001[Music] believe we're only waiting for trusty Baker is that correct yes that's correct I'm checking in now thank you all right Mr sayam yes Dr [ __ ] if you would like to go ahead and play our recording you may do so oh um I'm sorry for the Spanish translation [Music] you for thank you very much um as well we also have a transcriber um that will be doing close caption uh good evening everyone and welcome I would like to call to order the South San Francisco Unified School District Board of Trustees special meeting board study session for this Thursday January 21st 2020 Corona virus uh disease covid-19 notice this meeting will be conducted pursuant to the provisions of the governor's executive order n3520 issued last March 21st 2020 allowing for the deviation of teleconference rules required
002by the brown Act and pursuant to the order of the health officer of San Matel County dated March 31st 2020 as this meeting is necessary so that the South San Francisco Unified School District can conduct necessary business and is permitted under the order as an essential government governmental function the Board of Trustees invites the community to participate in the meeting virtually this board meeting is being streamed live and recorded and you can view it by visiting our web page under uh slashonline board meeting um having said that can I have roll call please student trusty rangal Cruz I think she's still as an attendee she needs to be moved to a panelist yes please trusty Baker present trusty Luhan present trusty Murray here vice president Richardson here president Flores present thank you very much next
003item Mr s if I could please have the flag and I will lead us on the pledge Mr Sim is a busy men tonight thank you right hand over our heart and please pledge with me I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you very much next item moving forward is our our Communications public comments may be submitted in advance of this meeting through our website links they were available to be submitted beginning at 3 pm as of last Friday January 15th and until 3 pm uh today Thursday January 21st these comments have been read and received by the board members as well as our student trustees and they are now
004posted on the district's websites again slbo meetings um if you would like to read them or see them this meeting meeting like I mentioned earlier is being recorded individuals may address the board concerning School business not on the agenda but public comment cannot be acted upon or discussed by the board unless placed on the agenda at a at a subsequent meeting in accordance with the law the brown act the board May res May request staff to respond orally at the meeting or in writing at a future time um at this time I would like uh members of the public if if you would uh like to speak to please use the raised hand uh feature um at this time I'll give it a few seconds there all right uh Mr s please take it away
005good evening I'll be calling on speakers during public comment in random order to our attendees if you would like to speak pre please use a raise hand uh feature on the zoom meeting platform now attendees that have called in can dial Star n to raise their hand um president Flores could you remind me of the meeting U I'm sorry the speaking length please yes thank you so I will do three minutes right now there doesn't seem to be an exhaustive amount of members of the public and i' also like to remind those members of the public that have requested to specifically uh speak on an agenda item that is listed on our agenda you will have time later on when that agenda comes up that agenda item comes up to speak um so just wanted
006to highlight that in addition and one last um um point of uh information for everyone in this meeting and as well as our public this meeting tonight is a study session which means that there is no vote happening or action of a vote or a yes or a no vote happening is an informational meeting you have just a moment before you I want to ask you a question I'm sorry can someone please put themselves on mute if you are not on mute I was I was going to say that this is per the purpose of this meeting is for information and knowledge to the board and that is by Design what a study session is so there is again no vote being taken by this body uh tonight alrighty Mr San go ahead when you're
007ready thank you thank you president Flores Okay um first speaker is uh CTA president Mr Yano please go ahead me I'm I'm Russell sorry oh uh sorry about that please go ahead oh okay hi um so hello uh yeah my name is Russell I submitted a comment earlier but I just wanted add perspective that couldn't be shared through text so I'd like to vocalize it um i' like to first off say thank that the work that these students who are about to present uh I would like to say that they should be congratulated uh there's displaying how much they care about the policing and criminalization of students by police in our schools and it's something that I wish that I had the lens for when I was growing up here when I was um their
008age because my friends you know would always talk about their experiences in our circles about you know their experiences with the police but it would be like indirectly you know it's not something that can like easily be shared and especially with like I guess guy friend groups like it's not very easy to share anything personal but yeah going on I'm only four years removed from high school but I still remember the slos visiting Elco and how they passed me thinking nothing nothing of a skinny Asian kid with braces and then they'd go and stop a qu and question a group of lighten X guys just like hanging out in front of the school and that would be the same with some of the administrators too but it's a lot different when a cop does it
009that doesn't excuse when our vice presid principles go and tell the troubled kids quote unquote to disperse or when they're watching their every move when they're just hanging in an open space but when a cop armed or unarmed is questioning monitoring monitoring and policing our students on our campuses it's a different Power Dynamic cops are the thin SLA door to juvie and jail for a lot of people in our community they take people away they are not informal counselors a counselor is someone who's trained in children's psychology a cop is trained in assessing criminal psychology we do not need our schools to be a training ground for ssfpd can we please end the SLO program so no more kids have to feel like they're it feel unsafe in our school system i y my time
010thank you so much thank you very much Mr Lee um I believe uh Mr Danny Yano president Yano go ahead when you're ready okay can you hear me can you hear me hello yes we can hear you Mr great thank you um good evening president Flores superintendent Moore board members and cabinet I'm speaking tonight as a teacher a middle school teacher not as um Union president and um I think like most of us probably all of us uh I'm still emerging from the Afterglow of the beautiful events of yesterday when we had a peaceful transition of power and the Highlight was the poem read by Amanda Gorman a 22-year-old and the feeling I got listening to her watching her is the same feeling I get when I hear our students speaking at board meetings I
011am so proud of our students for being good citizens and taking responsibility for trying to change society for the better uh some of my former students have spoken and whether I'm in agreement with them or disagreement that's not the point the point is I'm very very proud of you all Samantha I hear you thank you very much thank you very much Mr Yano uh I will move forward with our next one um Miss Clara Davis hello hi we can hear you go ahead oh perfect hi yeah I'm um I'm also calling in um in support of the removal of the slos from campus um I believe that having police officers in schools um it only creates an atmosphere of fear on campuses um they often recreate the same racial profiling and harassment that um has
012been documented by police on the streets um I also think that the police ties um to ice um also um make um immigrant kids who are in classes and going to school become targets as well and it makes schools no longer safe spaces for them where they can just learn um they have to be um fearful of what that could be um with the police there um I think that the funding from the um SLO program should also be used instead for trained youth workers um again because they have degrees for um psychology of children and um they know how to help them um San Francisco and Oakland have both been successful in removing their um officers out of their schools and are um they can be resources to see how that can be implemented
013here in South San Francisco um I think that it's important that police officers are only used um as an on call duty um in the case of an emergency such as a fire um and um yes so I that is uh my position and um thank you thank you for listening and I yield my time thank you very much Miss Davis um our next public comment is from Miss Marcela Rivera go ahead Miss Rivera when you are ready hi I just want to reemphasize some of the other comments I'll start off by saying um end the slow program now there should be no more discussion around this students have come to you directly expressing their concerns needs and the data your attempt to collect data from the survey was sad and honestly embarrassing ing I'm
014not sure if anyone on the staff or the Consultants have taken a stats class but your sample was not representative of the student population and therefore your results are kind of trash cops don't belong in schools most schools most of the schools in our district don't even have a nurse so why don't we start with that if we're so concerned about emergencies and student health and safety most of us recently viewed the video of the white man have an interaction with several cops of the South City like police force and many of these or yeah many of these cops were former slows if they were aggressive with a grown white man imagine how they treat black brown and Asian students you're kidding yourself if you think students have a healthy relationship with the slows we
015don't and honestly we don't need to we don't need cops in schools we don't need cops as friends and I'm here to tell you that I've seen cops treat my fellow black brown Asian friends awful okay um as a Latin xmember Community member Someone who lived in Sal City my whole life I've seen how cops treat my Spanish-speaking par parents and how they stop us in the streets this is a trigger I didn't need in school while I'm trying to manage my AP classes my hormones my sports and relationships with my peers you think I need to go see a cop walking around with a gun you don't you understand how that could be triggering with that said your survey had about 400 parent responses ask yourself what kind of parents filled out this survey
016if it was not offered in Spanish to gag and Cantonese also there's so many like foreign parents okay that's not even like one grade of high school seniors like um the safest communities don't have cops they have resources get rid of the slows now this is a horrible decision I don't know why we're continuing this like so many districts have gotten rid of it you guys love to say black lives matter and throw MLK quotes at us but what about the MLK quotes that have him saying and police brutality this is a way we can do this and stop the trigger and the triggering environment that slos cause in our schools bye thank you Miss Rivera our next uh public comment is from Liliana Rivera go ahead Miss Rivera when you're ready um hi my
017name is Lana Rivera I'm calling in as a former student from ssf USD and I want to voice my strong support um for the students who are are asking for the school to terminate the slow program um I want to bring up that when the police chief was asked about this he mentioned that the program was started in the 80s and has never at any point been questioned or scrutinized from the board and I think it really shows um because every single point that they bring up is so easy to debunk debunk with a simple Google search none of the reasons that they bring up hang up uh uh stand up to any scrutiny or common sense whatsoever um and I saw some of the survey response is claiming that the program is good because
018it allows students to develop relationships with the police I think while this might be well intentioned it's based on a faulty assumption that there's an equal balance of power between police and students which is just simply not true when I was in high school I knew if I saw a cop on campus that person was not there to try to be my friend that person was there to arrest one of my peers or one of my friends another child but if we had to complain about how they acted who are we supposed to turn to they have all the power in that quote unquote relationship that they claim to want to build and also I just like to say that after I left South City and went to college at like a white private college
019all of these kids so much worse things when they were in high school and they never got the cops called on them they never got into legal trouble and they like had adults in their lives who believed in them and tried to get them back on the right path um whereas in South City like you just put kids in juvie or send them to Fox rdge where you can just hide them and not have to worry about it and pretend like they don't exist um so I think that the board has to do the right and stop criminalizing young working-class students of color uh especially like when they're literally children they're minors and I can definitely say that I knew so many people my age who would have flourished if they had been given a
020chance that so many white kids are given in this country or kids who come from more wealthy families um because they get the resources and you need to do right by these students listen to what they're asking you they have the data they're in the right the Cs have no good points sorry but it's true um you're I'm sorry and and I'm just really proud of all the students for organizing this and standing up for what's right um I hope you guys will do the right thing and listen to them thank you thank you Miss Rivera uh next public comment is from Miss Olga Perez uh go ahead Miss Perez when you are ready oh yes Mr Flores good evening president Flores and board members this is Sol it is um during a racial and
021Equity meeting there was a very promising presentation by Professor Rodriguez uh from San Francisco State University I was very much impressed and spoken support with the hope his recommendations would come to parition um which is certainly necessary and very possible I think with the collaboration from the district City and Community um I respectfully urge our district to work closely with with our city leaders to bring much needed Ser uh services and resources and a well-rounded support system for students um um you know it's in particular areas not excluding anyone but in particular areas that are predominantly lowincome that do not have the resources or the means to provide a well-rounded education you know from academic sports music and art for example um you know after speaking with mayor Diego he's very supportive of working with
022the district on bringing services to the community outside of school ground starting with mentorship I strongly believe it was absolutely necessary to have a support system with mentors and Social Services on both home and school grounds that complement each other as it as the say goes it takes a village to raise a child you know I have a very close relationship with my children and there's been numerous times where for example you know a coach would give them advice and then I they would come home and I would tell them didn't I just tell you that um so there was another time you know where a dear friend um passed away a former South San Francisco high school student and um my children were very much devast at and not even I could help you
023know um a doctor or School officier helped it was Marco our security guard um who I have personally seen form close relationship with students and he even provides you know counseling to these students so I think students really need someone that they can trust and find a mentor in so I strongly urge our district to work closely with mayor ad Diego and the council members to bring these services so that the issue of police on our school grounds will hopefully you know not be be a be a day in the past you know be an issue in the past um I strongly believe education with necessary resources and services are are the real key you know it's UNF unfathomable to me that we have risen to a point where police officers are necessary in school
024grounds where our educational system is based on teachers counselors admin administrators Etc even our security guard Marco you know police officers should not be in this pyramid of our education system I I strongly believe that you know that's the reason I think it is absolutely necessary necessary to include mental health and resources for those in need to avoid police presence in the first place also urge thoughtful and serious consideration be taken and restricting the role of police officers with all due respect to them uh for the sole purpose of safety so that their presence do not interfere with student learning and to also bring mental health services and resources to our schools I heard many instances where a child instantly becomes tearful and fearful and even if mistaken for the wrong person when called into
025um the offices administrative offices I know as a parent I'll be verys Miss Paris just please W wrap up your last sentence please okay we are moving on to the next public speaker uh K Miss Katrina CD go ahead when you are ready to speak hi good evening um I just want to I'm excited to hear the presentations tonight and what is going to be discussed but I also want to point out for every adult here we have youth who have done hard hard work to bring themselves to a board of adults well educated well qualified adults and they had to catch up to speed to get to this point so by no means this is not a fad these are serious issues of our youth I am an alumni of South City and the
026things they Echo I'm also working with the youth in our Lo in our city and the things they Echo are the things I've said and that I've I've graduated South City for more than a decade and it's still the same they need resources Decades of defunding brings us here now where we need to talk about police presence so that our kids can be served and just know every person on this board is a servant is a servant to the city and to these kids and you owe it to them I cannot good conscience say nothing that these kids had to dig deep and find courage to speak before every qualified well-educated adult here and there is a power indifference here that every adult here has power to listen and make changes for them they do
027not hold any political power but their voice and please do not be a gatekeeper for them and dig deep because you can look for all the data you want but we're not not talking about it's so much more than Equity it's about the quality of every single person that experiences life in South City and through the public school system for everybody not just for the majority the dialogue I've been hearing has been mostly well the majority we do not need we're not here to talk about the majority we're here to talk about the minority so I really hope that this meeting is really going to go somewhere and it's not going to be for show as I've seen in other meetings youth I'm listening the community is with you and thank you for doing this
028because it's going to serve Generations you guys are changing things for my kids and I thank you for that I'm done thank you uh Miss ktina CI our next uh public comment is from Miss Andrea Sims please go ahead when you're ready hi can you all hear me yes we can go ahead please awesome thank you so much um hi everyone my name is Andrea Sims um I first off just want to thank um Miss Katrina for speaking um I just want to say that your message was very loud and clear and um I just want to Echo everything that you just said and your words were very very powerful tonight so thank you for speaking and saying what you said said um I really want to just circle back too um I 100% agree
029with removing slows off campus and I hope that um later after hearing the students speak tonight that um to what Katrina said you all do your part in serving this community and remove slows off campus but also there's more due diligence that needs to be done in our community as well as with our students um a lot of people who are affected not only by slows but also just with living in South City and going to school in South City City we have a lot of students who are misrepresented misrepresented which is our El students we need to make sure that we are also representing them not only were you guys taking a survey that only 11% of students were misrepresented but at the same time you weren't reaching out to students who are also
030undocumented who are also minorities who also have parents who are working you know different hours and stuff like that and then not on top of it we are in a still a global Pand mic and you guys are not offering the resources to have District learning be available for them as well as you know ensuring that they are safe when they are back on campus providing providing the fact that your students could be also undocumented as well too and having cops on campus and you know I I get it you guys are trying to do what you can but at the same time we've been talking about this for months and you can't be upset at the community for coming at you guys for months and months when we presented data the students are the
031one doing the work right now to make sure that El students are represented in how many years I'm also a South San Francisco Alum myself and it's just really disappointing and frustrating that we've been demanding and giving you all the resources to put out there what can be done for South City and make our community better for our students and it's not being done so please listen to us make it happen actually take the data that's being presented to you and do something about it because we're tired of begging we're tired of crying we've seen it time and time again so please like for the love of God do something because your community is upset and it's tired of your guys' stuff right now so you know I really hope to Katrina's point you guys
032actually do something about this and make something happen and protect our students listen to the students and and make a better South City thank you thank you very much Miss Sims I would like to now announce uh we have reached 15 speakers uh so moving forward any other raised hands from this point on out um we will move to two minutes but I will call out Carmela daon or Dison apologies if I mispronounced George Carpenter and Eddie hman will be the last uh three that will do three minutes um um after Eddie Holman we will move to two minutes and I I also want to thank the members of the public that are taking their time to share and participate um this is an active participatory we welcome Community public and input but I also
033want to be respectful of our presenters um we have three uh very um uh lengthy at to some degree with information so I do want to ensure that we have time for our presentations so as I said Carmela daon George Carpenter Eddie Holman will get the three minutes uh Sarah funes will get two minutes and anyone else after that thank you um Carmela daon please uh go ahead when you are ready hi my name is Carmela dieson and I am an alumni of South San Francisco High School class of 2017 and I'm in support of the students and the community members here today who are asking for the removals of slos on our campuses speaking from experience and as a current student of occupational therapy this presence of police Campus of police on campus is
034harmful and is not beneficial to our children instead of funding and allowing officers to terrorize and criminalize our children we should be moving towards mental health initiatives and funding the clubs and activities that build a better connected Campus Community which is actually shown to prevent the type of um crimes that what ssfpd presented about um there is no sufficient data that promotes that cops on campus is a benefit for students and like I said there is a substantial amount of research that proves that what schools need are Mental Health Services as they are the real school resource that students want and need for the greater good of our schools we must listen to the students who are not only advocating for their individual selves but also for those who have been victimized by the school
035to prison pipeline system that the slos contribute to I urge the school board to listen to the students that you serve the students here today who are going to be presenting and who are watching and are giving public comments are doing this in their free time when I fully well know that there are um college applications or scholarships or AP classes or any even if they're not in a high uh honors class they have work to do but they're here today trying to fight for their right to a safe learning environment as a community we need to be preventative instead of reactive when it comes to these things when it's time to vote and take action be proactive in the betterment of our schools by by investing in the compassion and care of our students
036through Mental Health Services and interconnected communities and not the ssfpd thank you I yield my time thank you Miss Dyson um next speaker George Carpenter go ahead when you are ready please hi can you hear me yes we can go ahead okay well first off I want to say you know I'm very um moved by um what I've heard from everyone and um I don't want to take up too much of your time but um again my name is George Carpenter um I'm I'm a neighbor I'm in Pacifica and I'm a member of Pacifica Social Justice and um I'm calling basically to Echo what everyone's been saying and encourage um the South SF Unified School District to follow the same steps as Oakland and San Francisco and the removing of slos from schools um back
037to your survey it does not make any substantial effort to hear out the voices of students who only comprised of 11% of those questions in the study and you know study after study shows that the presence of police officers have negative impacts on students and they create a pipeline to the prison system um in Pacifica where I live slos they've tackled detained and arrested students in front of peers parents and teachers and it's obvious that these tactics they're humiliating and they create a culture of fear not safety in school so South SF Unified School District needs to invest in counselors in extracurriculars in teacher salaries these are the role models that are vital to Student Success and their efforts get completely undermined in the presence of armed government officials uh thank you and that's all
038I'd like to say thank you very much Mr Carpenter um Mr Eddie Holman go ahead Mr Holman when you are ready hi can you hear me okay yes we can go ahead okay thank you so my name is Eddie Holman um I'm going to of ala middle school and El Camino High School I'm here to call on support of our students who are advocating to remove police from our schools um I'm so proud of our high school students for doing this amazing work and advocacy uh to do something at that age that's so impactful for our community um is really an inspirational thing to do so you know thanks for all the work you guys are doing so first off we should never be criminalizing our children um the sole function of the police is
039to control and punish people in our society so why do we have them around our youth um even in I've heard elementary schools here in our community I just simply don't understand how someone with a gun um whose sole job is to punish and to criminalize um and has really had a history in our community of uh really terrorizing our community our our neighbors of color I don't understand why we wanted to have them in a school um they're enforcing a criminal justice system that punishes people for their mistakes and there's so much information data statistics out there um proving how our criminal justice system is feeding into uh systematic racism in the United States and it's just a horrible horrible thing to be enforcing on our youth and our students um our youth are
040developing uh when they're in school and until you're in your 20s your mind is developing so another reason that we shouldn't have uh a whole profession who's in charge of punishing and enforcing this criminal justice system I hear the police try to talk about how they want to be counselors or build relationships with people at our school this is a weird a terrible system to have for counseling we need actual counselors who are trained and dealing with students in their issues we need nurses in our schools and it's frankly it's a huge waste of public resources to have police in our schools I remember hearing how uh the school district and the police would say oh you know we don't pay anything it's free we we don't pay for the school as and officers um
041honestly that's really silly and I think you all know that we are paying for it it's all taxpayer dollars uh to say that school a on officers is free it's patently false we could be using those resources to uh Empower our Community uh for example Municipal internet to get all of our students connected for a learning environment that's completely online we could be funding after school programs to the parks and wreck department to provide supervision and resources empowerment for our youth things to do after school give them opportunities we could be providing tutoring for SATs or any of these other tests that only uh you know rich commun rich white communities have for their students um there's so much more we could be doing for our youth and instead we're punishing them thanks take the
042schools School Leo on it out thank you thank you very much Mr Holman um Mr s if we could reset to two minutes please and then we will unmute U Miss Sarah FES and she can speak when she's ready thank you hello can you all hear me yes you can go ahead please hi yes this is Sarah funes I wanted to speak tonight as a Disabled Student who's also left the next and Asian-American I didn't feel safe 10 years ago when I was in school at South San Francisco high school so to Echo what everyone else has said I don't believe that slos should be in schools I didn't feel that way I I I still feel that way even though I graduated over 10 years ago and I felt that way when I was
043there so I just asked that the school board really try and listen to all the people that are speaking and the current and former students alumni of our wonderful district and say that this change desperately does need to be made and with that money that would go to slos should be going to more counselors because I remember how difficult it was when I was a teenager and it's only gotten worse so I would love for that money to be reallocated to get more actual counselors in the schools thank you so much thank you very much Miss funes um next speaker the speaker U Miss Dolores Piper U Miss Piper go ahead when you are ready can you hear me thank you you must get tired of that question H I totally agree with all of
044our young people they are truly astounding and and in the work they've put in and the effort to keep bringing up this this subject over and over and over again uh the night before last on the news it caught my attention that Fremont has severed their relationship with slos on campus and it was mentioned in the newscast that the program is cost two and a half million dollars now I don't know where the money comes from to support these slos I know the district doesn't have to pay for them but that's a huge amount of money and Fremont's just another small community so wherever that money is coming from it surely should be put someplace where it can do some really real good uh our our students don't need warm fuzzy feelings with the cops
045uh and that is not created by these slos and they are not teachers they are not counselors even though the chief tries to make out that these are just such one F programs that they teach at school about safety and this and that that that's not needed uh our teachers can do that job very well I am fully fully uh in agreement with all of these students that have spoken tonight that we need them out of the schools this program has not been reviewed since 1980 that's atrocious absolutely atrocious that we haven't looked and reviewed that thank you thank you very much Miss Piper uh that concludes this first period of public comment uh we are now moving on to presentations thank you Mr s and thank you everyone that spoke and took the time
046out out of their evening to attend and is attending and watching tonight's board meeting if you could please put them on mute Mr s when you have a moment thank you our next item on our scheduled agenda is presentations under item 1A is Administration um the Coalition of Hope and action necessary for growth and empowerment also knows as CHF and members Samantha Aila Brenda Gonzalez Finley liette and Mela Calo will present information on the impact of school leas on officers on South San Francisco Unified School District campuses prior to have them take the mic I wanted to double check with our superintendent um if you had anything uh Dr Moore thank you president Flores I just I wanted to also Echo what you said and thank our community um for sharing and speaking out and
047I think we all have recognized that this past year we've seen a lot of civil unrest and frustration across our country and um our school board has taken a very intentional and methodical datadriven approach to better understand the concerns and the role of SRO on our campuses and the impact that it's had on our community um both our school board and our administration of course are committed to educational equity for our students as evidenced by the great discussions that we had last year really taking into account what our students had experienced through the pandemic the board policy discussion that was most recently discussed last week and the programs that we've adopted looking at alternatives to expulsions and suspensions for our kiddos that and that really helps us remain informed and focused on the needs of
048our students and what we need to to serve them well so the discussion that we are having tonight and it is a discussion as president Flor has mentioned is really no different we want to understand the issue in order to figure out better ways we can enhance our policies our practices our protocols across the district tonight specifically it relates to our relationship with South San Francisco uh police department and I am very pleased to have uh the opportunity to introduce some of our students or and former students I believe who will be presenting this evening and I want to thank them in advance for responding so quickly to the invitation and putting a presentation together and so with that I will turn it over to the group you may share your screen and and walk
049us through your presentation thank you very much for being here hello everyone um once again my name is Michaela CVO and I have been in the ssfusd district since I was in elementary school so K and I am currently a junior and I am 16 years old hi my name is Finley I am a junior at South Francisco high school and I've been in the district since elementary school hi my name is Samantha V Gomez I'm a junior at South San Francisco high school and I've been in the ssf USC District since first grade hi my name is Brenda Gonzalez I'm a junior at South City High School and this is my third year in South City Unified School District would you like us to screen share the presentation yes please that would be uh
050helpful thank you let us know if you have any Tech issues too we're here standing by to support you once again I would like to say good evening and thank you to the Board of Trustees but most of all an even bigger thank you to our community Educators and social workers and we all know what the reason we are here today is presenting on harmful effects on of cops in schools especially in in ssfusd on behalf of change ssf next slide please so we are presenting on behalf of change ssf but we are a coalition of parents teachers alumni community and students and we're here to ask you to do the right thing and first and foremost we want to start off by making it clear that there should not be any cops on our
051campus except in case of an emergency where their specific skill set is needed we believe that the removal of slos from ssfusd schools will end abuses on power on campus and thus create a safer learning environment for our students if ssfusd is about making a safe learning environment then we should move forward with breaking ties with ssfpd a common counterargument that comes up when proposing s the removal of slos is what about school shootings and what about the occasion of a shooter on campus but as it says here the cop that was an SRO officer for Parkland High School actually ran away from the school shooter and did not protect the students he was fired but then thanks to the union got his job back also under federal law it was ruled that slos have
052no constitutional duty to protect students in the case of a school shooting so if it were ever to happen the cops would have no reason to protect us secondly Texas University Research finds that cops and schools don't actually prevent school shootings so there's no reason to have slos in our schools instead of slos what the district should invest towards are Mental Health Services as shown the rate at which students commit suicide now compared to 10 years ago has increased by at least 50% the district only has half the number of counselors social workers and psychologists per 1,000 students than the state standard of 1.5 in essence the ratio of students to to mental health support in ssfusd is 1,000 to 0.75 we also need support for our undocumented families and more accessible sex education programs
053for students to be informed about abuses assaults and harassments among many other services as well as therapy and counseling for students who need healing and to enable them to grow so this is a graph provided by the city of South San Francisco and it's based on students experiences in our city the main thing to find is that not enough mental health support will lead to substance use disorder now ssfusd might bring up the grape program or the Dare program however these costly programs have no actual long-lasting impact not to mention that Sergeant James P portolan was was recently posted on a YouTube video escalating a situation assaulting and arresting a citizen for following their First Amendment right students also came out against Jason fukami who was also in the video saying that he had been
054violent to students in high school many people have told us how during their mental breakdowns ssfpd has assaulted and verbally abused them when they were teenagers in a time of need these are the cops that ssfpd is bringing into our schools they cannot handle mental health situations with teenagers if a student comes to a cop and says that they're suffering from drug abuse because of family problems or mental issues the cop would incriminate them and put them in jail because these cops are not training to treat substance use disorders so this student and all students at our schools are left with no real support and no environment where they can feel safe learn and grow um these stats are well known to y'all as well but these are provided by the city of South San
055Francisco and it's the suspension rates of the ssfusd students as we can see our Latin X students are suspended at higher rates and it's just reinforcing the school to prison pipeline but it's also not a coincidence that ssfpd spends more time at Martin Elementary Parkway Heights middle school and South San Francisco High School the schools with the highest Latin X populations in the ssfusd in ssfusd implementing SLO officers is strengthening the school to prison Pipeline and it's not a coincidence that they are creating harm to the brown populations in South City an old teacher also told us that ssfpd presented at South City High schol school on gang bangers in schools using pictures of grown Latino scary men and frightening stories that made teachers fear the Latino boys and also Justified seeing Brown children as
056gang bangers for the color of their skin if we care about our students in these schools we should Harbor Mental Health Resources and services that Target latinx and immigrant families living in South City kids don't need to be criminalized they need services and only 3% of cops training is dedicated towards learning confliction mediation meaning that cops are not suited to help deescalate situations they are more likely to increase tensions instead cops also use a law enforcement role in the school environment reinforcing racial and Clash inequalities from the streets into what should be safe learning spaces for students again if a student confides with an officer looking for help the cop is more likely to investigate and criminalize them than actually help furthermore the great program for resisting gangs is not proven to be effective in
057the long term and the program seems to assume that crime is a personal choice rather than a system of lack and resources a cop's presence and Hyper surveillance creates a fearful fearful environment in a space which feel safe and where learning is prioritized but how can students feel that their safety and education is prioritized when they are cops on campus with noou so what is anou anou is basically a contract that outlines rules however there is no established memorandum of understanding between slos on campus and the district this means that there are no guidelines for how officers should act on campus furthermore in the event of police brutality it is impossible for students to pursue legal actions and hold cops accountable because there are no rules cops are not trained to work with neurode Divergent
058individuals reflecting on the training that these cops are given which we stated in the previous slide they do not know how to deescalate situations with students with special needs and instead only add violence to the issue previously students with anxiety have often felt threatened during their interactions with officers and this would even worsen their mental health according to various studies crime is not solely the matter of choice it's the outcome of lack of opportunity poverty and High Cost of Living if a student confides in an officer that their family members are selling candy bars or t-shirts without a permit so that they can pay for rent or medicine for their grandparents how sure can we be that this officer will not pursue an arrest and what happens if the officer does make an arrest how
059will the district respond will the district be empathetic towards the students and their circumstances furthermore the money that goes toward funding slos can instead be invested in youth social programs that could partner with schools to work with students as stated in the last few slides students will ultimately not want to discuss their problems with cops because they don't want to incriminate themselves or a family member for example an undocumented student wouldn't want to tell a cop that they're undocumented and seek help because it's possible a cop would threaten them with deportation not to mention the programs ssfpd has for them to be has the programs that ssfpd has requires citizenship this shows that they do not plan on connecting with South City community and undocumented students as seen here ssfusd board passed resolution 1701 in
0602017 when the Trump Administration attacked daa it made it clear that they prioritized protecting undocumented families and this is not being shown if we have cops in our schools I want to make it clear that South San Francisco is not a sanctuary City and the San Mato County Sheriff takes money from why have slos that could harm undocumented students if the district pledges to protect them schools across the bay area have removed slos from their campuses such as in Oakland and San Mato and have moved to focus on violence prevention and resilience Alternatives have included integrating counselors social workers and restorative justice coordinators to school invol environments as well as covering conflict mediation skills and coping methods that will be highly beneficial to many of our students and community and these are our demands we
061want to end the SLO program in ssfusd schools write a binding document that limits police presence on campuses and only in emergencies the Board needs to urge city council to reinvest money in effective programs that can partner with the district to better serve students with properly trained staff furthermore this the survey that was sent out was ineffective again a special thank you to our community we feel that the district has filled us again as students in their Outreach and we can't let another decision be made without our input now we would like to open up for question thank you very much um Miss ABI Lis Gonzalez Miss leet and Miss calvo for your time and for putting uh this presentation together um I since we do have specific um folks speak speaking at the end
062of these presentations I um will um call on these folks uh members of the public that indicated in their submission form that they wanted to speak to the agenda item after all the presentations have been uh uh brought forth to the uh before the board um however I do want to open it up to my colleagues members of the board if anyone wants to weigh in with questions or comments uh in regards to this presentation Mr President yes Mr uh trusty Baker go ahead thank you first I'd like to thank change SF change ssf TR saying that five times fast and the Pres presenters um very Illuminating and uh definitely brings me thoughts that I hadn't occurred before seeing the uh review of the packet um I I I agree that some of the uh
063items that they brought up are are quite disturbing you know when someone from the organization asked me for a copy of the chain of the um mou with the police last summer I was very surprised when I asked to find one didn't exist you know they have pointed out some serious deficiencies in the program um you know I I'm I'm I'm seeing a lot of uh Alternatives that we could and need to introduce um we're going to talk about this more a little later but I again thank you to our presenters and I'm keeping that in mind as we go forward tonight thank you very much trusty Baker um anyone else from m colleagues and bear with me because there's a lot of you in the boxes this this evening Mr President yes trusty please
064go ahead um no questions I just want to thank um the thank you all for the presentation this evening it was a lot of a lot of thought went into it and I I just want to thank you for your time and your effort and for sharing with us this evening thank you trusty Luhan um uh trusty Murray go ahead please the same no comments but thank you very much it it uh I it makes me proud that we represent such thoughtful kids um as as Mr Yano said whether we agree or not on a lot of things it's um it's always it's always amazing to see our kids put together a presentation and present it like this and I appreciate it thank you uh thank you trusty Murray uh student trustee ranel Cruz I
065just wanted to Echo what everybody else has been saying I appreciate and love the presentation I totally agree with them uh we do need to get these police officers off of our campuses um and I hope you guys uh take that into consideration thank you uh student trustee uh Vino hi yes I would just like to say a big thank you to my fellow classmates it takes a lot of courage to be able to speak up to a big group of board members and I just want to be able to Echo what the things that they said um police in our campuses they will always be protected and our students won't and it's just a matter of the board being able to take action and to finally be able to listen to these students voices
066it took the four of them to be able to have this presentation like this has been going on for a very long time and it's finally time that we put this issue to to rest and we finally get them off our campuses um we talk a lot about Equity but we cannot achieve that until we really listen to the voices of our students so board members I please ask you to really listen to the voices of the presenters and just think about the rest of the generations of students that will be attending our district thank you very much uh vice president Richardson go ahead you are muted right now so unmute yourself please thank you resident Flores I just wanted to say how proud I am of our students and uh alumni for uh putting
067this together it was very well done and uh powerful I I took it because uh it's still a wound that is still festering and um I'm happy to have the conversation now and this the city also is the one that has to start the conversation because they are the one funding all this and uh we're participants but we can be helpful to our own communities and our own students who who are now adults so I am so happy to hear that change S South San Francisco is not just a little Fringe group of people uh in our communities who want to make noise but they actually have a something to say so I appreciate you coming out and saying your peace thank you I I do see two members of the public with their hands
068raised um if it is a question specific to their presentation um we I will take it if it is a a at llarge comment I will open that up after all the presentations are um have taken place so if it's specific to their wonderful presentation then I will take it okay that took one hand off um Mr s can you please unmute um Miss Sarah funes please yes hi um I just wanted to say great job the students who presented I presented myself to my sou Frisco School Board back in 2010 or 2009 it's a really great achievement that you guys were able to do um I can't believe there isn't anou that's pretty glaring as a problem and I sincerely support your efforts in getting rid of this I would just mention for the
069future for both the Schoolboard and change ssf disability and disabled aren't bad words that's what enables me and other disabled people to get accommodations so those are the actual proper terms and those should be the ones used that's my comment thanks thank you Miss FES and I'll wrap this piece up by um completely sharing um and echoing the thoughts of my colleagues um and student trustees I want to thank each of you for taking the time to put this together you are students right now and that's unbelievable that you're also adding this on um and coming before the board again uh during a weekday taking time out of your schedule putting this together um I know within a short amount of time and and doing a great job in presenting I don't think when I
070was 16 years old I ever presented to an elected body so I my hats are off to you for doing that and thank you for for your voice um which is always important to have our student voice here in our district um moving on we will then proceed to our next item which is item 200 under presentations is human resources it is the thought exchange survey results um our assistant superintendent Dr Jay faldi will review survey results regarding expectations of the district's relationship with the South San Francisco police department and its School uh resource Lea on officers Dr Spalding take it away please thank you president Flores uh good evening everyone my name is Jay Spalding I'm the assistant superintendent of human resources and student services and I'll be presenting uh the next part here
071um I would like to recognize Kaylee medcafe and Rob rinsky that are our partners with thought exchange and they are here to make sure I correctly speak about thought exchange and they can answer any questions about actually the platform but I will be presenting um the slide show here so with that being said I'll be sharing my screen and starting my slideshow so um just a little background uh thought exchange is a special and unique two-way process to bring people together on important topics such as this which replaces the methods used in traditional surveys with a natural collaboration platform participants are asked to share their ideas in response to an open open-ended question all idea all idas are all ideas are shared confidential and once participants have shared their own ideas they are asked to
072rate the thoughts of others that have provided their responses on a scale of one to five if they agree or not agree on how important they think it is in the final step participants are able to view how the thoughts and the exchange have been rated by the group so we had the conversation with thought exchange we came up with the open-ended question of what expectations do you have regarding our relationship between South San Francisco UniFi school district and the ssf police department and school Resources leaone office officers we had Dr Moore do a video announcement that was posted on our district website we presented information to our site leaders to share this information with their Community as well as sharing it out with some of our student leaders we opened up the thought exchange
073on October 14th 2020 and closed it on October 28th 2020 so with that oops excuse sorry about that we did have 680 participants that shared 990 thoughts and the those 680 participants gave ratings of almost 28,000 we have a breakdown of the role within the district we had six out out of that group 404 parents responded that was 62% of the group we had 74% 74 students which was 11% of the group 44 staff members which was 7% of the group 65 people were either teachers or certificated which was 10% administrators were were 38 with 6% and Community another were 23 or 4% this is a word word word cloud based on the top ated words brought that were mentioned in the various thoughts I will let you just take a look at that real
074quickly the next one were a couple key Thoughts with their ranking out of the 950 any police officer assigned to work with the school district on a regular or frequent basis should have some training education and child development that was ranked at 4.2 my expectation is for the school and police working collaboratively and to have a night a plan in case of emergency arises involving the safety of our children was the second highest rated and ssfusd and ssfpd are both a part of our community a relationship that is that aspect is important Mutual beneficial relationship our children's safety and well-being is the most important once again that was the third ranked one here are the themes that were generated work together Community Police relationship good officers police and children police kids police law enforcement police
075mental health and police the theme of working together was brought forward any police officer assigned to work with School District on a regular frequent basis should have some training education and Child Development which was one of the first one we talk about the SEC another one was brought up with they should work close together to protect our kids and ssfusd and police department should work closely together to develop emergency plans and school security another theme was Community police police are an important and vital part of our community police and schools can be a benefit to both the students and the community if the intention is to build help build Bridges and relationships with students and for younger students Elementary it seems like there's an opportunity for building community and trust another thing that came up
076was relationship ssfusd and sfpd are both a part of our community I expect communication and the relationship to be positive open honest and responsive when it comes to the Safety and Security of our schools and I believe there should be a strong relationship between ssfpd and the school district and of course we we do have there are differences of opinions and so this slide shows the difference on police relationships and campus where we have side a 151 respondents were site a and two of the big comments on site a was I expect ssfusd to continue to have school leaz own officers in school and if children can see and speak to our officers in school that they have the chance to develop a healthy relationship or view them as a friend on the other end
077we had 71 people respond that saying have police presence on campus is cont contributing to the school to the school to prison pipeline so the the average score on this one was a 4.9 and keep police out of our schools but what there was was also common ground in the Middle with these were two that were highly rated as a mental health practitioner I expect the ssfusd and ssfpd and school resource and leison officers to be aware of how delicate an individual with mental health cases can be and another one our students need to feel encouraged nourished and stable in their daily environment especially especially if they have trouble very another one of differences Polie ssfpd good 114 respondents responded these two of 4.9 and 4.4 star rating is high my expectation is for the
078school and police working collaboratively and to have a plan in case an emergency arises involving the safety of the children and equip the liazon resource officers with the safety gear training for use of force and deterrence but on the other side where we have over a 100 respondents students don't have control over their home life if a family member has trouble with a drug addiction or trouble with the law it can be scary another comment this would in another them another uh sorry uh thought was this would include the appropriate culturally respons behavior and sensitivity to the current political social climate again from the differences from both sides there was some commonality we're both rated either 3.9 or 4.7 any police officers assigned to work with the school district on a regular or frequent basis
079should have some training and education in child development working with children and teens requires understanding of the issues and challenges faced at different age levels and another common one between these two was police officers should be called to a crime such as a weapon explosive on campus this is obvious another one on differences once again 145 respondents um in this area there should be a gate or fence dividing the houses from the main play area of the school to protect children from the Predators while playing teachers students and parents need to be more product proactive on the other side mental health ssfpd has nothing to do with mental health the sites should notice when a child has mental health issues and contact the parents or counselor and another comment to be clear we are not
080anti- police or anti- SRO we are anti- police brutality police profiling police bias and racist practices on our kids the inability to separate the two is equally problematic but again there is commonality from both of these different both sides of the coin here as a mental health practitioner I expect ssfusd and ssfpd and resource school resource and Leo Zone officers to be aware of how delicate an individual with Mental Health crisis can be which was replicated in a similar one and any police officer assigned to work with a school district on a regular frequent basis should have training education and Child Development working with children and teens requires understanding so that that concludes the presentation I'll stop sharing my screen and if there's any questions at this time thank you Dr spaling for um putting
081that together um I will ask my colleagues to hold one second while I reach out to members of the public um specific questions please make sure that these are questions towards this uh presentation um so that we can get the most out of our time um in regards to these presentations Mr when you are ready please and again questions specific to this presentation Miss Andrea Sims when you are ready hi um yeah after seeing that uh data pulled it doesn't necessarily look like actual research um so my question is is like how did the school board they it came across like opinions so what are you guys actually trying to gather to make your decisions when a lot of that commentary or quote unquote data you're pulling is coming across as opinions and very leading
082in its questions to lead that SLO should be on campus and then my second question is is why was there no demographic um data involved in this research um and at the same time too how come you know between the two size that you got you know it seems like for all of South City the data that did come in is relatively low to really get the data we're trying to look for um so if those questions could be answered I'd be really um interested to hear your guys's thoughts on that thank you and and Miss s uh stick around because you might need to repeat all those question questions if if Dr Spalding doesn't get all of them um Dr Spalding yeah I I think there's a couple factors here I think first of
