Schools Will Track Police Activity

Part of effort to eliminate racial profiling

Hannah Heineman
Mirror staff writer

   The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District’s Board of Education took one concrete step and discussed others last Thursday, August 8, in response to allegations made by the advocacy group Mothers For Justice that some school administrators routinely engage in racial profiling and discipline Latino and African American youths more harshly than Anglo students.
   The board approved a new Police On Campus Reporting Form, which was developed by Superintendent John Deasy and other School District officials based upon input from the District’s recently-created Race and Discipline Task Force.
   Deasy told the Board that he “learned from the task force that we don’t have all the information concerning discipline in District schools and that this form will assist us in obtaining that needed information.”
   Use of the form will begin when school opens in September. According to the School District staff report, “each time that representatives of law enforcement, either police or sheriff, are summoned to a school campus or arrive in the course of their official duties, the principal will ensure that the Police on Campus Reporting Form is completed and faxed to the Director of Pupil Services within twenty-four hours.”
   The form asks administrators to describe how students were questioned by police, who was present, whether a student was read his rights before questioning and whether the student’s parents were called beforehand. Mothers For Justice alleged that school administrators and police were violating students’ rights before and during questioning by police.
   The form also requires documentation of police and administrative actions in disciplining students and details of administrators’ attempts to contact parents when police intervention is deemed necessary.
   Deasy said that the form is intended to track patterns of police activity within the District just as the District tracks who graduates, and “just like we report non-graduates, just like we report test scores.”
   Deasy also described several other steps the District will take to avoid racial profiling in District disciplinary actions. An extensive professional development program, which will begin when school opens, is being developed with the help of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and other community resources. Its purpose is to raise awareness of “bias, behavior, discipline and consequences in schools.” Specifically, it will examine the role bias plays in the “the perception of behavior, investigations and reporting” of incidents and in other areas.
   Before school opens, there will also be “non-optional” training for all campus security personnel, which was designed with the help of the Los Angeles County Department of Education.
   Finally, Deasy said, “the District has begun and is committed to reviewing the behavior [of District employees] that emerged out of some of the initial testimony [of the Mothers For Justice at the June 27 Board meeting]…we can learn as a result of that so we don’t repeat mistakes if mistakes were made.” The district will also look for patterns in existing data on incidents the group described.
   “If we discover that things were mishandled, we are absolutely committed to correct anything, i.e. a record for example or a documentation,” Deasy said.
   Several members of Mother For Justice complimented the Superintendent and the District for acting on their allegations. However, Terri Archuletta reminded them “this is only the beginning. In order to make lasting change, the culture of punishment that exists in our schools must change. The schools and administrators must make the commitment to uphold equal rights for all students. Our children cannot learn in schools if they are a gateway to prison.”
   In other business, the Board once again reordered the permit priority list for students who want to attend a school other than their home school in the District, or non-resident students who want to attend school here. They also revised the Board policy regarding siblings of those students who have intradistrict permits. Now, when a family receives an intradistrict permit for one child, the receiving school will be seen as the home school for all the children in the family.
   The new priority order for intradistrict permit issuance, if space is available is:
   1) Intradistrict permits allowing children who are residents of the cities of Santa Monica and/or Malibu to attend a school other than their neighborhood school.
   2) Interdistrict permits for children of employees of the District who work at least 15 hours per week.
   3) Interdistrict permits for children entering Kindergarten or grades 1, 6 or 9 who currently have siblings attending the District on an interdistrict permit. (Siblings of those who graduated in the last 3 years are also eligible).
  4) Interdistrict permits for children of employees of the Cities of Malibu and Santa Monica.