At a Board Meeting on April 29, 2025, the Board of Trustees approved revisions to our Privacy Policy.

All Ontario public institutions, including our school district, are legally obligated to have a privacy and access to information policy. This policy supports creating a workplace culture that respects privacy, has accountability mechanisms for privacy breaches and ensures high standards to protect student health information.

Revised Policy

The most significant change to the policy relates to the collection, use and disclosure of student health information.

The revisions clarified that records created by health care practitioners employed by the District (such as social workers, psychologists and speech language pathologists) are under the custody and control of the District, rather than the individual practitioners. This is intended to clarify that the District holds the role of Health Information Custodian (HIC) for these records.

Why is this important?

• By clarifying that the OCDSB is the custodian of student health records, we will ensure that these records are managed consistently, even when the staff who provided the health care services are no longer employed by the District.
• As the Health Information Custodian, the OCDSB will follow obligations outlined in the province's Personal Health Information Protection Act (PHIPA).
• Access to the records will be based on the provisions of PHIPA, rather than those outlined in the Municipal Freedom Of Information And Protection Of Privacy Act (MFIPPA). This change affirms that students under the age of 16 who have the capacity to do so have the right to withhold consent for the disclosure of their health records to parents or guardians.

Staff presented Report No. 25-011 to the Policy Review Committee on April 10 and to the Board of Trustees on April 29, where they discussed the draft policy.

You can view the approved policy at the following link:

Consultation

We held an online consultation on Engage OCDSB from December 16, 2024 and January 31, 2025 and invited families, students, staff and community members to share their feedback. We also gathered feedback from trustees and committee members during the meetings where the policies were discussed. This feedback helped to inform the revisions to the policy. We would like to thank all who participated in the consultation process.