Students at least three Toronto high schools plan to walk out of class this Friday to demand the provincial government take action to protect students from teachers who engage in sexual abuse or misconduct.

The protest will happen days after the province changed the law to revoke the licences of teachers who grope or sexually touch their students, following a Star investigation into abusive teachers that had been transferred from school to school.

That change is long overdue, but not enough, Harbord Collegiate Institute student Sara Escallon-Sotomayor, 16, told the Star on Wednesday.

“There are still some things that are lacking in legislation that we think are necessary to make schools a safer environment,” she said.

Escallon-Sotomayor was among a group of students from Harbord who mobilized around a homegrown movement called Not Just Rumours, after a Star investigation probed the case of a Harbord teacher alleged to have engaged in “sexualized behaviour” for years.

And she and her fellow students know precisely what they’re asking for.

The students launched an online petition a month ago asking for reforms to the Protecting Students Act and citing previous investigative work by the Star. It’s garnered more than 17,000 signatures to date. They also wrote a letter to Ontario Education Minister Indira Naidoo-Harris, asking for four specific steps to be taken.

They asked that Ontario College of Teachers be required to develop policies for training its members and others, “to recognize and address signs of professional misconduct, and familiarizing these individuals with the disciplinary processes that follow reporting.”

As well, the students asked Naidoo-Harris to provide “new tools” for teachers, administrators and students to determine when suspicions of misconduct should be reported; develop “protections and supports for survivors of sexual abuse and their families”; and revoke teachers’ licenses in all cases where they’re found guilty of sexual misconduct or abuse.

The new amendments, which will automatically revoke teachers licences if they’re found guilty of groping or sexually touching students, received royal assent Wednesday.

Any other findings of sexual abuse that don’t result in revocation will now carry a mandatory suspension of the teacher’s licence. Sexual abuse, under the Ontario College of Teachers Act, is defined as sexual intercourse, physical sexual relations, touching of a sexual nature and behaviour or remarks of a sexual nature by a teacher towards a student.

The students are now pressing for more action on incidents of sexual misconduct — defined as inappropriate behaviour or remarks of a sexual nature by the teacher towards one or more students that doesn’t meet the standard of sexual abuse, but that a reasonable person would expect to cause distress to a student, be detrimental to their physical or mental well-being or create a negative school environment.

The new amendment specifies that students who were victimized by sexually abusive teachers will be eligible for new funding to access therapy and counselling, administered by the Ontario College of Teachers, the provincial oversight and licensing body.

But, Escallon-Sotomayor said, it’s unclear whether this funding will be available for victims of sexual misconduct.

She says the students would also like to see more concrete commitments from the government around providing their requested tools for navigating the reporting process.

“We think that’s a very important component of our movement, and we think that’s going to be a very important component to make sure schools are a safe environment and a secure learning environment, for all students, all the time,” Escallon-Sotomayor said.

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“We’d like a timeline by the legislative assembly to see when they’d make the other changes we asked of them,” she said. For that, they’ll continue their rallies on Friday.

“We think this is very important, because it unites communities around the issues, and it unites students around the organizations that affect us,” she said. “We welcome these changes, and we’re glad that some action is being taken, but we’d like to see more.”