Body confidence week being proposed for Winnipeg School Division

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This article was published 01/05/2017 (3110 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One in five Manitoba students has been bullied on the basis of appearance, and eight per cent believe they have been treated unfairly by their teachers.

Those data emerged from student surveys and back the urging of Winnipeg School Division trustee Lisa Naylor to hold a Body Confidence Awareness Week every October.

Her motion will be tabled this evening, and go before WSD trustees for debate and a vote May 15.

Naylor’s motion — emulating a special week to deal with unhealthy body image created by the Toronto District School Board — says that students bullied about their weight and appearance perform poorly in school and suffer eating disorders and self-harm at much higher rates.

The week’s activities would encourage respect for body diversity. Details are at winnipegsdca.civicweb.net.

In 2008, WSD trustees rejected a proposal from trustee Mike Babinsky that report cards include a student’s body mass index to indicate to parents if their children were overweight. Babinsky said at the time: “If our kids are fat now, what are they going to be like five years from now?”

Meanwhile, trustees will vote this evening on establishing a one-year term position for a program director and co-ordinator who would oversee a major expansion of the division’s international student program

International students pay considerably higher fees than the per-student costs for Manitoban students, along with the cost of boarding with families.

Last week, the division told Education Minister Ian Wishart that WSD schools are so overcrowded it needs a new high school and two new elementary schools immediately.

A proposal to start a swim-to-survive program for Grade 4 students next year at a cost of $63,000 is still being discussed with the city and province, trustees will learn tonight. Trustee Mark Wasyliw came up with the idea after several young people drowned last year, some of them new Canadians who had not had swimming lessons.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca