A school board trustee in Winnipeg wants to grant teachers the authority to seize and search students’ cellphones, even if they are password-protected.
Trustee Mark Wasyliw put forth a motion calling for cellphone-specific wording to be added to the board’s search and seizure policy Monday night, at a meeting of the Winnipeg school division’s trustees. Wasyliw says the policy needs an update because it was written nearly two decades ago, before the advent of smartphones.
“We don’t have the policies to keep up with the technology,” Wasyliw told CTV Winnipeg, before the meeting. Wasyliw expects the trustees to work up a draft policy regarding cellphones in schools, with the aim of balancing privacy and security. It will then be put to the community for consultation.
Wasyliw says the policy is necessary because there may be times when a school official needs to search the contents of a students’ phone for safety reasons. Wasyliw says the current rules are not clear, but he can imagine scenarios in which such searches might be necessary.
“Right now anything can happen and there’s really no direction from the school division, so we need to fill that vacuum,” Wasyliw said. He adds that the policy should also address staffers’ personal cellphones, and include measures for sharing information with police.
The current school policy permits staff to search students’ lockers, because they are understood to belong to the school.
Several students told CTV Winnipeg they don’t like the idea of surrendering their phones and passwords to their teachers.
Privacy lawyer Vivian Rachlis also raised concerns about such a policy, saying that it might be tough to ensure that it conforms to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
“The state of the law today may have developed further a year from now,” she said. “We absolutely advise our clients, particularly our institutional clients, to tread very carefully in this area.”
Police in Canada are not permitted to search a password-protected phone without a warrant, but are allowed to conduct a cursory search of a phone after an arrest, provided the phone is not password-protected.
With files from CTV Winnipeg