083all this is gathering the thought of an individual and letting uh and having other people's rank rank that thought it was not a yes or no once again as I said it was an open-ended question about the relation about the expectation of our community and students um the relationship between ssf USD the police department slos and SRS as far as the other demographic data I don't believe we're able to gather that or we collect that data on the demographics and uh miss medcafe or miss Mr rinsky you can remind me if we do collect that I do know we can we set up where um uh the group they are representing such as a student or a Community member or an employee yeah I can speak to that and I'll just share my screen really
084quickly there are the options to ask demographic survey questions for this exchange um there was just one ask so you can see at the bottom of my screen it was what is your role within the district um and I know it sounds like some of you have already looked at this before tonight and then also um the platform is available in any language supported by Google translate so we didn't ask participants to enter this information but these are the results of how those in other languages participated so that could um share more around demographics but that's what we have for this exchange and Dr Spalding Miss metf and Mr uh rinsky are with thought exchange is that correct I should have said that yeah they are yes I'm not okay I was asking you just
085confirming so that members of the public and those that are watching are aware okay thank you um next uh member of the public uh with a question Mr Russell Lee go ahead oh okay hello um yeah I guess I have one question because um on uh Mrs or no Miss Sims um part you got cut off there are you still there hello yes Mr Lee I heard you say Miss Sims already asked your question is that correct I know a couple of them yeah but um I was also in the bathroom so sorry I missed like a couple of them but so sorry if like this is reiterating or anything but like what did Outreach look like to um I guess parents and yeah mainly like parents and students who are like normally aren't engaged
086enged in the political process the school district process because I know with like a lot of school district um just like events and just things going on like it's mostly the people who have been um you know like engaged and they kind of slant towards um white and PTA which isn't like all white and PTA but you know what I mean right like it's like it's kind of like a homogeneous demographic and we want to be able to represent everybody I guess and I was just wondering like what type of Outreach to people let's say like on the east side who are predominantly like Lin X and A lot of people who are like live in Spanish speaking households you know I saw that it was only 2% Spanish so I was wondering what efforts
087to outreach to them look like yeah president Flores if I may yes certainly yeah absolutely as I stated before what we did was we uh told our site supervisors to send out um a document to announcing this survey which we um have a little letterhead to it um translating Spanish if needed um to send out to the community we I believe we sent it out through Peach jar which is communication tool we also post it on our website for everybody to view and every anybody could have taken uh and use this I I will say this was the first time using thought exchange and so there may um have been some hesitancy to respond I know there is often hesitant to respond to surveys U by using a Google because people NE don't necessarily want
088to put their name in there so we wanted really try to emphasize this is a confidential response um but that could have led to the lack of more participation if I if I may add on to that we also shared the video and the link with our ASB students and we asked them to help get the word out um with our student body uh we sent an email out to all of our families and and we asked our um our director for our district English language acquisition uh our parent committee to also share it with our parents so that they knew what we were doing um in addition to what Dr spaling excuse me already mentioned thank you Dr Moore and thank you Dr spaling um next member of the public asking a question U
089Mr Iris de Cruz go ahead Mr de Cruz hi I just wanted to had similar questions to What U Miss Sims had asked earlier um just wondering given the and I appreciate the the effort um in trying to get it out um I'm just curious to ask um what um what's GNA and maybe this might be overstepping in terms of a question but asking what is the board's um how much weight are they giving this particular survey um and is this going to hold um significant weight um given the demographics that they were able to reach which I I felt um this is not as reflective as I would want it to be um in and in contrast to um the data that's been collected from uh institutions that that are more uh that are
090academic and do um research on a very thorough and and and uh without sort of this this limited time window because I understand there was a limited time window in which the surveys were coming out I'm just curious about how um this school district is planning to move forward with regards to not just this data but all the data available uh with regards to police presence um in in schools uh thank you Mr DEA Cruz so our last item of the evening that is agendized will be the board discussion on the data and uh feedback uh regarding these presentations so I invite you to stay tuned and you will hear the board um follow up with discussion and all of that um next uh member of the public uh asking a question Miss Liliana Rivera
091go ahead when you're ready Miss Rivera oh did we lose her I think we lost her okay she doesn't come on on the screen um we will move on to miss Valeria oling um please unmute hi um I just want to ask one question um knowing that there exists a digital divide in South City I just I'm interested to like know what effort was put into making sure that parents who don't have as much access to the internet as other folks or like how what you do to reach out to those folks especially to those parents who also don't speak English um and if not enough effort was done to put it to like reach out to them will there be a second round of like research done or surveys to make sure that there's
092a better rounded um survey questionnaire for and making sure that like demographic is explained um especially with South City you know being so segregated and US knowing that policing is in East Side um it's just kind of makes me question the questionnaire when we don't know what neighborhoods these students and parents are responding from thank you you like me to answer I I can answer that I can try my best to answer that it is uh tech-based um thought exchange once again this is not uh scientific data study we did not go deep um and breaking that down a bunch of questions this was about a single uh thought and trying to gather um people's thoughts around it and whether they liked it or uh disliked it um the platform is also available on um
093smartphone and so we know a lot more of our families and individuals have smart for form platforms but yes one of the caveats is this was not done in a a word survey document um because once again it's supposed to be an an interface between a person and and providing feedback on other thoughts and that is just not a capable of a actual paper survey or typical data scientific uh um research project you would normally find and to add on to that what we did was we asked our site leaders to um help with Outreach and then open up our campuses we also offered um if any families wanted to come to the district office where we would set out laptops since we have laptop cart available for them to also engage and participate in
094the survey so it's just another way to try to um connect with our community I will take um four more minutes of questions from the public and then we will be forced to take a a break from the transcriber and after our break I will be taking questions from our panelists um meaning the school board members and our student trustees and presenters um Mr Cesar Rodriguez uh please go ahead when you are ready hello good evening thank you for uh taking my questions U my first question is what population of the parent po of the parent po s for done it I was writing this quickly what population of parents at ssfusd is Spanish speaking and what percentage of Spanish speaking participants responded to this number two to reiterate a question that was shared earlier
095what efforts are being done to diversify the insights brought to the table particularly for workingclass parents with a digital and language divide I say this because for instance when it comes to community policing often the people that are brought in to speak are homeowners landlords and businesses their voices get over represented and get called quote unquote community Al even though they're a smaller number and what we don't hear are the renter the worker the undocumented and that's in the case of community policing right so I bring that up because that calls me the question some what is being brought to the table by this and as if this is is useful um framing in in polling matters were the questions about alternatives to police and schools included such as ethnic studies restorative justice counseling arts
096and culture etc etc were there any questions about alternatives to police and schools um because that matters if it's just about cops in schools then that could be leading um number four would you say the survey is about public opinion or best practices because if it's just about public opinion um a it is a matter about we can we can debate about leading questions but public opinion some schools would have prayer and corporal punishment some schools would resist integration because of public opinion um and finally what are the efforts by the district to survey learn and Implement best practices to serve our workingclass students of color thank you thank you I think that was a a list uh Dr sponding is there anything from that list that you want to call call out right away
097there there was a lot there so I will say that uh trying to take notes uh I think one thing is this was just one one U open-ended um question we can with thought exchange we are able able to open up and do this numerous times on various questions the the difficult part is layering multiple questions in one thought exchange um is that kind of correct miss medca or miss Mr rinsky that's correct so an exchange is just one question often open-ended um as it was in this case but there is that opportunity should you want to gather more Community voice and understand those priorities you could do like an iterative process and and frame the question in another way to hear that voice thank you sorry go ahead Dr Mar go ahead just going
098to say the question was what is the percent of our Spanish speaking population we have about 30% of uh Spanish speakers in our our district um as based on information that they've submitted to our information system um and I think because the question has come up so when I mentioned at the very beginning that our board is really taking an intentional and methodical approach to understanding it includes looking at multiple pieces of data one of which is the best practices and we've heard a lot from our community and been given a lot of resources and have done our own research so our board also does that as one data point um but then they're also interested in qualitative feedback qualitative data that they can really understand the perceptions and the impact and you see that
099done through the survey and then um we also did student focus groups as another way to understand and the concerns of our students on campus and we'll be talking about that shortly so I think that there is this understanding of looking at Best Practices and and taking all of it into consideration and thinking about what is best for the students here in South San Francisco thank you very much Mr Rodriguez if we were not able to address all of your questions please feel free to submit them via email and we'll gladly uh Circle back with you um the next uh um public uh member of the public asking a question Miss II soloro hello my name isi Solorio and I'm senior at s Francisco high school and I was one of the students who um
100put my opinion on the website the thought thing and I want to know why my thoughts um regarding Derek gains were removed I made a few um comments about that and all of them were removed and if you guys don't believe me I have pictures of all my thoughts that were removed regarding Derek gains and of who for those of you guys do remember who Derek gain is he was a 15-year-old boy who was shot and killed by ssf police officer Joshua Cavo and he should be remembered um yes please answer my question Dr Spalding or um I I can answer that yes the um responses were moderated um and if any responses were vulgar or had nothing to do with um the expectation the actual question yes they were removed and not allowed owed
101to um Garner uh opinion or Stars I should say Okay U Miss Liliana Rivera you have a question go ahead when you are ready hi um my question was going to be what these responses look like if you just pull out um the student responses only but I think the last caller really made it clear that you know what the student respon is looked like and I just want to know why is it considered vulgar for a student to bring up a child who was killed by the police officer who had been known to threaten students um during his time at South San Francisco schools why would that be considered vulgar to bring that up it's a fact that he was killed by the police it's not vulgar it's the truth M Rivera are you
102okay want to make sure that she asked all her questions we will um be discussing uh the board will be discussing all these um measures or or the way to proceed on this thought exchange uh again at a last agenda item um one last one and one last question then we have to take a break again the transcriber um is required um that she takes a break break every hour and a half so I do want to be respectful of her but this does not mean that we're U concluding this period um Miss Dolores Piper um go ahead and ask your question please and I want to remind you sorry Miss Piper before you go I want to remind folks that if you do have a comment we will welcome you certainly want to hear
103from everyone but we will welcome your comment at the end a specific question to the presentation go ahead Miss Piper when you're ready uh I do believe that when parents are asked to question about taking cops off campuses they suddenly get afraid for the the safety of their children and I would believe that many of these people don't even know what these SLS do on campus especially if there hasn't been anou that has defined what their role is and what what guidelines they should follow I would it's just in it parents freak out they think somehow there's going to be some level of safety removed from their children so I I don't know that it's this it survey is valid on that point I also think it was uh the person who kept stressing that
104they should have child early childhood development training that's a very good thought but it's wishful thinking that is not going to happen and we all know that you know cops are not set up to do all that they barely get the the the adequate training now and and certainly they need a ton more of training in anti-bias and other efforts so you know I I'm not too too fond of this survey either I made a lot of remarks in this survey about cops on campus I don't see them reflected there either thank you thank you Miss Piper um Mr Jojo Gomez Mr Eddie Holman Miss Andrea Sims um the three of you will um be up when we come back from our break um we will now go into a 10-minute Recons is 7:05 who
105will come back at 7:15 at 7:15 thank you everyone two minutes two minutes this is a two minute warning we will resume in two minutes thank you everyone for promptly uh returning welcome back everyone from our recess our 10-minute recess um Mr s when you are ready please unmute Mr Jojo Gomez Mr Gomez are you there and and if so please uh go ahead when you're ready uh hi can you hear me oh sorry yes go ahead um I'd like to start off by saying thank you for misgendering me I appreciate the sign of respect but as people who Proclaim that they're inclusive and aware of our community I hope you guys start taking a gender neutral approach from now on um I wanted to start by asking how you guys account for reaching out
106to working class and undocumented parents or parents that don't speak English because earlier you said there's a 30% Spanish speaking population in the district but the Spanish speakers that responded to this survey was a mere 2% so clearly something's missing here and I'd like to know what that is secondly do you think there's any particular reason that your Outreach to students was so limited when the survey acts about slos who are literally on student campuses there were only 74 students who responded when there's at least 1,000 in ssfhs alone and lastly I want to know how you guys decide what's a relevant comment or not like what's your basis um and I'm just really hoping that you guys aren't building any major decisions off of this because if this was just a question and not
107actually for research purposes then quite frankly I don't know what the point was it just sounds like a waste of your time and your money and yeah that's it thank you thank you um Dr Mo or or Dr spaling is there any questions that you can pick from there that to provide an answer yeah I can explain like I said there was some comments that had vulgarity in it so those were removed automatically there were some other comments that did not have anything uh that did not have uh anything to do with our relationship uh between ssfusd and ssf PD SLR slos and Sr yeah and often when we are reaching out to the our different communities we do our best to do so in the prim primary language so that we can explain what's
108happening um I think the question was about Outreach to our uh different populations that are oftentimes hard to reach and that's one of the strategies that we've taken and you know that's a great question about student Outreach um because we did take uh we utilized multiple strategies and we didn't have the number of student participants that of course we would have loved to have have had participate um I think it can be a myriad of reasons I'm going to talk a little bit later about some of the strategies we took to try to invite them and encourage and ensure that they knew it' be a safe uh place at least for the focus groups to share but I think that you raised a good point uh are there other reasons why some of our student
109participants didn't take the survey and maybe we do need to think of other ways to connect and make sure that they have uh the information so that they can share honestly in a in a exchange like we did thank you very much um public speaker Eddie Holman please go ahead and unmute yourself and ask the question hello can you hear me now yes go ahead great thanks um so first of all I just want to say I think this data collected here is problematic and I don't think it's really usable um I think when we go back to the statistics that Spanish speaking families represent 30% of the uh student families but only 2% are represented in the survey I think that right there disqualifies the data so I want to know what is your
110criteria for representing U the different demographics for this community and why are we still using this data if it's so heavily skewed um why are we making decisions for students if only 11% of the responses were actually from students um you know I want to give credit to our South San Francisco Unified School District teachers I and alumni of this District if I tried to use this kind of data for any research I would have failed my class um second of all I want to know what is your definition of vulgar um is the truth about that a South San Francisco police officer murdered a student right outside of sou San Francisco High School is that vulgar or is that just the hard truth of the police in our schools here in South San Francisco
111um another question how much should we spend on this thought Exchange program I think this money could have been better used to Simply reach out uh via phone to people in our community um and how do you define this as a an unbiased space if there was someone moderating the content uh what is the criteria for moderating the content thanks can we uh answer some of those questions I think are able to be asked answer as I can answer I already responded a little bit there was vulgar language had nothing to do with a a student um or an ex um I'm I'm not quite sure of the the young gentleman who was shot um but that was not the vulgaria I was talking about actually swear words were used and those were eliminated and
112so people actually had an opportunity to respond in an appropriate way um once again this is an open-ended question about the expectations regarding the relationship not about what's going on in the community what is expectations of our relationship and so as the moderator I did my best to try to keep it um positive as best I could there are some things that um were not necessarily always in a an open-ended um way there was some direct comments that were made and that was shared also and people did comment on those and they had the opportunity um and once again this is not a data research product project it was a simple question we were asking uh for feedback and Dr Mo can you share about the cost yeah the cost was free we didn't pay
113they they allowed us to Pilot um to engage our community thank you we'll move on to um public speaker Andreas Sims hello um Al righty um so my first question is um if I guess to um the point of vulgarity is if it was an open-ended question or open-ended response and they are allowed to public comment on it why is it being moderated if that's how someone felt and it that's the truth of matter for some cases as well um and why would you not want that data to be included into your overall data if those were taken in and why are you hiding it from our community um I think that's really important and really frustrating that we have to even ask that of you guys um and then the second one is um
114how would you expect students to you know answer this in the future if you plan on reaching out to the students um if they already know now at this point that their answers could be censored uh and then also um lastly just you know are you guys proud of these results like are I mean after seeing and hearing what people are talking about regarding this survey like even though you guys don't want to claim it now as data it you guys are running it and using it as something to l your thoughts and opinions and changing on something on this so what are you guys going to do in the future to actually collect more you know of the not only students but people Outreach that you guys are clearly neglecting thank you um those
115are are are good questions and I appreciate um folks um bringing them forth I will have one more question from the public and then I really uh would like to move to our panelist that means our colleagues and student trustees um so that they can ask questions as well um Miss Marcela Rivera go ahead and uh speak when you are ready yeah my question is straightforward um how would you expect any student to want to participate in any of your future surveys if you clearly showed that you don't care about what they have to say and what their experiences are and um yeah oh and someone who has had a family member killed like that oh she wants to comment Dolores Piper wants to comment and and it's her relative that has been um that
116has been affected and she should be able to comment on this since you guys are making um a show of like her experience and a students experiences okay yeah do you have any other questions if not we'll end the clock um Miss Piper um since I do know you U Miss Piper go ahead and um speak when you are ready I have spoken with Dr Moore and Mr seers and this whole change in the uh policies of the South San Francisco School District to a less punitive more supportive less suspensions less e uh expulsions this is a this has been a a wonderful move forward that's why I think we should couple it with letting these officers off the campuses uh they don't was the was the community asked when we first set up theou
117or the so-called started this in 1980 I'll bet not and I don't see why we have to get so much Community input to get rid of them it the nation is doing this school districts are doing this all over the Bay Area uh I don't know I you're going to carry this on for years and years to try to get some kind of consensus in this community people don't understand what these guys do on campus they don't know their role I mean you're asking questions of of people that they don't even know how to answer this so and they think somehow that more training is going to make it right more training didn't save my nephew's life and that's that really is the the bottom line we had a rookie who had no alternatives to
118his uh Arsenal but violence I give up the rest thank you very much I appreciate your time and I appreciate everyone's uh very thoughtful questions and comments and again there is an item at the end of this agenda where the board will weigh in and uh provide comment on the data and the feedback received I now like to turn over to my panelist thank you for being patient um I'd like to start off with samanta Aila since I did owe you a raised hand please go ahead and unmute yourself um it's okay for now if I can be safe for the end that's certainly yes of course um now to members of the board if anyone has questions or comments it's raise your hand time um I saw Miss Vino student truste Miss farino please
119go ahead I saw your hand first thank you um my first question is um we did have SLO meetings with Dr Moore and a facilitator so I'm just curious as to what happened with those results like how th that feedback and those results were incorporated into the thought exchange because I do know that thought exchange was launched at um after these sessions happened so I just want to know how those were Incorporated that is a great question um we actually started thought exchange first and then we coupled it to make sure that we had student voice and that is the next presentation tonight so that we can present what our student focus group said thank you uh truste Murray um yeah I I just I didn't have a lot of a lot to say except
120I I want people to know that we tasked the the superintendent and the cabinet to get um student voice and Community voice this was never meant to be something scientific this was just another another piece of information to inform our decisions so this is not everything that goes into our way um the weight that we put into our decision um next vice president Richardson and then uh trusty Luhan after that vice president Richardson go ahead yes thank you um I wanted to ask Dr Spalding uh what about redaction can we do that so that the callers can understand that um uh have all their comments and context and uh if there's a an offensive um line that it could be blotted out instead of Vice President Rich the whole comment yeah vice president Richard I'm
121unaware of that I got to tell you this this was my first time doing this also I'm by no means an expert this was asked of me um so I did my best working with Mr rinsky and Miss medcafe um to go and and do the best job I can and trying to be as um transparent as possible um but I was unaware of any kind of redaction of uh specific word or words in someone's thought um in keeping with some of the commentary that is allowed in public um for the Public's expression um and we didn't want to uh infringe on their right to expression so that that is my concern so I'm just putting that out there thank you vice president Richardson uh trusty Luhan thank you um more than anything I just
122want to thank you for the presentation um it's to trusty R's point this is one of three data points that are being considered in terms of formal presentations and it's just a data point um and so I just want to thank you all for the work that went into creating this point um so thank you thank you trusty Luhan uh trusty Baker did you have any comments or questions uh I wasn't raising my hand but since you called on me um I think those of you watched the board for a while uh know that I do like statistical valid surveys um maybe this wasn't meant to be one but you know it and I'm treating it as a non-statistically valid survey um with an opt-in like this you're really subjecting yourself to B to bias
123and I'm really not convinced due to what we've heard that it reached the members of the community who are most affected by police on campus so I'll treat this for what it is some people's thoughts but no more than that thank you trusty Baker I also Echo um your comment and and and and I I'd like to say that you know we are living under a pandemic this would have done be done uh hopefully uh differently if we would have been able to meet in person perhaps in a matter of a town hall or other ways of more inperson more personable ways of receiving um feedback in fact we try to do the the focus groups which are the next item on our agenda virtually which was something that we sincerely have never tried or
124done before um personable obviously is is is where we get the feedback the stories the the sacrifices the hardships that people have endured in the comments and unfortunately I don't think this hit the mark and like my trustees have said um part of good governance which we have all learned in being school board members is studying an item and receiving the information and that's why we called upon this study session um just to gather information each one of us do does with that information what we see it um it's evident you know that there are holes uh presented again in a pilot program like uh it has been shared so um there is um a lot to be desired and uh we will have further discussion on this but I do not want to be
125labor the next presentations and I really want to emphasize how grateful on behalf of the board and the cabinet and superintendent we are to all our presenters for sticking through through our our process here it is kind of become a little lengthier than we anticipated so I do acknowledge that and thank you again for your time um moving on we will then come into our next agenda item which is the next presentation which is on student focus groups feedback uh superintendent Moore will provide information on the student focus groups feedback regarding that ssfpd school resource leas on officers on school campuses Dr Moore thank you president Flores um so while Dr Holt she is on it already has the presentation I had the great privilege of uh engaging and participating in helping to facilitate our
