms, deteriorating infrastructure, poor mental health supports and cuts to special education.

Policing won’t improve safety

Despite government claims, there is no evidence that policing in schools improves safety. In decades of international research, studies have consistently shown that policing in schools does not prevent violence. Instead, it contributes to the school-to-prison nexus, a continuum through which punitive school practices increase young people’s contact with police, courts and long-term criminalization.

In mandating police access to school premises and other school-police collaboration, Bill 33 names no exception even in boards where “school resource officer” programs were ended after sustained grassroots advocacy and community consultation.

Policies that mandate sanctioned surveillance, control, punishment, violence or contribute to the threat of incarceration to preserve state interests — “carceral” approaches — predict lower achievement, higher dropout rates and increased likelihood of later arrest.

Read more: For a fairer education system, get the police out of schools

A 2025 study on mass incarceration and schools makes a similar point: tackling the over-representation of racialized people in prisons must be integrated with systemic responses to providing equitable opportunities through schooling and community-based resources. When schools rely on policing, they don’t solve the roots of harm.

The expansion of policing in schools disproportionately affects Black, Indigenous and racialized students, students with disabilities, immigrant and lower-income youth and otherwise marginalized communities. These groups are significantly more likely to be suspended, expelled or referred to police even when accounting for the severity of behaviours.

Criminalization inside schools also intensifies racial disparities in society.

Mandated policing will deepen student mistrust

Police presence also changes how students respond to harm. I study violence in schools and in my own research on what I call “the snitch factor,” I find a hidden layer of harm shapes how young people decide whether to disclose violence. Many students avoid reporting because they expect escalation, retaliation or being labelled as the problem rather than helped.

Students see disclosures leading to discipline and punishment, not support. When schools adopt carceral responses, students learn that reporting can bring more risk than resolution.

Bill 33’s policing provisions risk amplifying these dynamics. When students believe that disclosure will trigger police involvement or harsh punishment, they often stay silent. This undermines safety, particularly for youth who already mistrust institutional responses.

Read more: To resolve youth violence, Canada must move beyond policing and prison

Local democracy is at stake

One of the most profound changes in Bill 33 is its weakening of local governance. Allowing the minister to appoint supervisors, it shifts power from elected trustees to political appointees who do not live in the communities they oversee.

Without trustees, communities lose a key mechanism for oversight, transparency and responsiveness. It also accelerates stakeholder concerns about increasing privatization and centralization in the education system, trends that have accompanied funding cuts and service erosion.

Policing Free Schools, which has led provincial advocacy to remove policing from schools, argues that Bill 33 is a top-down political intervention that ignores evidence. Their position is grounded in an international coalition and research showing that police presence increases harm.

Teacher unions have also warned that mandatory policing will worsen inequities and distract from the real issues of underfunding and staff shortages

Their voices are among concerned responses from communities across the province who understand what safety in schools requires.

An equitable path exists, backed by evidence

The research points toward effective, non-carceral approaches that improve safety and well-being in schools, including:

Notably, none of these are part of Bill 33.

Safety through well-funded education

Safety is not created through policing; it is created through trust, support and well-funded public education. Bill 33 threatens all three.

Across Ontario, communities are already organizing to challenge the harms the bill will produce and to push for evidence-based approaches that support students.

Bill 33 will reshape the landscape, but it has also strengthened the resolve of those committed to safe, well-funded and democratic schools.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Salsabel Almanssori, University of Windsor

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Salsabel Almanssori receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.