126student focus groups and I have to tell you I was humbled and really proud and emotional at times really listening to um the stories of our students and their experiences and we had um diverse perspectives not all of the groups felt the same way about the questions that we presented to them and uh tonight I going to be co-presenting with a couple of our wonderful guests and so we'll start uh Dr Shelley Holt did a phenomenal job helping to facilitate the student focus groups create she did a great job creating a safe non-threatening space for our students to honestly share their thoughts um and for our students and our alumni that that participated and um she really has a vision to build leadership capacity and Equitable systems both for our students and organizations I'm really
127looking at organizational policy and a culture of courage to address controversial issues but in a safe space that encourages brave action and I felt like she did an amazing job doing that we also have tonight Miss Nicole Anderson she has done some work with our school board and many school boards across California and in our County and we have the privilege of working with her as well and she also has a vision for creating Equitable school systems that really close educational gaps in school districts Across the Nation and we also have I I'm not sure if she's participating she might be helping to facilitate or she might be observing Deborah Keys wri she's also been working with our board on board governance through the equity lens she has experience and expertise in leading and guiding
128School boards to govern equitably and intentionally and all three have been wonderful supports and assets to our school district and really strive to support the work of our district leadership in the pursuit of educational excellence and equity for our students I Believe Miss Anderson is going to have some opening remarks in the we will jump right into the presentation thank you Dr Moore H good evening trustees it's great to see you again it's been a little while I feel like it's been like four years since I saw you last um A lot's gone on um and so I'm with my um amazing colleague Dr Shelley hold um also Deborah Keys who um also co- facilitated our study sessions in the past um she was on earlier but she is uh she had to jump off
129unfortunately um so she said to tell you hello and she looks forward to seeing you all in our future study sessions as well but before Dr Holt shares um the perspective about the student focus group I wanted to just share a few comments with the board um as you listen to not only this presentation but as you consider the presentations you've heard um first I just want to acknowledge you I think that um we get to work with boards all around the state and um in nation in particular and what I find is you have um an amazing process and model that you are showing is very real um around the fact that you are learning about data collection right as a board um you are learning about how to address a tough topic such
130as policing in schools and um this has historical implications and so I just acknowledge you and being very thoughtful about the decision that you make because ultimately irregardless of the decisions as a board you all know that you have a role and your role is at the policy level and so just remind you of some of the things we talked about your policy level work you're evaluating the progress of the work in the district you're setting that vision and so with this particular topic whatever decision you make um I want you to be mindful of our systems approach um because it's important to recognize it's not only about changing a policy and I think our students who are phenomenal the community are listening to the comments um just really commend them on their thoughtfulness the
131data that was presented um and also them speaking their truth but also wanting the community to understand the process for system change is not easy um and it is a go slow to go fast process and so so I commend you as a board to not make a a a rash decision on anything um to not make decisions without an entire set of data because ultimately what you saw tonight is just the beginning and most boards are not as data Savvy right they don't ask those questions and so we want boards to be more Savvy around using data and good data which is what you heard earlier and understanding there's multiple forms to con to consider before you make a decision and so with that being said um I just again want to commend you
132on your work tonight um it's not always easy to do this type of work but whatever work you're doing I think it's going to have implications for lots of decisions you make even Beyond police in school so I just want to just say kudos to you um and I'm honored to lock arms with you all on this journey because I know it's hard and I know ultimately you'll make the best decision for your kids because that's the center of all this um but doing that in informed way is definitely something that we as consultants always recommend so thank you again Dr H hold um I want to pass pass a virtual mic to you because I know that you have the amazing opportunity to meet with the students and so just really thankful for the
133partnership and so I'm going to go and pass the virtual mic to you and then um I'll have a couple closing comments for the board um after the presentation thank you Nicole and I believe that this next slide is is yours Dr Mo go ahead it is thank you so here's our agenda we've laid out for you this evening and we designed it in a way to talk about how did we get here uh what do we want to accomplish with this work outlining the goal what do we need to accomplish the goal and so we can really think about our needs and then the methodology how will we get what we need to accomplish the goal and student focus group process was part of that and then um we're going to spend time looking
134at the data what was said what we learned what we heard from our stud students and we will end with recommendations and considerations really helping us to think about where do we go from here good evening everybody my name is Dr Shelley Jones Holtz and um it it has been an absolute pleasure uh to work with South San Francisco Unified um especially being a Berkeley grad being from the uh era where we have done plenty of protests been set I've sat on the picket lines many of times on many issues uh out there in the Bay Area I actually live in Michigan now all I can say to all y'all is you're welcome uh because there's a lot that we've been doing out here in Michigan uh to move this fight towards racial Equity uh
135forward um part of this though is uh in in being in this uh business now of um social activism and Equity work and education for over 20 years it really is about uh setting up the stage and setting up situations for everyone to be heard for everyone to listen and to actually be uh move forward with the best uh information that we have in order to do that first and foremost we had to create safe space and so I'm going to take you through a couple of things as we work through this I want you to see what we set up for the students to be able to get that uh feedback that we did receive but also to understand and I'm going to be very clear especially because I've already heard it today we
136did not get the student representation that we wanted I'll say it again we searched high and low and we did not get there were more people on this call now than we could even find to participate in our survey results and that is a something that we all need to take a moment and just take a step back and go um I wonder why that is uh because it wasn't due to lack of effort it wasn't due to lack of uh put putting it out there um but there is something going on with the communities that need to be involved or that want to be involved getting involved and that's something that we need to explore further um to find out how we can actually get people involved um as we set the stage for
137each of our presentations including this one I want to um ensure that we are moving from safe space to Brave space Through The Four Agreements with courageous conversations about race oh at the uh Crux of this issue because the police department was founded on racist ideals then this conversation about policing is inevitably riddled in uh racial undertones or overtones that some would say and so order to talk about race which policing does have to do with race because it's a system uh based upon that we uh employ Four Agreements that we explained at to each and every one of uh each of our sessions uh these sessions were closed to the public but a few board members were able to um listen in and it's awesome to see your faces now because I hadn't seen
138your faces the whole time so uh the whole time I'm like I wonder what I had to go online and I looked but uh I hadn't seen any your faces um the whole time we were there um the uh Rules of Engagement so to speak were one to stay engaged even when it got tough um we typically positions of power or people in positions of power tend to disengage when the conversation gets uncomfortable um and so that's why our first expectation or agreement is that we stay engaged throughout the process and that there is no such thing as multitasking uh we wanted everyone's full engagement through this as a respect for everyone that's speaking and listening to the process the second is to experience discomfort Again part of the power structure that we're working in
139is when it gets uncomfortable we're going to stop talking or we're going to stop listening one or the other and so part of having courageous conversations about race that actually move your social uh justice um uh issue forward is to actually experience that discomfort that means I'm talking about Ango folks when we start talking about policing and we start talking about the structure of it we've got to be a able to say oh my gosh this is making me uncomfortable but I'm going to stay in it when we start talking about things that we as a community need to do to get more involved ah she's talking about the Spanish speaking Community figuring out a way to get involved even if they don't reach out to you that's making me uncomfortable because our belief systems
140may be different around that and so I want everyone to experience the discomfort that comes from talking about issues that are inevitably riddled in uh racial over undertones the the other one is to speak your truth and my goodness I'm so proud of y'all I need you all to know I'm talking about our babies and our uh Community here and forgive me I'm an educator by trade and so all kids and young people if you are younger than 30 you are considered a baby to me just because I'm old uh and but uh we want you all to speak your truth no matter what truth it is if you are all about wanting the police on campus man we want to hear it if you're all about not wanting the police on campus man we
141want to hear it if you're in the the middle and you're trying to figure out exactly where do I sit on this we want to hear that too we also want to create a space where descending opinions feel safe and so um uh there were times when I had to navigate that um to make sure everybody in the room felt safe no matter what their opinion was and we weren't cutting people off or minimizing um uh the the uh what people were saying there's also a piece around speaking your truth though where we also we're a school district and we have legal matters and so when things brought up about certain name or certain individual people my recommendation is always and I'm saying this to the youth groups as well keep names and people out
142of it and let me tell you why one we open ourselves up possibly to litigation and we don't want to do that secondly it takes away from the actual systemic issue that we're dealing with and it makes it about that person or that specific incident and people can defend an incident they can't defend always assistant and so it's part of the strategy that we use as activists is that we stay on the issue and not about the person and so that brings me to our last uh rule of Engagement so to speak is to expect and accept non-closure there are some people on here today who got on this call because they wanted to see this board put the police officers out there are other people who got on this call because they want to
143make sure that this board does not put the police officers out I'm telling you today and my recommendation and our group is going to be not to make a decision tonight and to continue to gather information around this because a community does not need to be divided around something so critical and we have to have a plan moving forward so this is one of the things I'm going to ask is that we accept and expect non-closure non-closure doesn't mean inaction or lack of action or that we're not going to do anything it means we're not going to wrap this up in a tight little bow when we finish talking tonight and everybody's going to go to sleep and wake up tomorrow like yay we did like uh uh something happened the truth of the matter
144is we are hearing everybody in this um and so we want to expect and accept that non-closure that comes these agreements we do all over the country actually all over the world we can say now because with International work because they help us to talk about controversial topics uh about race and manage both the emotions because a lot of things are emotional and we tend to react to emotions and back that up with process and content and knowledge so that we are all uh uh getting all the information we need while also managing me emotions that are inevitably going to come up I know I felt some emotions when folks were talking about um certain people and I'm like oh my goodness what in the world and we have to make sure that we are
145not making emotional decisions that we're making decisions that are going to be best for the community based on fact and so um these are our expectations of Engagement that we asked of the students um and let me tell you they did amazing with them they spoke their truth they said what they needed to say and there was no question about where they were coming from or where they stood um but they were also very respectful of one another and we made sure that everybody left their safe and we followed up with people afterwards to ensure that safety and I have to thank Dr Moore for that so with this we got to figure out how we got here oh you want to go ahead no go ahead so we want to figure out how we
146got here and I just want to be just put voice to the fact that we are in a beautiful mess that nobody could have put together more more more specifically for this moment in time let me tell you I've been doing this over 20 years over 20 years and I know I don't look that old my par my father was a black panther I've been in this movement since I before I was born and let me that never have all the stars align like they have right now never we did we get a global pandemic that sent everybody home to their rooms in the middle of racially based political unrest especially that around uh uh uh policing in the middle of of racial Uprising and an increase in global awareness around police brutality with what
147was happening you have all of these working beautifully and so I say this to the board and to the activist you got a beautiful mesh of things happening that if we uh capitalize on this moment just right it's bigger than just an SLO on campus my mind is bigger than that because SLO is just one part this is about systemic racism and a system that an educational system and a policing system that was not built or designed to serve the people that we are expecting it to serve and and and and and uh have flourish so we want to make sure that it's bigger than just officer whoever this is about how are we ensuring that every voice is heard how are we ensuring that every child feels safe at school how are we ensuring
148that every moment that a child has on campus we are not ret traumatizing them or further traumatizing them based on societal Norms that we have put out that it's okay to traumatize certain children and not traumatize others that's where we're moving Dr Moore I'll I'll let you go ahead for that from there you know I get excited about this stuff no that was beautifully stated I actually think we can move forward you you you captured that really well so I'm not going to show this video just for the sake of time and I know um it's it's almost 11 o'clock here where I am um and so it's also late for you youngsters there that are that need to possibly get to school but if you get a chance please Google the video the unequal
149opportunity race this was a video that we showed the children to begin with because again we want to bring them into a place of understanding what we're talking about and so part of the work that we do with racial Equity is we got to bring because everybody's coming from different places and we want to bring everybody to the same place and know what we're talking about and so this uh video was used to uh in addition to a bit of a PowerPoint that I showed just to bring people into the saves base about why we're talking about this and how some people have opportunities other people don't and there's this concept of generational wealth that exists in in uh Anglo uh and or Euros centrically uh based communities that does not exist in other communities
150and so we want to make sure that we can move forward from that again I'm not going to show the video but uh please uh if you get a chance please look at it um this video really helped us understand that we are at a Crossroads here and we're solving an issue bigger than again just policing on campus we have a completely split divide where these issues bring up solidarity for some like we need to we need to all fight we got to be together on this we've got to move forward simultaneously as we saw in January 6 they bring up rage and fear and a feeling of loss for others and while we uh while we may not always see eye to eye as leaders in this work and again I say as choosing
151to lead this work we have to respect where everyone is coming from even when we disagree with the thoughts beliefs and mindsets of how they got there we also have to understand that we're addressing 400 years of institutional racism and systemic oppression in America not just again an SLO at um South at San South San Francisco high so just to paint the picture of what we ask the children to do we ask them to State one thing that was confirmed one question that they had to ask and a thought that was provoked and that initiated the conversation just got kids talking uh because when you start bringing out this topic and then say go talk and they kind of go ah so this gets them talking the goal of the go ahead the goal for
152us when we think about what we wanted to accomplish was really to take a step back and really understand what we were we were the data we were gathering and make an informed decision about the role future role of school liaison officers on our campuses here in South San Francisco Unified and as we've heard Dr Holt said this earlier very well that it's even bigger than just this particular um issue that we are were having a conversation about and so thinking about how we keep the decision within the greater context of school safety in general um because we are making decisions about returning to school in a safe way um after or postco the last piece um in terms of what we wanted to accomplish was really create and utilize a student voice process that
153we can continue to involve students um at varying levels for decision making there is a lot of power in student voice and in being really inclusive and engaging them in authentic ways and I thought this was such a wonderful way and actually many of our students said that that it felt safe um for them to be honest versus and some of them shared that sometimes they don't speak up because other voices are louder so they may either speak this have the same idea or thought or they may actually have an opposing idea but they don't always they're not um they're worried sometimes about speaking up and so thinking about being able to engage them in ways that they have a voice is really important and that's that's what we want to do to help accomplish
154this work as well we think about what do we need to accomplish the goal um I think we've said it earlier all throughout the night we really need to understand um have a strong understanding of the problem and how it's actually impacting our communities um we talked about how important it is to just hear the voices and have our our community speak their truth um whatever truth that actually is um and this this third thing what do we need we really need to have a strong understanding and knowledge of of the demographics and the work of police meaning who are the police interacting with and engaging with and how are they doing that so that we can really understand what that Dynamic is and looks like and then understanding what safety means and what things
155are necessary for safety on campus this is really important to understand for us um those who are experiencing it and whether or not they feel safe and those and the impacts it has from those who might be um who who might be present or engaging in actions that make students or community members not feel safe and then of course we also need various perspectives we've heard that tonight we have a community here of diverse perspectives it's something that we value it's part of our vision for our students and all perspectives are valued and all of them are valuable information for us to make decisions on and so that is also something that we need to accomplish the goal and then uh lastly here it's important that we have accurate data that's related to policing on
156campus so that we can make uh intelligent and well-informed decisions about about this work so we think of our methodology um you we've spoken a little bit about this really we we talk to our students about what we wanted to do and how we wanted to elicit their feedback we shared what had happened and then really um we know in order to do that we need to create this safe space we talk to our students about really sharing authent their authentic self and their authentic voice and experiences um and um being able to connect and um articulate oneself and hear other people was really important and of course we want the part of what we need to accomplish the goal we need to be able to replicate it and we need to really validate what
157our students are saying in our focus group to make sure that it's also reliable data that we're bringing back and sharing with our board and community and so here are just a few considerations as we consider the data we wanted to consider what data we're Gathering and how that data actually informs our work and so as we continue we want to uh uh move move forward with this in mind so the purpose of our uh of our conversations with our young people this is the slide we actually showed them to let them know why we were doing what we were doing uh so that you can read here what the purpose was and what the outcomes were and ultimately my focus was to create a safe space for kids to talk um no it was
158hard enough to get kids into the room and so even with getting them in the room to AG that safe space for them to speak and for them to understand why uh we were doing this and what we wanted to get out of it so uh some of the recruitment strategies we used um and we are open to more recruitment strategies so uh that we contacted School leaders ASB uh there was actually a video that uh superintendent Mo did to get more children uh to want to participate we even offered Raffles we did as much as we could if there are more ways to reach kids then we need to know where it where to find them and how to get them into the room and have these conversations because we want to hear the
159voice but if the voices are too scared or are trepidacious about participating then that's something for us to think about as well is why are our folks not wanting to participate or not wanting to be heard uh on a on a more Global level this is just an outline of our student participants we thought we'd give just a breakdown we had a total of 25 over four sessions that we ran uh 18 of the participants were current students seven participants were former students and then you can see the grade level breakdown so again we W walked them through the process this was the process so that first I set up with preparation and expectations again creating that safe space with The Four Agreements and then we talked about what is equity and defining some terms
160we Define institutionalized racism we Define uh various terms for folks to understand what we were talking about we also had the C moment which I spoke to earlier and then we had the group response interview questions and so these we're going to go through each question to let you know just a summary of what the young people said and beyond that there was followup uh to those questions afterwards so that we made sure that people felt comfortable afterwards uh particularly since then uh there there were some surprises in some of our sessions but they were good surprises and it led to uh some robust conversations our work at UH Nicole Anderson and Associates Consulting we put everything into the water of systems change framework why because this is not again about One Moment One movement
161one person or one thing that we want to have happen we want to eliminate the predictability a uh of results and eliminate systemic Opa and and systemic racism in the entire system and in order to do that we have to get all the way through to understand the mental model that created the system that we're in right now and then move through that water systems change framework up into the policies typically people want to start with the structural changes because they're easy oh create this policy get rid of the do this person put this in your in that book and it's going to all be fixed but the mentality that created that is still there the mentality that created that is still there so until you address the mentality let me tell you they you
162could vote tonight to remove it then you get somebody else on the board and they decide that they want to bring it back next year done just like that it's as quick as it's gone it's as quick as it comes back we want to make sure if we were to move in either direction that we get to the mentor model level so as you're hearing this data I'm asking everyone to listen through the lens of water systems change and listen through the lens of Shifting the mental models that created our situations in the first place so here's an overview of what was said in what we learned um that our students are aware of the cultural issues that are are happening around them and to them and they appreciate the cultural guidance Direction and celebration
163and presentation more so than looking at them to be the cultural representation of of their particular ethnic group um we also heard our students say that they see and understand the current effects and impacts of systemic oppression um they just don't yet understand its origins or historical context and that was through some of the questions that we asked our students in the focus group said that they they or they didn't say they did struggle with wording to express their knowledge of political sociological or anthrop anthropological connections and so um Dr Holt did a nice job of helping to explain it in a way that they could grapple with it and understand and we also learned that our our our students understand the police presence on campus is experienced differently by students based on race and
164culture even within the student groups that we had they didn't always agree and some were very much in support of having police on campus and they talked about that whereas others were staunchly against it and they were able to verbalize that and then we also learned that there is clear difference in responses and room environment when police representatives were present so at one of our sessions we had um two former students they are alumni but they are current um they they work currently within the police department they're not police officers they work in the police department and um we there was definitely uh moments of tension and um really um intense conversations happening and I felt like we were able to navigate that well Dr Holt navigated it really well and got them to really
165hear what each other was saying but that that was really a parent and just for the record we did not know that ahead of time we just ask for people which goes to show that we didn't screen and say oh only these people or only that people only those people um we were just as shocked as the students but again that's a great opportunity because it helped us see what was really uh happening for young people when they noticed that police representatives were present it was very palpable in the room oh yes so this one of the questions we asked her was about our students hopes and fears when addressing policing in the community and you can see here that um there's a a hope that we have greater cultural proficiency knowledge and Equity based
166by all adults especially the police um I think um one of the things that also bubbled up was really thinking about how it's enforced and by whom and you'll see that later in the presentation all of our students did indicate that they feel supported and safe at school and um they recognized that police presence does not necessarily do that for many students of color and that um was something that they hoped that people would understand and take into consideration as we're we're having discussions and making decisions there was also um a hope about bringing more attention to the need for mental health supports and I think we heard a lot about that we've been hearing a lot about that at our last Community Forum we heard about that and it it was the same thing
167here there's a hope that we define the role of the police so that it's just really clear uh what is it that they are are expected to do or that we would like for them to do when they're on our campuses and that there's a big hope that all voices are heard equitably and that we really validate um uh the the members of our student groups that are coming forward and sharing their experiences now they also shared their greatest fears when we talked about policing in the community um and there is the sentiment that nothing is going to change and the feelings and experiences of black indigenous people of color are going to be invalidated not um made making them feel like their experiences don't matter uh there is a fear that Administration will continue
168to use police as an escalation um strategy and a threat to students kind of an intimidation strategy about calling police if they don't say or do certain things and again you know that was surprising to hear it was Illuminating to hear our students talk about that as a fear and then share some experiences that they either had or they they knew from a friend um one of the biggest fears is um how police interact with special education students a concern that that won't may not change um because there may not be the background knowledge of how to interact and how to deescalate and how um and even whether uh police should be interacting with special education students in that regard and a lot of concern around public perception about um police presence at certain schools
169and levels so as you heard earlier there is a perception about police primarily spending their time at our tan campuses where we do have a larger percent of children of color there and there's a concern about that and then um worry our students are worried about abuse of police Authority and police brutality and there's a fear there and that really on the flip side we heard from some students that said you know our biggest fear is that police are being seen and treated unfairly that um they also have fears and they've been exposed to a lot of different um traumatic situations and incidents and they also need mental health support and there's a fear that we're overlooking that piece uh as part of our um understanding and consideration of our relationship with the police so
170the other question we asked was how are police forming relationships positively because we didn't want this to be um you know any kind I'm a firm believer of no shame no blame no victims I'll say it again no shame no blame no victims when we have conversations about race we're really just going to talk about uh what our experiences are and use those iMessages and the kids were um remembered very it was almost you could see the the lightness in the air happen because I did ask these questions in this order and you could just see them go well I remember them being in elementary school and I felt safe and they gave stickers and they did little presentations on safety and they remembered that with uh with pride and and almost um uh Joy
171uh with that with the the stickers and the presentations and such uh we spoke about the youth Academy and the great program it was mixed responses some people spoke about these very um passionately I they had done great things for them others spoke at that were kind of negligible like ah well that didn't you know that doesn't mean too much so there was definitely a a difference in the responses there but overall those two programs were seen as a positive um there's the high school Explorer program and also the um police being career mentors for young people that are interested in going into law enforcement so there is a place there because there are students who want to go in law enforcement and want to interact with police officers and we have to um nurture
172those positive uh interactions as well the other question we asked them was what does black lives matter mean to you and um the fact that there there were differential responses on this students understood uh at for the most part black lives matter as a concept and some of them made connections to the economic and the political connections but it wasn't always there some of it was just what they had heard and uh that differentiated by grade level as well um some mentioned that it was the responsibility of learning is with the oppressor and the respons and the responsibility of teaching is not on the oppressed and I thought that those two statements uh which many kids when they heard them they went yep um and so the other piece was a basic human rights for
173fairness and equality and for some it meant black lives matter meant defund the police flat out no question about it and so that led us to know that the um perception or the thoughts around black lives matter differentiated amongst the group but for the most part they got it spot on that um it meant that we're going to move forward with an eye on how we're treating everyone in our system uh what do you hope happens as we address and so the by far the most uh most students wanted an acknowledgement of the harm that was being done uh the incident with a young man uh that was mentioned earlier was brought up several times and the students felt like there wasn't a enough of a response or an acknowledgement of what happened on the
174part of school officials or police officers and it was just kind of skirted over in some senses um they understand that the stigma that police have on campus and so making sure that everyone understands that police being on campus most kids know that that wasn't a friendly uh interaction they were there for a purpose and it was not to build relationships essentially um there is a certain stigma for that um uh they wanted they wanted folks to be more knowledgeable about the funding it was very clear that some folks understood where the money was coming from for police but they were they were more concerned with where is the funding going to support children who may have mental health challenges or some social emotional trauma that they need to have addressed and it may be
175showing up in their behaviors and therefore uh necessitating what some believe to be a need for police services and so um there was just like this connection that kids were making around that they wanted uh they hope that we'll get clarity around training and the role of police on campus I can't tell you how many times it came up that people want to be fear about what exactly is the purpose of police being on campus and so it's uh uh and we're going to talk a little bit more about how we can um if we decide to keep the police on campus what would that should that look like um they wanted to focus on deescalation above all uh that the police are uh that if children are having challenges we all know that kids
176in the frontal L which is where the executive functioning occurs does not developed uh at least to the age of 25 and so if we're working with young people who have of course been through a lot of trauma and especially right now as we're as we consider returning back they wanted young people to focus on deescalation and support explicit support for dealing with uh students with special needs and accountability around that and then they also wanted a distinction and they spoke about this um in stories oftentimes about what police do and what security guards on campus do uh there was often a very affectionate relationship or v um uh a more of a mentorship uh uh tone when they were speaking about their security guards which was not as present often times when they were
177talking about police officers so there may be some room uh for uh clarification there the next question we asked was what role has implicit bias played in experience with police with police officers and remember this was one of the terms that I defined earlier for the young people and then I had to redefine again just so we understood what implicit bias meant and um more so than anything they talked about the fact that police seem to be present at the school where more PE uh black indigenist and people of color attended there was one young lady who attended I don't know all the schools so please forgive me but she attended one of the schools that was not at typically tital one and she mentioned she had never seen one in all her years there
178seen a police officer where there were other people who said no I saw them every day so there was a huge difference in in that uh black and Latin X students are targeted and they don't know why um and so they put this in the co scope of racial profiling or in the scope of backpack SE or um or things that were going on on campus that appeared to them to impact uh students of color more um admin appears to contact police more for students of color and utilize as intimidation or threatening tactic this came up over and over and over again um around the use of intimidation I'm going to call the police on you or you better or and and around those uh those kind of languages uh with the with the young
179people and so that's something the kids did not appreciate and it actually led us to ask another question which I added and you'll see in a moment uh people who call the police are also responsible and they wanted to make sure that they understood that anybody who calls the police um uh may have to have their biases uh addressed as well and that police were seem to be called more frequently on students of color without actual data this is very hard to move forward on and again without actual data it's also very hard to combat and so this is why we have a lot of um information we're requesting around collecting data As you move forward uh what could community members and officials do to protect both law enforcement and citizens so this is a
180few of what they talked about first and foremost was address and educate the structures of systemic racism and implicit bias for everyone they believe everybody needs training the students the staff the community everybody needs to understand what this is um distinguish and share the different roles and responsibilities on campus make that very clear for everyone so that everyone can follow the rules as they been set out by the Board of Education um as being as expected um educ this was a huge one educate the educational community and the community at large around when to call the police and when and whom we could call for other lower level disputes um you know I I if a student is tapping their pencil or you know has just said you know a foul word or something like
181that that's not that doesn't Elevate to the level of police but it is uh some of the examples that the kids gave of why police were called because they couldn't um get a handle on the situation um keep conversations and opportunities to hear voices open and ongoing uh the kids all commented that more kids needed to be a part of these conversations to be able to have their voice heard and documented because we literally wrote down every single word every child said and have law enforcement interact with the community unarmed as regular people this goes to the concept of community policing and seeing police as people um in addition to their positions yeah so this one really this one was really interesting it um we focused on just the feeling of safety and what to
182do to ensure safety and our students told us contact our parents first um before the police um maybe we can have peer leaders or give us an opportunity to go to a teacher with whom we trust or a counselor whom we trust we ask the question you know do you have a safe space that you can go to and this is what what they said and then what was interesting that bubbled up part here was you know there's some things that we aren't going to share um with anyone on campus Because we recognize that they're mandated reporter requirements and so if that's the case then maybe there's an anonymous um location phone call website we can go to that's not directly connected to the school where we can still get the support that we need
183because we know if we say something on campus that you know you might have to call the police you might have to report you might have to call social services Etc and so we indicated that this is a certainly a subject that we need to explore further if police will be on campus Because you notice in all of the other questions there was a lot our students had to say in terms of what they hope and fear and resources and we got to the safe space there wasn't a lot there wasn't a lot um and they did comment yeah for some but we recognized that this wasn't one that they felt like they had a plethora of people that they could go to when they needed it so this question uh we talked about how
184can we heal and be heard when we have a conflict around power structure of policing and um it was great our students really talked about how they loved this forum that they had a safe space um it wasn't too large where they could communicate and have an open dialogue and be honest and Frank and candid and that was some of the criteria that I shared at the very beginning that it's only going to be as good as as our us willing to be able to be honest and share our experiences and our thoughts uh they also shared how important it is to have student presence and we've heard this before in student presence and voice at the board level so that they have opportunities to share feedback um to explore the possibility of an impartial
185third party for disputes or complaints um so if they have concerns that there's someone else that can come in and resolve it doesn't necessarily need to be the police that get involved and another aspect was really thinking about um having police officer and the language was oppressors being in the room is a challenge and we shared that earlier we had one session and that was the case and um and so when we got to this question about how can we heal and be heard we were told that that's really hard to have uh an oppressor their words in the room um with us as we're trying to be honest share information the students also told us we need other resources other than police and I think that's kind of a common theme in that um
186punishment and favoritism need to be mitigated are there Alternatives that we can Implement to um to help students understand and and recognize if they have demonstrated any type of behavior that may need um may need to be addressed uh but that police doesn't that doesn't always need to be the first step that we go to think of other Alternatives and then you see here through a restorative approach or restorative practices and then the other was you know seeing how we can engage the police so that they're involved with our community uh more positive interactions events activities so that the community can also heal and be heard and and feel like they can start building relationship with the police so again as we talked about a reminder of the system systemic change framework and as we
187talk about these recommendations that we're about to share uh please consider them in the framework of systemic change and uh Nicole's going to go deeper into that when we have our our board members able to um Express their thoughts uh around these recommendations and everything you've heard today we want to give you all an opportunity to process as well um in this initial uh Set uh uh setting and so here are our recommendations to go from here um and this is in general and then we'll talk about um if you're going to keep policing on campus we have specific recommendations if you're going to move in that direction so first of all continue to listen and collect data uh parent staff admin business uh police officers uh this was one segment of 25 children that
188we were able to find who volunteered and so we all know that the the statistical reliability and inv validity uh based on the sample size is going to be a challenge right but the process F thing is the process is there so it can continue and we are going to encourage you to do more of these um and enough of you saw me facilitated if I want me to come facilitated I most certainly can but we need to have these facilitated forums for kids to express their thoughts utilize existing cultural Club so one of the things the kids brought up in one of the sessions is that uh and I forget which high school it is forgive me for but they brought up the fact that they have these amazing cultural clubs um that were
189going on in the campus that kids were doing like either after school or at lunch and the kids actually felt safe and validated in these environments and so perhaps using those as a way to build up the schoolwide cultural um awareness and the systemwide cultural awareness because these young people are all studying and learning about their respective cultures and celebrating them and that's where we can go for more information insight and knowledge around what's what the kids really think and what's really happening for them field understanding about how and why policing and education is experienced differently by different populations I cannot stress enough how much this community needs to understand the history of both policing and education we all have to understand where it came from and why it looks the way it does in
190its current setting without that common knowledge we're struggling now to be able to have solid conversations because everybody's coming at this from a different perspective build cultural proficiency and equity in the schools uh this G goes to training uh what we've heard is just some teachers and administrators and adults quite frankly are not connected to the kids and the kids have said it um the the adults have have said that we don't feel as connected at times and so we have to figure out a way to build that within them uh discuss safety and what is needed for safety um yes this is in the context of policing but policing is in the greater context of safety in on campus and so what does safety look like and mean for different people on campus and
191let's have that conversation and then the last thing just in general is to develop an actual impact action plan which um Nicole Anderson and I can help and I believe are helping the district um work through but that Equity action plan needs to include voices that are in this room right now um so if we decide to keep policing on campus here are our recommendations first and foremost use the information gathered to determine and explicitly Define the police the role of police on campus and as you redesign and redefine schooling they need to know what uh what the police are there for and what they're not there for and thatou at my recommendation should include a clause that the police are expected to use restorative practices as a first Resort in dealing with children given
192that they are on your campus and yes that is possible for you as a district to put in there as you work through your legal team um with your legal team on that ensure all parts of the community are acutely aware of exactly what that role is um that just goes to communication and making sure that everybody knows why they're there if you're going to keep them there uh clear protocols on when they are to be contacted and what role they will serve so that kids everybody teachers everybody knows exactly what they should uh be doing around this um Define safe spaces on campus and ensure each student is connected to a trusted adult this was huge especially when it came to asking children where is your safe space if the police are called on
193you and that stumped them and that's of concern because if kids don't know where to go when an authority figure like a police officer is coming towards them uh that could really traumatize children for years to come uh collect and share data related to police matters and consider working on part in partnership with the police department for a concerted uh positive relationship development if you're going to keep them there so um what's happened since uh Dr Mo can speak to this yeah so it was really a positive experience for the students uh they were very grateful that they had a platform to to share and Sh and speak their truth and so as a result of that I've had a couple of follow-up sessions on student identified concerns and and one of which is going
194to be meeting with our counselors soon um because they felt and appreciated that how much their voices were part of the dialogue um and um we also at our last board meeting we heard um one our ASB student talk about student initi initiated programs and supports on a high school campus taking a leadership role in that so I think it just goes to the power of really engaging our students and listening to what they have to say and then um and partnering with them so that they know that we are here for them we are here working in deference to our students and we want to make sure that they have the uh schooling experience that is enjoyable so with that we want to that that kind of concludes the formal part of our presentation
195and we want wanted to give you an opportunity to respond so with this I will turn it over to my colleague and partner in this work Nicole Anderson to gather from the board some thoughts and ahas but again we're going to do that within the systems change framework Cole sure um if you want to stop sharing for them so we can um just have a dialogue um so yeah and this been a long presentation so I'm going to kind of make my comments closing comments very brief because I also know we'll have future study sessions together so a lot of what you saw tonight although it's specifically focused on the SRO and school safety I want you again to just talk to you as a board okay your your role as a Board of Trustees
196is governing through policy so I want to just remind us of that that a lot of what's been discussed tonight is talking a lot about practice right and like what people do and that's really the role of superintendent and staff and so I want to keep that very clear for you as a board because there's a lot of information that came to you tonight but in any decision you make whether it's this or anything else that comes across your desk remember your role and your role is to ask the right questions right and to really look at that data and be fully informed um but knowing that policy is what really is going to impact what happens at the ground level so when I say that go back to the systems change framework and just
197you know on your own time just go back to that article the water system change just to regroup but as you make decisions remember there's multiple layers to this system and as Dr Hulk said earlier whatever decisions you make remember there's a lot of layers to it and you can't just make a decision and think this is going to solve the problem now but then two years later when funding looks different right when policies change with the state federal level you never know all those implications for school we want this work to last we want it to be a system change versus just a knee-jerk response because we all acknowledge when Mr George Floyd was murdered that's where the energy around the nation looked very different when addressing system racism so this is not some
198decision you're just making about police right it's a little bit bigger than that and so whatever decision you make I want you to just practice using the systems approach model so that you can look at all of the conditions in the system including the relationships um that I heard including the power dynamics of whose voice is part of these decisions what are those practices what are those mindsets because that's going to be what you're wrestle with the most is whatever decision you make somebody's not going to be happy right whatever decision you make people have to believe in this work so the work you're doing now is going to really support the long-term effect and I want to say that while the community is engaged in this too because great effective boards who address the
199safety of kids they do that with a lot of thought around the systems approach it's not just about right now because we have a lot of energy in the room it's important um and I want to Echo what Dr Holt said it's important for people of color it's important for indigenous people is important for people anyone who has not had a voice has been oppressed and has not been able to really address this issue this is not something that happened when Mr George Floyd was murdered this has been hundreds of years worth of inequities in the system so you got to approach it in that way so I just say that to you as a board that you know we really lead this work not through emotion but we lead it through strategy and through
200our core beliefs so with that being said we want to just allow the board um to kind of follow their process so president Flores I'm not sure if you want to take from here in terms of questions discussion but we are super excited and thank you Dr Hall Dr Moore for your collaboration um with us and we look forward to following up on this in future study sessions so I want to just say that to the board because I know there'll be a lot of non-closure after this so certainly certainly I first of all um I would like to thank you on behalf of all our entire Community the board cabinets student trustees and everyone present um to you to Deborah to Dr Hol um and um really express my gratitude for this work that
201you have engaged with um not just this year but even before when we were engaged at a at a a countywide and for those that don't know Nicole Anderson and her team of Associates a terrific and ultimately professional exceptional team of Associates has engaged in um with several uh school districts not just here in our County but Nationwide uh regionally uh Statewide I mean I I see her in every conference and I hear about you in every conference um your work is well respect Ed and we are very honored and privileged um that you are supporting this work with our board and um as part of our County uh school boards Association Equity Network we are extremely humbled um and um some of the comments that were shared um primarily in the beginning spoke to
202my truth spoke to everyone's truth I believe and and they resonate and I I wholeheartedly wholeheartedly believe also about being a systemic approach because we don't just want to work on something now and forget it in six months and forget it in two years and say what happened with the work that we did in 2020 or 2021 this has to look at root causes which is very important I want to be brief so I do want to give an opportunity I'll start off with my panelists uh board colleagues student trustees if you have any initial reactions comments or questions we welcome them all just a point of clarification Mr President yes are we uh just talking about the presentation right now or are we moving on to our general we are just talking about this
203presentation yes okay I see Hands um truste Luhan go ahead please so want to thank you for the presentation it is good to see you um and I want to thank you for the grounding activities as you spoke about that and it's you know not just one system but there are multiple systems where we see systemic racism I couldn't help but remember a quote that I actually often share in one of the classes I teach at a local community college um our education system every educator that I know believes in making a positive difference for every single student however our system was founded on the idea that we will rake a few Geniuses from the rubbish Mr Jefferson um so with that it brought me to a very powerful place of the this isn't about
204one action this is really about educating the entire Community bringing everyone together healing um really looking at systemic changes and looking at data from a disaggregated approach for as often as possible so that way we can really look at impacts across the board positive negative where are areas of opportunity and I really just want to take thank you so much for taking us to that place thank you trusty Luhan uh trusty Murray well I couldn't say it better than uh trusty Luhan but um but I agree and I'd like to thank Nicole and Deborah and Dr Hol and I I really appreciate your helping to to focus us and and send us on our journey and I it's it's a journey that will be for as long as I'm on the board and and Beyond
205but um but we're we're learning a lot in terms of looking at entire systems and and um and not making quick decisions and uh I appreciate all of your work thank you thank you trusty Murray anyone else from the panel all right seeing none I will open up for questions um for Dr Holt Dr Moore or for Nicole Anderson from members of our audience um Miss Katrina or Katrina CD I see your hand is raised do you have a question okay no question I saw the hand so right now we don't have any questions in regards to this presentation or yes there is one there is two now um Mr s could you please unmute Miss uh speak speaker Russell Lee please and thank you please go ahead uh hi um I was just wondering
206um if like during the group when you were discussing a systemic yeah just like systemic forms of racism if the origins of policing and you know that like whole entire history was like discussed you know because like there is like a lot that has continued that is like imp that is just part of the institution itself and I think that's a big way to help understand why you know it's not just like imp implicit bias but it's like the policies that and the practices that police officers do with um black and brown people in our community and I was just wondering if like there dis if there was discussion on that part and um yeah I guess and as a comment can you please not have police officers in student groups thank you so yeah
207we did spend it wasn't a large part of the conversation but we did um to frame it for our students um talk about just the historical um implications and institutions of policing but it was very brief it wasn't an in-depth discussion because we had as you saw so many questions that we were trying to frame and and make sure all of our students had a chance to respond to great um moving on uh Marcel Rivera a question for regarding the presentation go ahead please yeah my first question is like if you guys are consultants and you people on the school board like especially on the school board you claim to have like really um like strong ties with the community and then you can't even get students to participate in your survey um so my
208question is why is that and then um my other question is why would you um sorry I forgot for a sec but yeah I guess it's my first question and then my second question is do you think that the other school districts who remov their police officers were doing it as a trend or to keep up or if they were too hasty in their decisions and are you questioning their integrity as a school district and decision makers for their students and then my third question was if students who are participating are saying that they understand the implications of having the negative implications of having police on campus even though if it doesn't directly affect them but they it affects that their their peers of color um why would you continue to have this association with
209the police so I think the first question if I heard correctly was about why student participants I think we raised that question it was certainly wasn't lack for lack of trying but I think that there's more to explore why we didn't have more students that were willing to engage and participate um I I don't have a comment about other districts I think here we are just trying to do our due diligence and really understanding and making sure that we hear from our community that as we heard early a representative sample of our community so that we can make an informed decision and as we do that we're thinking about through systemic change which which means that it can it permeates from The Boardroom to the classroom and beyond all throughout our system so that it
210becomes part of the culture not something that happens and then um when people leave then um it goes away Etc and so um I I I don't know that we were making any comments about other districts we're talking specifically about what we believe here uh the approach should be to make sure that it becomes internalized and systematized here in South San Francisco Unified and I missed the last question so I can I can add to Dr Moore um that question about other districts and I can jump in on that just because I have the the luxury of working with lots of districts and this is not a a unique topic to just South San Francisco um yes there are districts who have made decisions about removing their uh terminating their uh relation ship theyou with
211police there are others who have not made that decision and doing like you're doing where you're being methodical about it you're want to make that decision to have a lasting change um but I can say that no district is the same so Marcel to answer your question um when you mentioned about like why why didn't you why do you not have so enough kids you know who are wanting to be a part of this and I just want to just remind you this is new this is a new discussion um just nationally around being very very real about a topic that is very sensitive and so even even students saying Hey I want you to give me your opinion everyone doesn't feel safe to talk about that and that came up so that in itself
212is a culture that has to be created and I just commend your District on actually starting this process to create a safe space for students to even know like hey adults you want to hear me like that is a power Dynamic that has never really been embedded in the school system so whether it's police or grades or any topic um getting a lot of Student Response is actually not NE necessarily the norm until there's a culture that's created and a process and so that's what Dr Hol was referring to and so looking at other districts we work with we're actually in the same process with them they're working to get get more feedback more involvement and also I heard very clearly you say earlier the diverse perspectives right there are certain kids voices who were
213not heard who they don't want to show up and again you got to remember this is about safety and about power dynamics and if people don't feel safe based on historical Trends around a addressing things that are near and dear to their heart you're not going to necessarily see them show up and then remember the school district is working on building relationships and trust with students knowing that hey you hear my voice and then you have to do something with that information and that's a process so I just want to say it's a great question um in many districts are wrestling with it is not unique to your District um but I do want to commend you on you're very intentional and you all are really wanting to um um do this process right and
214so students you know I hate saying this but it's a go slow to go fast process and you got to be patient with us adults because remember we've been doing this for a while and this is not something that's easy to unpack but it is um an open door I hear your superintendent which we don't have a lot of superintendent saying hey students I'm gonna be sitting with you myself that does not happen often and so I just want to remind you you're in a very unique Place take advantage of this but also recognize it's a work in progress and it's not perfect but it's definitely a move and step forward you should should be really proud of so I just encourage you stay engaged with the work because this is great great historical work
215you're doing on behalf of generations to come I hope you can see that as students thank you Nicole I appreciate that answer um Mr SIM can you please unmute uh doloris Piper I thought the Pres Michael please I thought the presentation was excellent um and and being as my nephew Derek Gaines was brought up several times tonight when he was executed by a South City Cop Joshua cabil after a period of total grief and and and mourning I set out to understand about policing and I often tell people over the last eight years I have gotten another degree and that's an understanding systemic racism and what's involved in policing and how police react and act only to policy and that's why I've tried to encourage members of the council the San Francisco uh C South
216City Council to review the policing policies that that govern how these cops act I am currently on a committee in this San Francisco and we are rewriting the anti-bias policing policy for the for the department and so this has been a huge learning situation for me and I I really appreciate the thoughtfulness that went into this presentation I think the entire Community has to hear and see what this is about because nobody understands policing and and the history of policing thank you thank you very much um Liliana Rivera do you have a question specific to this presentation please go ahead hi um yeah my question is about the responses that some of the students gave about you know the way that they see cops treat Kids on Campus and it sounds like it's a pretty
217resounding negative they're basically saying this is not about building relationships this is about kids getting in trouble for silly things right that's what you said in your presentation so I guess my question would be to everyone in this meeting how much more harm has to be done before you act with urgency how many more kids have to be harmed how many more kids have to go to jie how many more kids have to be roughed up by a cop what is the limit if this is what you're hearing how many more times do you have to hear it before you do something I don't understand how you can get these answers these kids are telling you directly this is what we're experiencing I don't know how many more times you need to hear the same
218thing before you do something about it what is the upside of keeping kids in a situation where where they're being harmed or where their peers are being harmed who's benefiting from that why would you hesitate when you know that you can make these kids have a better situation when they're going to school day in and day out why would that be something that needs to be done slowly and I'm looking specifically at members of the board like Luhan and Pat Murray who say well we have to be thoughtful we have to do this slowly if that was your kid would you say no we have to wait or would you do something about it that's my question we will have uh time for a board comment and feedback following these last two hands um Katrina
219CD speaker please go ahead um and ask your question yes thank you um I also have worked in different departments in the city um one with childcare second in library um and just growing up in Sou and intimately knowing um the Youth of the city especially on the east side um when we talk about safe spaces I want the board to know because you guys don't walk these Halls daily you don't know what it feels like to walk in their shoes and I really encourage when school does open up you do so um but there is a a undercurrent of snitch culture and I mean that really develops around the fear of what can happen to you when Authority steps in for people of color especially marginalized communities so I want to want you guys
220to really know this that at third grade these kids know the repercussions of what happens when authorities step in that something bad can happen to you that you can be taken away your siblings will go to juvie so this creates a culture of fear in the school this is why people are not reaching out for your survey because our systems do not protect them they have no margin as children to make mistakes and so they attack each other for snitching and we're not creating safe spaces and I hope we do um to get that Outreach is honestly you could be going to first period and have having 15 minutes of class time to initiate that survey you have all the resources to make it happen it does posting up on a website no one knows
221that's there you have first period sixth period PE Home Room you have all the opportunities to do so and I hope that second time around with real data that happens thank you thank you and bless you to the little one there that was sneezing um last member of the public and then we will take a 10-minute uh break for the transcriptionist is Andrea Sims speaker Andrea Sims please go ahead and ask your question hi yes um I will uh keep it pretty brief and I hope that my previous questions that I earlier asked in this meeting um will be answered at some point tonight as I do want to clarify that my questions were not answered after I spoke in my first comment um but after seeing this presentation I do want to ask and
222just you know from what I gathered from the uh presentation was if you're saying that it's important to keep students safe that cops are a part of the systematic racist problem that we have in our country and the data shows that cops don't make our students feel safe then why are we still considering them to still be on our campuses uh I yield my time thank you um I also want to REM mind members of the public um I appreciate very much we all appreciate your questions some of them came um out of qu at a very fast rate so if uh any of us missed your questions or they are not addressed again I will repeat uh there is email you are welcome to email all of us um we're more than happy to
223follow up there is no intentional mean of avoiding a question or forgetting about a question um it's just that some of them were asked very fast and some I see some of my colleagues writing really quickly to try to cover all of them um it is 8:46 we will now take a recess Break um for 10 minutes and be back at well it's 8:47 now so we'll be back at at 8:57 we'll go recess thank you thank you everyone care Al righty it is 8:57 we will um resume our meeting once again thank you everyone uh for staying engaged um we will move on now to our final item in our agenda for information and discussion um under Administration item 1A South San Francisco Police Department resource leason officers on school campuses the board will
224discuss the data and the feedback regarding the relationship with the South San Francisco police department and determine any next steps to take uh to support the needs of South San Francisco Unified School District trusty Baker I see you unmuted did you wanna in here to rip off the Band-Aid or um okay uh well first again thanks to all our presenters all three groups um you know this is very much an issue that my privilege has up to now informed my perceptions I was an Explorer Scout I was a dispatcher you know so I've always had a good relationship with law enforcement and the Justice Sy system seems to work for me but I'm also in the position where I recognize what Dr Holt said it was designed to work for me um you know when
225I'm at a board meeting I I like to listen to my colleagues or experts on issues I listen to trusty Murray when there's a question on PTA issues or fundraising I listen to trusty Lan when we're talking about school administration so I think I'd be really remiss right now if I didn't listen to our two student trustees Miss ryal Cruz and Miss Vino and their thoughts on the topic um you know they're there and they said and this is paraphrasing um that they students feel overp policed they feel fearful and this is what I'm hearing from some of our most accomplished students and if there's one thing being on this board has taught me it's that when someone says they have a problem you got to believe them you know there are community members who
226say that officers add something and I agree officers can but that's partially at least countered by the fact that when I read this report I'm seeing an undercurrent of fear among a lot of our students you know no student should be afraid on our campuses especially by not not by someone we invite into them you know and right now I'm having a hard time seeing good things that outweigh that fear um I agree and I think it was uh Brenda and her part of the presentation that pointed out that the lack of anou is troubling you know over the summer and just indulge me on this it will just take a second um I I said we should have a memorandum of understanding and I listed those five elements you know a clear definition what
227the roles are directions to staff about when police should be involved agreement with the PD about training no arrest for off- campus Etc officers may be wearing business clothing I'll stop sharing now um yeah those are the minimum requirements I'd be comfortable with if if we're going to continue an SLO program and if we can't agree if with the police on them if or they can or they won't you know maybe we should think of Alternatives um there are going to be times when we need a police officer on campus and when those times come I do want it to be an officer who specifically to train to deal with the needs of our students um rather than just some officer coming in not on his regular shift who may be stressed by another situation
228I I said earlier I used to dispatch and I could tell when I sent a non SRO officer to a school campus that you know they weren't really happy to be there I because that's not their specialty I think we do need to have specialty students that deal with students um chiefa a party a few months ago told us that we see so many police encounters on our campus because we're the ones calling them in to me that kind of means that we can make the SLO program largely obsolete by calling police fewer times and that to do that it's going to take more counselors it's going to take more more training of our staff and restorative justice may also mean us asking in a short in the short term more out of our slos
229until such time we can eventually ease them out so I'm going to be listening to my colleagues here and I'm going to be asking them do you think we can make progress if we have a good s soou do you think that the relationship at the PD can be saved should it be saved because what's happening right now is not working for our students and I yield thank you trusty M uh sorry trusty Baker I appreciate you sharing um Samantha AA Gomez uh thank you for sticking around I really appreciate it um I know that you are a student and um and you're still around so thank you and I also want to say um for the other presenters that were with you if they got logged off for one reason or another they are
230certainly welcome back in and they are more than welcome to join in this discussion and conversation to provide questions or feedback please go ahead Samantha um so I just wanted to save my comments throughout the whole agenda and all the three items that were brought up just into one because I think they all correlate especially because I was involved in every single process of them so for the sessions I honestly felt like the whole presentation was sugarcoated it really was I was in those sessions and I talked to students about those sessions and was one of those students that was in the session with a dispatcher and that session did not feel safe for me that session was me debating my beliefs and my friend stories and how we've been interrogated by cops and how
231we've been treated by cops and how I said like I don't feel safe around cops and people shared that same value and felt like that was their belief as well and what we had was two dispatchers coming at us and going going against what we had to say and the dispatchers said it um one of the dispatchers said it themselves they said that ssfpd was racist but because they're a dispatcher of color they don't allow it to happen around them which I think is concerning because just because someone's a person like just because they're there doesn't mean the cops aren't still racist they're going to be racist behind closed doors just because they aren't doing it to you doesn't mean it doesn't happen and next is the survey the survey was honestly really sad um
232everyone already dragged it so I won't comment too much on it but I will say that there's so much more that we can be doing I work with changes SF obviously because I was giving the presentation on behalf of them and part of our Coalition is building with other groups and that's Mission meals so we give out food to the community and it's really hard to connect with people through this pandemic um because there is a digital divide in South City you know the way that we contact them is through phone calls and at times we have to have two or three people call them because they don't even answer their phone I think it's also concerning I know these meetings run late but it's also concerning that we had them at 5:30 because if
233we think about it okay the working class gets off at 6:00 maybe 6:10 because they have to check out they have to do their whole routine and then they go home they come home tired and what is it like a let's say it's a 20 minute drive home so now it's like 6:30 now they've already missed like one hour of this board session and I think that's just things that we need to think about if we're talking about the working class now youri sorry not to mention names but she did give her public comment about the vulgarness they sent me the screenshots of what was their message and it was nothing vulgar at all there was not a single bad word in there and I think when we talk about Derek Gaines we have to
234stop saying gentleman we have to stop saying young man because Derek Gaines was a 15-year-old boy there's no sugarcoating that he was 15 years old he was an afro Latino boy and we have to talk about him when we talk about slos you know why because he was a South San Francisco high school student you know what Joshua Cabo was an SLO that is how he met Derek Gaines that's how he was harassing students at South San Francisco high schools and the other schools he would literally tell them that he was going to get him and all his friends what's it going to take to remove slos another Derek gains because that's going to be so sad and so tragic and honestly it really feels like every time we talk about him we always forget
235the you the board really spits at his name all the city officials really spit at his name and don't really hold that and I don't know why because Derek Gaines was 15 he had a whole life ahead of him and it was because Joshua kabo again that's how he met Derek Gaines he met him at a school this is the effect of SLO officers and I don't know why we're not understanding that and the second point is we're talking about student input and how we're not really getting it but yet when we had four students mind you two of them were Filipina girls and then the other two were Mexican girls that's really representative that's a large portion of South San Francisco Unified School uh the South San Francisco Unified population but then there were
236no questions asked but then when Chief Jeff as a party presented for two consecutive meetings for like amounting to an hour you are conversed with him you asked questions you were engaging you say that you want student input but then when it's suddenly about removing slos it's just we are treated like this was a school assignment it's just really concerning and that's just all I had to say um again this is the SLO program is $500,000 or is about half a million dollars a year and if the ssfusd community can come together and push the city if we can remove slos out of our school and then push the city to put these programs and whether that be to Bringing art classes or building um we always font about foror why don't we help build
237foror finally a parks and their Parks and Rec program finally a dance studio why don't we put the why don't we invest why don't we put why don't we push the city to reinvest this money and there's just so much potential in South City and I wish everyone saw it I wish everyone saw the potential and these brown and black kids that go to these schools that are trying I talk to e kids and literally it's so sad because some of them are getting off work at this time think about how much $500,000 how many daaka applications that can fill for El immigrant students think about how much money that can go into giving some of these students the opportunity to find themselves and whether that be art or music or just all these government
238all these programs that we can fund with 500 almost half a million dollars a year and that's just all I implore of you I'm I'm literally begging you to come together and let's finally we say that we care about our students let's come together and reinvest in them thank you thank you Samantha and I just want to call out your your bravery you you are very brave because um and I want to commend you because uh you're it's probably and and very likely that this is very hard for you to speak up like this and and mention and share your truth and and I want to acknowledge that um and I wanna also say that um if we've let you down or if we you felt let down um I want to apologize because it
239has not been intentional at least from members of this board um any other questions or comments from my colleagues or feedback to Dr Moore which is this item actually yeah this is an opportunity for the board to discuss your ahas what you heard what you're reflecting on from tonight's three presentations and the feedback that you heard Luhan go ahead please thank you for the opportunity um president Flores so as I sit and I listen um my heart and is at a place no matter what where I want every student to feel safe and as I listen this evening and as I have listened not every student feels safe um for and and we need to get there that would be what I would like to have happen I agree that it is concerned in that
240there's noou in place that some sort of agreement just outlining the relationship would be incredibly helpful um but anou is anou and if we are to bring systemic true change we really do need to look at support across the board Community um students staff administration every Community partner that we partner with to really look at system like bias having honest conversations about bias and racism and judgments that are made and decisions that are made on that split-second like just split second observation um and so I think for me yes anou is helpful but I think that we need to engage in the longer harder work and I know I I know that that is not the popular answer among the public but I also know that one quick action doesn't mean that we're leading to
241that systemic change that we all desire and one quick action might make an immediate feel safe for right now but it's six months down the road there's going to be another problem that surfaces from the fact that we have not addressed that core problem of really looking at the heart workk and opening up those hard conversations and I don't want to come back to the same to to address another surface problem because we have not done the hard work and so for me I think I would like more data longer term theou really looking at how do we create that systemic change and open up spaces for students and staff Administration across the community Community Partners to really look at systemic racism um and engage in those conversations and I think also just a good
242practice moving forward as I really looked at the data um was we probably should make a like it would be great if to the extent possible disaggregating the data whenever we can um just so that way we can get that sense of who did we actually engage um and who are we impacting who are we hearing from because then we start getting a sense of who are where where are the voices that aren't where are the voices that we're not hearing from thank you trusty Luhan uh trusty Mary you have your hand up yeah hi um basically I was gonna say very much what uh trusty Luhan said um we can end our relationship right now but that's not going to take away the problems um the the problems will still exist and so I
243I would like to to have some sort of agreement I I read the recommendations of the the board the recommendations of the the focus group um I have to say you know 25 students on the focus students and alumni on the the um the focus group and and the the the people community members on uh thought exchange and you know the the probably 25 um community members that come and speak and right to us is still a very very small number of people we have 8,400 schools and um I mean 8,400 students yeah we do not have 8,400 schools no no we don't we have 8400 students and um and all of them have families and so really I would like to see how the police are interacting with our students better dat you know
244what the interactions are and and you know what the the results are um I would like to hear from the students that we're not hearing from and um I uh you know I having I had three children go through this District they were white kids so they may not have had the the same experiences as a lot of our students but um but we we had um from the time they were in elementary school we had the police and this was Monty verie so it wasn't a title one school we had the police on campus quite often and um they were there um in a good way they were they were teaching our kids and you know I I think about when my kids were little and they didn't like something or they were afraid
245of something I didn't just take it away I taught them the value in whatever it was and um and I think having officers one of the recommendations of one of the kids in the focus group having the officers there at a younger age and maybe building relationships um is a good thing um I so I I would say that the recommendations that were written were very good um more data um your recommendations included it didn't spec explicitly sayou but it it did say um to that you would um come up with an agreement with the police department and share that agreement with our our community I think that would be a good thing so that's my my thought on it thank you uh trusty Murray uh vice president Richardson uh thank you uh president Flores
246I have a perspective that um I I think that we got I from my perspective I mean I I've always seen this I've been in this community for years decades 30 40 years I think in my 20s I was raising my three sons and believe me it's not easy three sons but I've seen the product of this um education under um South City Style of discipline before if you were chewing a gum you were suspended but I've seen strides over the years and I was pleasantly surprised when I came on the board and I saw that there has been real change uh from when it what it used to be and kids were expelled left right and Center so I've seen that but also seen the uh some of the things that we are studying
247now and I saw this um part of the exchange uh questionnaire and I I just think that we we need to separate what we can we what we are entitled to have as a community when we hear people say that people think the public parents think think that if we take slos out that our children will be in some way in Jeopardy that the police won't come if there's a shooting on campus of course that's not true the police will continue to come if there's a a problem with guns or any kind of uh threat to the community they have to that's part of their their laws you know the the commitments that they have and to protect the community so I think there's a misconception to to think that parents have to feel that
248they need to have these people on on campus and that's something that we need to work at and and and tell the public hey you know it doesn't mean that your your child will be endangered and killed which they already are but it doesn't it doesn't translate into the it doesn't justify having an SLO on campus um if my from my point of view this is a funded program by the city funded by a half cent sales tax that it's on the ordinance that the police uh that the community will pay for this program based on this uh tax half cense sales tax it's supposed to uh it they even say it it's for gang Rel relation programs or suppression programs so the city the city is doing their thing but our role here is
249to allow access what are we are we going to continue to allow access for these people to come on campus because that's that's the question that's in a nutshell do we as a board allow these people on campus and are our kids any unsafe or safer if they're not and the the answer to that is that the police will have to tell you your children are not any less safe if uh we don't have a a SLO on campus that's just the reality and we just have to separate the myth from the reality and what our board our board responsibilities are and that's that's my position thank you vice president Richardson I wanted to if I may ask um Nicole um I totally see that there is um a lack I wouldn't say lack of
250well perhaps there is lack of Outreach right because the sample size it's not justifiable in Any Which Way um how would you advise reaching students that that we were not able to yet um and to be able to create not just a safe space but a but a brave space so that they are able to engage and provide their their truth yeah that's a great question um I always go back to um thinking about the role of different um people in the system and I always think about who's closest to kids and it's typically teachers and your site administrators and so I think about you know what is their role in all of this and um how they can be a part of that process but it's it's bigger than just hey it's this one
251event I need you to get 30 kids from your school 30 I mean you can you can say that right but it's more about the why of it and I think there's a culture that has to be created around even you know a principal or a teacher say he I'm going to call these kids that I have good relationships with I need to hear your input but remember the kids that we're wanting to hear from typically are the ones that also may be subjected to not having the best relationships with staff so that's why it's so complex and so I think you have to it's bigger than just start with let's Outreach and let's you know just do it it's more about let's talk about what is professional learning look like for the staff so
252then they can be a part of this process too because I think they're the ones that have the closest relationships to students and then I would say the other is um to create a culture you have to communicate so I see the board playing a role and how do you communicate right your vision around this um the importance of this work um how does that look from principles to their uh teaching staff right when they coordinate the um professional learning spaces at each school so I think there's a collective effort so it's not as easy as just go do this there's really kind of go back to systems approach um but the other is this I think the students can also play a huge role I feel like students can facilitate this um they just
253need the platform they need the support from adults to um you know to orchestrate it but I can see students facilitating these same conversations where they feel safe with each other um and I think as Samantha said you know being in a space with people that they trust right but also learning like guiding our students on how to facilitate these conversations because remember I heard Dr Hol say some kids didn't feel the same as others and that is um you know the reality is I think um trusty Murray said you know we only had 25 kids right so that does not give us like the big picture so I think the out reach has to be very intentional um and and I think I heard um you know one of your community members say you
254know out out like in the community if you don't walk the streets of the community which again during covid that's really hard right but had we been like where we were in school one of the things we would have said is hey this has to be more Outreach and do your Equity walks right go do community walks go learn so that you can create that relationship and safety to pull people in and get their perspective so it's a process um but I guess you know short answer that was the long version but the short answer is we got to consider what is the role of our site leadership also our teachers in this process because they are the ones that have the closest relationship to students and I think they can also help answer that
255because they probably have some some strategies as well um because they have their own student form and platforms that happen in schools all the time right that we may be able to leverage the clubs the student council um I even say talking to your assistant principles and V folks who deal with discipline there's a whole club of kids who don't get acknowledged that uh those are usually my favorites right the ones who came through my office when I was a dean assistant principal I had a whole club of kids we could do a p a student Forum because they were with me in Saturday school right because they were truing or they it's the kids who don't fit the box of what we call success and I think what you're gonna have to consider is
256as you hear their voices how do we still value those voices even though they don't fit the box for success in what we think students should say and that's going to be the harder part of the work is when their truth doesn't align with ours so there's a lot to that President Flores and and I gave you the long answer again instead of the short version but hopefully that helps I I think still on mute sorry I appreciate that I appreciate the context and the details um this is all a process like you're saying yeah um Abby did you have a question or I know that I saw your hand at one point I want to make sure that um I just wanted to um bring up something that vice president Richardson said Richardson said
257about access and how if we don't um I heard this earlier but one of the board members said that it's not going to stop the core problem but it will stop a lot of problems by continuing the access you're you're going to continue allowing these slos to racially um to racially profile our students and to allowing them the access to for admin to admin to continue to threaten our students and I don't know just we've already seen so much data so much voices student voices tonight and we've already seen a lot of um real perspectives of actually walking in the shoes of these students yet we still want more data we still want more voices but we've already had so much of that tonight and I hope you all just don't turn a blind eye
258on that because it took a lot of Courage for these ladies to be able to present and it just feels like we're back at step one so I just hope that um with this like with tonight like we don't take a step backwards we're able to move forward or actually get to the root of the problem that was mentioned earlier but Dr Hol mentioned earlier about how this is a really interesting time that we're in right now you know we're fighting racism we're in a pandemic and that's why it is so different from past students experiences like we are or my generation at least is going through High School in a very different way and although we don't have to deal with these L right now like these future Generations will and I don't want
259to have to worry about these students having to worry about being racially profiled or being threatened because of the things that they do and it's just really disheartening you know just from a student's perspective but um I hope that we're able to make that change moving forward thank you Abby uh trusty Murray I know that you had your hand up at one point or another just want to give you an opportunity or not yeah yeah um a a couple of things um as I said you know this is I I I so appreciate all of the students and and I sat in on the on I think every single one of the focus groups and um or observe them and I I so appreciate their their truths I mean it is what it is and
260and um but even speaking in in the focus group I mean it takes a certain amount of Bravery to do that and um and so I appreciate that we talked about getting having like a student Advisory Group at one point and as I was listening during the um during the focus groups I thought that was something that we could work on um I think we talked about it at the end of last year where we brought students in and uh not just student leadership but stud students who would join this group and kind of like Jefferson High School has so um so you know that that might be a way to kind of bring more more students in um and and the atypical students too you know not not just the honor students but all
261the kids um I I do think that um the police are are part of our community I've said this before um it's not just the police officers but their children are in our schools many of them are our neighbors um many of them are um you they they're like a a really a part of our community and um and so I think putting you know following the recommendation um of setting some rules and and having a a I think you it said having a regular meeting with students and and the um and the the police department and staff I think that's I I think we used to do that a long time ago I think Ryan said that um you guys used to have meetings every so often I don't know but you know building
262that relationship rather than just throwing throwing it out is is I think is important and so that's my opinion thank you trusty Murray um Dr Moore I could do you mind pulling up the presentation again um and uh yes Dr Hol was sharing it so give me one second okay and and go to the the slides where the pullet points um in particularly the one titled um what could community members or school officials do to protect both it's almost uh a little bit past the middle this one yes and and the reason why I bring this one up is because I do want to call out that we do have a school district um city council um liaison committee that has had a strong partnership with the city in terms of communication and bringing up
263topics that relate at a larger scale a systemic scale right so I wanted to look at these and and bring it up to to my colleagues to see if there's any appetite that you guys could think we could address these um any of these um in a subcommittee liaison level um to start putting these forth again looking at the systemic impact right that affects not just within our schools but South San Francisco and our community if there is any appetite or openness um if anyone wants to weigh in or or trusty Murray since you're also Serv Ving in this committee with me yeah I I think that it's certainly something that that can be brought up um at a subcommittee meeting um I think that the the commission on racial and Equity uh racial and
264and social Equity um commission is working on on policing and um I I I think just got a grant to have social workers go out on or maybe therapists go out on some of the calls um that that that would benefit from a a therapist or a social worker as opposed to the police coming in uh being the the first Contact um so certainly I think we can bring up any of these things yeah I believe that the program is actually just one Health worker assigned to one city um there's no mention it's a pilot program but it's it's no mention of social workers yet I mean it is pilot at the pilot level countywide three or so four series I was looking at the third bullet educating the community and when to call the
265police and other people to call uh for low level disputes um I I I feel like perhaps this this is something that we could agendize for a committee in upcoming um liaison committee um and I think uh it was uh public speaker Dolores Piper that mentioned that this this presentation or the earlier part that Dr Hol brought forth um Nicole um should be meant should be shared with the rest of the community right and and education because how do we attack misinformation how do we start changing Concepts and and systems is by education and bringing in the light right to to educate our our community members at at all levels um I I'm I'm looking at that and I also wanted to look at um if you could go two more slides Dr Moore please
266one there in that one um the other point there adults need other resources than police to address student issues um and going back to Nicole's point of we could use our own site leaders our own principles right to start perhaps putting some of these bullet points at the site level as well um these are immediate things that we can get rolling on um and and again this is at the at the pleasure of the board I am one of five um but I bring these as as other uh very important and very eminent ways that we can start addressing it it has to be multi- promp right it can't just be one level at least that's how I I see it in my opinion we have to and I don't want to use the the
267the word attack but we have to overcome it and really put provide reinforcement uh the calvary has to come out in terms of making sure that we're addressing it at different faces at different levels so that we're moving all forward at the same um looking at the same need thoughts or questions or comments or anything from my board would it be okay if I chimed in on that slide please go ahead yeah one thing me is it still open can you still see it yeah it's we're I think we're good now um I I just wanted to speak no it's off now so it's fine I just wanted to speak to that piece about the um the city's role in this because remember um you all have to wrestle with even how police are funded
268right thatou conversation all that's important but also you have to remember the role of the city and the role of the school district sometimes look very different and the relationship you have is going to be something to really consider moving forward regardless of what decision you make what does this look like to come with that relationship because if there's not a Readiness at the city level so you have to look at the culture of you know City leadership the role of city council um the role of the police department in terms of even the the education in itself and the willingness and I shouldn't say the willingness the Readiness that's the key word the Readiness um because I've seen it in multiple spaces where this is an issue that comes up um but the reality
269is that your agency and the agency of the city sometimes is very different the role is different so even allowing some collaborative efforts to happen I think is really powerful um to think about what does that partnership look like because remember policing is one segment of the community but your children are going to be the future citizens in the community in the community and so the city sometimes doesn't know the perspective I call it the youth or young people right they don't know so encouraging the city to also be a part of having this youthful voice be a part of their decision- making and then inviting them to do some listening session where they can hear because sometimes they don't know and I think establishing that space so they know how to respect young people's
270voices while also understanding that um we have to recognize it may not be our truth and this is a very sensitive topic when we talk about the safety of Officer safety of community sometimes that can be very sticky because I think I heard some of you say uh one of you say you know officers also have children right officers are part of a community and so the national narrative has created a different level of of safety right to even talk about it so I think those those steps that you saw on the screen are absolutely recommended but just keep in mind there is a relationship you're going to have to consider and the Readiness of your District versus the police department versus City leadership and again all of the Community Partners who play a role
271in this because it does take a village to raise a child and we have to remember that um and talking about racism is not just although there's a lot of energy in the streets right now everybody from an Institutional space is not ready to talk about racism so you got to be mindful of how you approach that um it can be a barrier to the work as well so thank you for pointing that out appreciate that perspective uh trusty Murray um you know another thing that I didn't see on the recommendations but something that I think we'd spoken about before is making it clear to our um assistant principles or whomever's call calling the police have have clear guidelines for them as well when the police should be called and when they shouldn't and I
272think uh Chief AA party told us at one point that um they come on campus when they're called and and then listening to the focus group I remember that uh one of the kids said or I think it was part of the the presentation was that um they felt like um oh when they were talking about the security guards and um I think was on here the security guards and the police or and the the assistant principals saying that um if they don't do X then the police will be called uh that's I I don't know if that's true I mean it's it's their truth but I'm not sure what actually happens but something I don't know if Dr Moore if you've already followed up or checked into that but I I think that's something
273that it there can't be a you know if if you don't do this than this and I think that talks to uh speaks to the uh power dynamics and and and that makes the police right there that makes the police the bad guys and um the the the students should be disciplined if they need to be disciplined but the the the threat of holding the police over their head should not be a part part of the conversation my opinion yeah I can I just speak to that and I I don't want to take a lot of the airspace but I just want to say just using real live example and I'll use myself when I was an assistant principal we did have SRO on campus and and there were reasons why we needed SRO on
274campus um however when I look back in my experience when I was first an assistant principal I came into a system where there was just this is how we did it remember the whole water of system change conversation and the fish swimming in the water and it's like well what's water this is just how we've always disciplined kids at school and it took me a couple of years to kind of figure out like wait I'm in a powerful position where I can actually change that but remember I was an assistant principal we also had vice principal we had principal and so there was a kind of a dynamic of things that we I don't think even recognize we were perpetuating in terms of racial inequities through policing now I do want to say that there
275were moments and I I even think about my husband who was very protective right of me working in a high school where there was criminal activity don't get me wrong and there was a need at times to have police but I do want to say this the relationship was What mattered and so having a relationship with officers in terms of staff and the police to be very clear with we are the authority figures at the school and the officers we had a culture where the officers would ask me Nicole Anderson what Miss Anderson what would you like and that was something we established because remember we had treny issues where officers were bringing kids back to school right they were trying to be supportive and trying to figure it out but again it was established
276what we do here and that has to be discussed in defense of your principles your assistant princip Vice principles some things are just kind of baked into this is just how we do it and so it's going to require you to rethink your policies you're going to have to look at the discipline Matrix you're going to have to go back to it and and again your role as a board I want to remind you is not to get too Stuck In The Weeds remember this is the role of the superintendent and her staff right so what you have to think about is what policies at the board level are impacting what happens at schools and that's where you have to go back to your own review of your policies um as a board what does
277safety look like what are our discipline policies exposion suspensions you set that tone through policy and then it's implemented at the site level and some things are done differently than in other sites than others but there has to be a framework for How We Do discipline so it's consistent because if not then you kind of leave it up to different personalities different culture at one school another school so it needs to be clear and if it's not clear then you kind of leave it up to the adults to make those decisions which is what you see right is this is just how we've done it and so until the students have been able to share their experiences we kind of didn't think of it in that way right we didn't think about it because it
278didn't impact us as adults in this same with impact kids and so I leave you with you know after 20 plus years as an educator and first being in an assistant principal role who dealt with student discipline who worked with SRO I am reflective and there are some things I could have done differently so I say to you there is definitely something to be thought of when you asked um truste Murray about this can't be happening at the sites and it's like yeah I think it may be happening but you got to ask more questions a lot of times it's not intentional it's just a culture and so without calling that out and doing training for your staff then you you will you know unfortunately I don't want you to hold people accountable without providing
279support first and making sure they're aware that's gonna be very important or else you're gonna have be counterproductive and we don't want to blame as Dr H said we don't want to blame shame anybody we want to come together be aware and learn and then make an informed decision thank you once again vice president Richardson and then trustee Luhan uh okay so I believe that your last statement um is it Miss Hol uh what she said and there's that inconsistency then that's true of our district because there's three schools that do not have compulsory slos and we're unified and I've said this repeatedly so there's that there's that so we have to clean up our own house do we want to be consistent across the board if we want to keep slos or are we
280just because what the information I have that I received from the district was that we didn't that these three schools which are in another city two cities those are on a uh invitation basis it's not compulsory there's no regular schedule of their slos like it is so there in lies the rub there's only certain schools that are targeted and I have a problem with that thank you vice president Richardson trusty Luhan thank you for the opportunity um in thinking back or and stepping back and really looking at the role of the board the board is the role of the board is to to set policy um and so it is to look at things like we review memorandums of understanding we look at what are our current policies as they relate to discipline um and
281that also relates to exactly why I was asking for disaggregated data just as a common practice because if we pull data on grading assessments discipline I can tell you that systemic racism is going to pop up across the board so that's what I was trying to speak to when I when I stated that we also need to look at that core and so I think for me it is doing that policy review and pulling specific policies and it is looking at look the the professional development we are providing to staff and the the guidance we're providing to staff because from that policy and in conjunction with the training and the professional development comes things like administrative regulations that spell out to a te when does an administrator call law enforcement and when do they not
282when do they refer to other resources and I can say sitting here right now we don't have those structures in place so the problems will continue we do need to step back and look at policy and I would very much so like to do so and I would love to see more professional development and yeah it would be great to do community and spread it wide and but at the same time I also want to look at it's better to start small and grow so we start with our own we start with our staff we start with our administrators and we grow so that way we can build upon success and really build sustainable change thank you trusty Luhan um so I what I want to kind of uh just kind of summarize a little
283bit and um not paraphrase because I I I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth of what I've been hearing um but what I have been hearing is uh my board colleagues trustee Baker and vice president Richardson who want to rec reconsider slos and others want to uh perhaps look into more data and policy and actual review of some of the policy items um this is where we're at is this correct uh for my part uh president Flores it's more or less correct however I I would you know trusty Luen and has and others have been talking about policy right now that we don't really have a policy with regards to slos I would not be adverse to putting in a very strong mou such as ones that are in this document and that
284I proposed a few months ago and then seeing if we could actually address some of the issues because again like I said and um Miss Anderson said you know it's important that there is a the police that do have come to our campuses have a relationship you know we could talk about how we can reduce the number of times those police come to our campuses um but yeah uh in the in the short term yeah maybe I I I would be amenable to continuing a relationship just not the one we have now um so provided we have some strong anou with some strong guidance to both police and to our own staff over when and if police should be called to an incident thank you uh trusty Baker um as well as the the items
285that trusty Luhan just um highlighted um in her last comment I felt that there was um several actionable steps there as well um how does the rest of the board feel in regards to that trusty Richardson you still have your hand up I just want to make sure that okay okay yeah uh trusty Murray um yeah I you know I I think that looking at the recommendations there are probably several of the recommendations that we can start on and um the recommendations of uh staff or so this is what I I will suggest to do I will give us um a little bit of a mental break so that we could process this I'm going to go to the public um comments or questions right now and that'll give my board colleagues a little bit
286time um so that I could uh uh address these uh before I go there I W to uh take care of uh Jess you had a comment go ahead and unmute yourself yeah I did have a comment um I just wanted to say that uh school is generally it is meant for us kids to be learning it is a learning experience and a learning environment and having police officers on campus does not seem like something school is meant to like do it's meant for educational um for us getting our own education and building those relationships may be all right but it's not the environment that students want as we've seen through other students talking about this and expressing how they feel about it it doesn't seem like the right environment for this to happen um
287so I feel like it's best just to not have them on campus as we've seen if you guys would like more data um please be sure and go for it make um ask for that data for more students and have their voices and their opinions be said but for now what's been said um it does seem like it's not the perfect environment for that and students do not agree with it so I just want to voice that and once again restate that because it seems like that's gotten Lost in Translation here fully noted thank you Jess I appreciate you um uplifting that comment um I'll start with let's see things are moving around bear with me uh I'll start with Sam um if you have a question or comment and then we'll go to the
288public attendees and I'm going to limit public attendees to one minute so that we could get um proceed with with um recommend commendations to the superintendent go ahead Samantha um just again I would like to point out that just as justess echoed that we don't want SL slos on campus it's not the goal um I think ssfusd messed up as a whole as we haven't had anou in the past 40 years but that's not the goal that we're going for um and I wanted to speak on a little bit that people brought up that St does use police as a form of um a threatening way mostly because they know what police will do to Brown and um black children in schools uh but also when the police arrive I've had friends that have told
289me and just people opened up on Via social media about their times in ssfusd that cops would when they were called they would not be sympathetic and would interrogate and even it it led to a student being wrongly interrogated and it's like one of her traumatic memories um I would also like to say that I've had friends that have been victims to sexual assaults and because they were in the it was a school campus problem they were interrogated by the police and no Mental Health Resources were given to these children and rather the police had them go through their story over and over and over again and really had no sympathy for this for these children we are children we were children then um so this is a live situation I've seen it happen it's
290happened to some of my closest friends and it's really sad and um I know this was a while back ago but in the summer I feel like we keep on going back to the past that these slos like did this in the past but it's still happening like that child that was arrested at Parkway Heights because he was selling drugs to support his family the cops the teacher said it themselves that the cops didn't have to go to the campus but they wanted a set a quote unquote example but that just turned out to be a traumatic memory if we really care about our students we would have given support to that child that has has forced themselves into a situation where they have to sell drugs to survive I feel like we should have
291given that support to their family and seen how we can support them but rather we had cops go and arrest that child and Not only was it traumatic for themselves for their family but also everyone else that was watching seeing their friend get arrested um and when they go through similar family situations as well so I just wanted to clear up a little bit on that um that even though some staff is guilty of using cops as a threat it's because cops are a threat themselves it's doesn't change the fact from that thank you thank you uh Mr SIM can you set the clock for one minute and we will go ahead with um speaker Andrea Sims please go ahead hi yes um I think uh first off I don't even like what data what
292more data do you guys really need honestly like what more data you guys need please say it now because like the students presented data the students are the one who speaking the people who are here tonight speaking are all saying the same thing get slos off campus slos are affecting our students they're the people who are you know racially profiling our students and causing issues to our students why are we not listening to that why are we sitting like why are we sitting here still when you guys had six months before change ssf came through with their presentation tonight telling you these factual datas and you guys want to go back to square one and say more data the community is exhausted y'all like come on like students are begging you you're not listening do
293something please thank you thank you um Liliana Rivera go ahead please hi i' just like to say that um something that's brought up and was talked about we're not under the impression that removing slows from school is going to end racism they will feel safer and they have told you this and the empirical data shows this they will be safer if there are no cops in schools and after that you guys can work on changing the minds of the teachers because that's a problem too but a teacher can be racist but at the end of the day if they can't call a cop to arrest a kid the harm that they can do to that child is limited and that's why we say take them out of the schools and then work on the other
294problems fix the conditions now and Luhan and Pat marray that wasn't a rhetorical question when I asked you how much more data do you need how many more kids I want to hear a number because my question was not answered and that's not a rhetorical question how many more kids need to tell you they are being harmed before you do something give me a number uh Kanani Cortez please uh go ahead and speak when you're ready sorry I was still muted and I was talking anyway um I just wanted to mention some things that have been brought up about bias um that's really confusing to me we had the police chief present obviously he's bias to the police department they want to keep their program that's in their best interest the money goes back to
295them um I'm concerned about this relation this political relationship with the city and the school board um if if you're protecting your personal political gains or if people on this board have political aspirations they want to protect and don't want to offend people that's just ridiculous I think that you your direct responsibility is to the students so I don't think that should be of concern of whose feelings are going to be hurt and you know it's not the South San Francisco Unified School District's responsibility to take care of the police department what they end up having to do with their officers compensate them lay them off whatever it is it is not your responsibility your responsibility is to protect these children and so I just think that that needs to be considered and the core
296problem this mention of a core problem this is a step toward addressing that problem nobody is saying you have to solve it all right now thank you thank you um Mr let's see Mr our RSL Dela Cruz please go ahead when you are ready hi um I just want to give comment um on a few things here um and hopefully I can I can reach the time limit so one the data shows slos and sro's exploded in numbers in the 90s when that exploded what did not explode or what did not Spike was academic achievement or safety what in what instead spiked as a result of the Clinton Administration was was prison population as a result of three strikes right when the SRO and slos started to decrease in early 2000s what also did not
297happen is this fear mongering that some people might try and argue and say schools then descended into some sort of Hunger Games Gotham City type of unsafe environment that also did not happen right and so what we find is that when you look at the best schools the the best schools do not have police officers the best schools have Ro uh staff members that are well trained loving caring and it's not about um trying to um be on some Trend it's really about giving the students the best that they deserve thank you um Dolores Piper please go ahead given the the excellent remarks by our young people here tonight this is a great opportunity right now that kids are not in school to just sever the relationship with the police department go out and collect
298your data later and at president Flores I think we lost her lost her there for a minute yeah Mr s do you want to unmute her again still see her that she's on okay thank you I I'm concerned about the city council and their relationship with the police department there should be an active oversight of the police department and I think that relationship is way too cozy however changes are coming to the council as we've seen young James Coleman be elected and there will be more changes down the road as more people come forward and and engage in that body but Chief as a party was very you know uh at the commission for social and racial Equity he was like flabbergast that anyone would even question what he does or question his policies uh
299that speaks a lot right there they need to go then you can come back and study this whole thing and ask if you ever ever want to have them back that's my opinion on it thank you um VA let's see Valeria please go ahead when you're ready hi yeah my question is why are you so fearful of growing and changing like why are you looking towards a stagnant and dried solution to solve current issues within the school like you look at your teachers they're evolving right now trying to learn how to teach through digitally to kids from ages 6 to 18 so why can't you look at like try to figure out how you can grow like uh like this in like what's it called sorry but um yeah students are like they have negative
300experiences and like so why are sorry students have negative experiences um but so that does carry does not carry the same way as the positive experiences that students have when the negative experiences risk children's lives and well-beings um you know sorry the time limit is so short but I'm just wondering like if shoving cops down kids throats like that's not going to solve the issue when kids can go online and watch Cops kill Tamir rice when kids walk through the same hallways that in which uh Derek Gaines walked thank you um Carmela daon go ahead and unmute yourself when you're ready well um basically throughout this long meeting all I can think about is when you talk about our community who are you talking about because it doesn't feel like we're talking about the same
301groups of people when you talk about the unheard students who are you talking about because when I think of the students that aren't being heard by the school district I think of those who have fallen victim to the school pipeline system and they're in juvie because they're it's being reinforced by having pops on campus I think of the community members that has told us that the current chief of police has harassed them in schools when they were a SLO so are we discussing the same groups of people are we trying to appease the same population that has been under under for what 40 years now the 40 years that there was no data collected I guess that the 40 years that isn't enough of a proof to show you that this doesn't work that they're
302harming our students like what else do you need what else do you need to hear thank you Mika Cavo hello yes can you hear me yes we can go ahead firstly I would like to ask why you took me and my two other fellow panelists Brenda and Finley off while on the rest of these presentation and also I would I need to ask how much more data reiterating give us a number how much more do you need because we presented we have laid down and we have spelled it out for you for all the things we need as a ssfusd student I I have walked these halls I have opened my laptop every single morning to attend my school and I understand why and I know my fellow peers on how we feel uncomfortable and
303how we feel unsafe so why are we still being unheard and why is this topic still being discussed about when we have countlessly begged and proven our feelings if you do serve the students if you do want our safety then you must hear us because I am begging you because we are the ones who walk the halls and we are the ones who have mental health issues and everything in between thank you Mr s was there a glitch of why they were moved off by any chance um no standard procedures to move the um uh similar to to what we do with the uh uh CTA and csca presidents once their item is completed off to uh the attendee side okay because Miss savila is still on and and other presenters I was just wondering
304about that um let's continue so we can um get um the last few comments in um please uh Olga PES please unmute yourself when you're ready to speak thank you president Flores um if I may please um wish to speak on Outreach uh for not only tonight's meeting but for future meetings um to start I really appreciate that our schools and our district offer information in both English and Spanish however in this day and age is concerning that non English speakers are not able to participate and interpreters aren't available especially when important decisions are being made that affect student education health and safety the district is not unique in this issue and expressed the same issues before it would be a great benefit to community in working with Council and closing the Gap in deating
305information to have an interpreter for both City and district meetings even up to two weeks ago our family has spent countless hours and entire days Distributing Flyers that pertain to Housing Services education Parks climate change Etc even though we happily do our part the continue walking around alltown is Not Practical and District decisions are equally important bringing back a was the Neighborhood Services Center is a great start Also if anyone needs suggestions on how to reach our Spanish speakers and the Ser Community I'm available thank you thank you uh JoJo Gomez public speaker go ahead and ask your question if I wasn't already concerned enough for my fellow students tonight this did it for sure the fact that my friends and peers that are minors put together a more well research presentation than people with
306doctorates and degrees is astounding I'm sure you're all feeling very embarrassed of yourselves tonight I don't get why you're still so driven for data when kids came out right here and now telling you that their experiences with slos are bad you're ignoring the voices of our minorities are actual students that need help the most which literally makes no sense I'm just so tired of waiting for you guys to wake up one day and do better how many more students have to get hurt before you do something I really hope that you guys stay up late at night feeling guilty about the kids that are assaulted harassed and arrested every day under your leadership because of your complacency children are suffering because of your inability to do anything you should be feeling incompetent and if you
307have any real humanity and really care for the students in your District then I hope you're feeling guilty thank you for your time so I will name out the last uh four that we will take and then we will come back um and proceed uh so Russell Lee Marcela Tanya Torres and chesca iasan will be the last four that we will take uh Russ Le go ahead and unmute yourself when you're ready please hi I just want to say that I know that there was an acknowledgement that slos don't protect kids at the schools by either Richardson or even more of the board so why what what's there more to say like honestly isn't the reason why they're there to protect and if they don't you just end the program like people don't trust administrators
308people don't students don't trust administrators students don't trust cops student don't trust any adult with their secure information because of things like that they think that they know more than them and they think that that they're not mature enough to evaluate their own experiences but they do and y'all need to listen I'm I'm 21 years old and I still remember all the times that I was a kid just being dismissed by adults in this district and yeah I you have my time Marcel please go ahead and unmute yourself and begin to speak when you're ready you guys sound like a bunch of clowns especially you Murray and you Luhan I'm sick and tired of your stupid data we need data we need more data we gave you the data and then when you produce your
309own so-called data through this thought exchange it's just trash and not useful and then you say oh this wasn't meant to be scientific like what's the point then what are you trying to do and then Lan comes out here with her Thomas Jefferson quotes who was a slave owner really thinks she's doing something you guys are a bunch of bootlickers and it shows you do not care about the students in this district and if you did you would get rid of slows how many more students have to tell you that slows do not improve their school experience how many more more students the data you want is something to say that students like police cops are good that doesn't exist because it is not an experience students have like slos need to get out and
310this relationship you're trying to build we don't need a relationship with cops cops are workers we don't have a relationship with firemen do we we don't have a relationship with gardeners do we no uh Tanya Tores and then we'll have chesa B oh okay hello so if I recall correctly someone said that we shouldn't take away something that is feared but instead we should teach them the value of it in this case teach our students the value of it well the thing is that brown and black kids they do not have the privilege to do this they they don't they can't go walking around holding hands with cops they can't do this they don't have the privilege because cops see them as a walking crime that's how they see them this has been shown all
311throughout 2020 in this nation and and with they are gains it was shown multiple times and the fact that the board fails to realize this and doesn't and just lacks the ability to recognize that these kids are being racially profiled and just criminalized by these cops is out of this world this is this is terrible slos do not belong in our schools multiple students have shared their concerns tonight and the lack of like ability to care for the like what what even is that do better thank you chesa iasan so I think we keep retrograding to the conversation of having more data more research more more proof when those have been provided months ago already I am a commissioner for the commission of racial and social equity and the same thing same thing keeps happening
312I don't know how many more people need to say say what I just said which public figure needs to say it for y'all to take action but fix it we have seen way too much infographic to be pass the need for more data or more numbers or more information take the SLO out or see more kids at the juvie I yield my time that will be all for tonight okay um we need to give a uh further Direction and uh follow up to Dr Moore Dr Moore can you reiterate what you have what you've collected in terms of what you have right now yes so when you summarized it I heard that there is um we have board members that are amenable to a relationship but that it needs um clear protocols anou um guidelines
313on when to call police I also heard that there is a need for us to review your policies pull specific ones um and really analyze those spend time providing professional development to staff and administration and start there um and then as we are analyzing additional data that we are disaggregating it um but I I still and I think back to what Nicole said just about really um studying the issue and making sure that before we jump to um whatever the resolution or the solution is going to be that we really are Mindful and that we're looking at it through the lens that they presented on systems water water systems change and um and that we really think through that lens but that captures everything that I heard when you summed it up about what our
314next steps potentially could be understood um I also wanted just just for the purpose of my own edification um or maybe Dr Moore you're already clear and I didn't hear it or I didn't get it um what what data is being asked specifically what data to be disaggregated that is a great question that hasn't been articulated tonight it's just indicated more data more student data um looking at our policies so and I believe trusty Luhan has her hand raised so she may be able to address that that is not clear Lan please go ahead so to clarify I wasn't asking for more data specifically on this topic I was talking about a best practice moving forward to disaggregate data just as data is presented because it came up this evening that's when it became very
315apparent for me that the data wasn't disaggregated and so as we move forward and we build surveys um whether it's a return to School survey or we're looking at student performance data the more the data is disaggregated the better sense we have on how our students are doing and where our our greatest areas of opportunity are so it was more just a best practice as I listen to this pres and listen to the presentations this evening that came up a couple of times trusty Lan I don't believe you were the you mentioned the disaggregation of data but I did hear a couple of times about more data and so we will need some clarity on what that actually is and means trusty Murray yeah hi um my thought was you know we're hearing from just
316a handful of students and maybe better Outreach and and I think in your recommendations you you talked about you know I think cultural clubs and and you know more Outreach I don't know if if that'll work but uh Cole was also saying that the students could be a resource for bringing more student voice in um so that was my thoughts just others thank you trust maray others I'll just can I ask you all a clarifying question just as you process your um I know you're getting close to the 10 30 mark and um just maybe the community can also understand is tonight is a study session um if I'm not mistaken and this is a discussion and so I think to help the community understand the process of how we make decisions as a governing
317team I think is important to recognize no decision was going to be made tonight if I'm not mistaken this is not an action item that is correct and that so the clarification now is to gather for superintendent Moore what is it that you are giving her Direction on and clarifying what are those next steps and so just remember the presentation we gave included recommendations but some of those are like now and some of those are like longterm so I don't want you to feel so overwhelmed with trying to do everything at once but I think the community needs to know that this is not an action item and that maybe the community could know when you plan to take an action and make decisions but also knowing that you sounds like you may need some
318additional information which is is fine um it's not always the popular decision by any community and not to disrespect any of our students but just knowing the governance process knowing the change process I know it sounds like you need more information to make a decision but I think it's important to recognize that that a decision will be made but it's just not tonight and I think that's important um because there's a lot that's been shared a lot of great information I agree with the students you have a lot of data to consider and you could make a decision tonight but that's not the agenda item and I think it's important for everyone to recognize it so that you can not only only make a decision but have a plan moving forward and I think that's
319the most critical piece which I believe um you may need more time to have a plan moving forward which is where the voices of students can be supported where you need to have other people who are involved in this process besides who's on this call tonight I think that's really important and again to be fair to Dr Moore um the implementation of this is where it all falls on her and her staff so I think your decision Direction tonight needs to be considerate considering um of that process and knowing um just for the community again not always knowing governance practices they have to recognize is very frustrating at times um but there is a process um based on uh governance so there is no action item tonight and I think that may be I just
320wanted to make sure I got Clarity um again and also to clarify for the the community so um I leave it at that I won't give any recommendations on that piece because your time frames what you decide to do is what's the will of the board but just want to make sure that that question was clarified thank you I certainly appreciate you highlighting that I as well mentioned it to our community and our participants and attendees that there is no action item that is correct there is no yes vote there is no no vote this is the part of a study session that sometimes frustrates a few folks because there is no no okay let's do it or or there is no motion there is um the absorbance of information and it's a teaching moment
321um all right I'm looking for um Direction comments from those members in my on my board trusty Murray sorry go ahead trusty Murray I didn't have my hand raised oh sorry vice president Richardson yes um uh I need Clarity um are we can we uh suggest other things at another time or is this the time to bring it s as a suggestion I had a suggestion to this situation and I didn't know this if this was the appropriate time to bring it because you were saying uh we want to summarize to Dr Moore uh about our discussion or what what is it what was that suggestion whatever uh you you bring forth um feel free to do so well I had a u suggestion that uh those parents that feel comfortable with these uh slos
322and the parents that don't feel comfortable will have a choice that since this is a program that is sponsored by the city that let the city allow the uh the programs to continue on their side and it would be decided by app parent parent if a parent wants their child to participate like I said we provide access the board just says yes slos come on in and you have our children but if we leave it up to the parents and say parents now this is how we're going to do this we are not going to dictate to the city whether they want this program or keep their program because they're funding it so therefore we are going to H tell you that you don't have to send your child to this program uh and we
323but we won't have these programs no longer available here on campus because honestly I don't see the equity we're talking about Equity Equity Equity uh I don't see this this program has had Equity from the get and that's my problem with it either you give all the students across all our 8,000 students the same program or not at all because that's not Equity to me so we talking Equity we're going to we better walk the walk that's what I'm saying I say I Pro I say ask the parents do you want your child to participate in this program the city has the options they they can provide the venues and parents and we won't have a hand in it yes we have policy and we could do a certain part I don't I haven't figured
324that part out yet but we do have policy that says that we need to provide these types of programs but it doesn't say that we have to do it on campus it could be at a city facility and that's all I have to say on the matter okay thank you um but I believe the the slos Dr Moore they roam around right it's not like their specific two-way program they're not housed at specific schools they do roam around they sometimes come and you will see their their cars parked uh on different campuses but they've been at elementary schools um engaging or playing basketball and then they'll be at the high school and then the middle school thank you anyone else all right let me ask the board this um is there any interest in extending
325um this board meeting that it's coming up in five minutes well I do think we have to come with some definitive Direction I don't know if that we really have that yet um so yes I'd like to propose an extension till let's just say 11 so we can have some built-in uh stoppage there is a motion um trust is there a second I'll second there is a second by trusty Luhan can I have roll call please and Nani you're muted sorry student trustey rangal Cruz here trusty Baker yes trusty Luhan yes trusty Murray yes vice president Richardson yes president Flores yes and we do need to take a break at this time yep okay um let's come back at 10:35 thank you am for e for all right are we all back trusty Richardson are
326you back and okay so I wanted to give an opportunity once again um if there's any further direction from anyone else um first or any comments um and if anyone wants to weigh at that level uh trusty Murray yeah hi I was just looking over the I hate to keep going back to this but the list of recommendations and one of the things on the list of recommendations was an equity impact action plan and and that's something that should inform like all of our decisions and um and specifically when when when you have a topic like this that's so important to our community that's that's I think our direction should start personally okay thank you trusty Murray trusty Baker I want to clarify did you wna extend it so that you shared your direction I
327just want to make sure that that I didn't Mis mishar you I'm sorry you clarify your question I mean my my um I guess my proposal was that see if we can come back with an acceptable mou because right now we have no policy it's it's you there's no rules and I think if we're going to continue this relationship in any sort of form we need rules um and if we don't if we can't come to such an agreement that satisfies the police department that satisfies our respondents earlier today that you know we move on um so that's that's my proposal but it's not it's not Direction I'm I'm waiting to I want to see what the rest of you think fair enough fair enough vice president Richard go ahead vice president Richardson um we
328do have a policy I believe um but I I I don't know the name right now and um it has to be with uh something along the line with uh prevention of Gang Related activity on campus I can't don't quote me on it but we'll have to do research on that but I think there's something about that and I don't don't have the policy number but we'll have we could bring it up so it's by the state actually the state mandates that we have something like that in place and I think we do we have to research it we have an administrative regulation um on District police in the school district something along that line I thought we brought that up once before we have an AR if I may I think the complaint that
329we had last summer that those ARS are scattered all over the place not in one Consolidated document and I think we need to have that in one document whether or not this relationship continues trusty Luhan go ahead sorry my raised hand disappeared um so thank you president Flores um so I agree that anou is like the first key actionable step because it um because there are a couple other things that it does seem need to be also in place soou seems to me the most key actionable step to work on um also looking at board policy um that informs the ARs that exist would be prudent um but then I do also see benefit to longer term looking at an equity action plan because that would inform the professional development we offer um and just
330the direction we go and then other priorities that we have as a board have talked about grading homework discipline all of these Trends come up and many of the inequities we see and the data that we do see that we do have access to it does show there's disproportionate result there's just inequitable results and so for me it seems mou board policy looking at the AR and then longer term deep harder work because it is going to be hard work really developing a clear Equity action plan that informs everything we do and every decision we make thank you trusty Luhan does um anyone else agree with trusty Luhan trusty Murray agrees um also we could consider and I I want to be thoughtful you know we've been into this five hours now right and Nicole
331knows this that the best in all governing bodies the best decisions are not done late at night or into five hours or six hours and this is a very critical very important and that's part of good governance as well as and good leadership um what about also could be a suggestion for Dr Moore that she looks at other that are currently in place with school districts um and see what language they have in pertaining to ARs and we could look at that and and also gather more student voices more than 70 or more than 50 or more than what the lack of sample size was and then let's set up another study session and we can um look at these more in depth um this is the process of of of looking at things and
332unpacking right and uh and I'm happy to um take additional suggestions from my colleagues in terms of other items that you would like uh for her to look into and then bring back at a study session again because we cannot make them a vote there is no an action item tonight so we need to do Direction Through the chair go ahead um I think that your suggestion is a beautiful yes and it takes a threads of what many of us have mentioned this idea of and board policies um and then the con and wanting to also honor the many voices that spoke this evening um and so I I definitely would support this idea of coming back for an additional study session where Dr Moore has gathered Other M that are in place as well
333as other board policies um and if they look at ways to I ALS so gather student voice in the process of like what do what does resonate with anyone um Community voice and then bring that back for a steady session if that's also others support that any other uh colleagues support that I believe trusty Murray you had raised your hand before saying yes right you had agreed on that um I I also you know want to take on Nicole's suggestion of of getting student facilitators I think that is very doable and we have very well spoken um proactive um extremely wellth thought out Advocates um in our in our in our school district in our school if we could engage that to the level of um them facilitating because I think that's a wonderful idea
334too yeah I just you know to help you all with your decision making because I know your brains are fried and I know your community is probably frustrated and sleepy and all that good stuff is I love your suggestions about you know regroup you know come back I think Dr Moore has lots of Direction lots of information lots of feedback to consider and in your next study session really look at kind of like what can we do I heard mou a lot but I want to just kind of you know say a little bit more broadly I think it's bigger than anou I think there's a lot of layers to it so as trusty Lan said that plan we recommended like I could see Dr Moore coming back and with all this information let's just
335come with like here's a plan right including if there's anou and what that looks like because mou may be that again police aren't housed on the campus and it very clearly outlines what that looks like because regardless of whatever this looks like police are in a community and if there's a crime then you call the police like that has to be clarified and what that looks like in a school setting so I would say um you know your next study session um I'd be more than willing to support the process I actually love even the idea of the students who um who were on tonight you know if there's a Outreach to them I think you all have their emails and how to reach them is maybe they can give some input on the plan
336and then that way in that study session you get to wrestle with the plan and really come up with um you know okay we like this plan um this is what we may consider for voting at a future meeting that you will take action on and I think that's fair to the community to know we will make a decision and but allow you to now have a game plan on what that looks like I think that's fair um again doing a knee-jerk response just won't I don't think anybody's going to be happy in the long run if that doesn't um if it's not carefully thought out so I agree with the students like you know I heard this what more data do you need right and they have a great point but then there's also
337um the what I call um expert lens of you do need more data right you need more and data is not just about the charts and the numbers it's about information and information is what data is and so yes research sample us having all of that in front of you is going to be helpful tonight it was more like talk right and there were numbers in front of you but as a board to make that decision you do want to have a plan and I love what you said um trusty Luhan is is that plan also would probably impact other things you all have been wrestling with so you almost can kind of do this two-in-one type of experience um so I will commit and I'll talk to my team um to set up some
338time with Dr Moore and her team to try try to flesh that out to support in any way we can and if you want to bring kids in to help kind of weigh in on that plan I think that's more than you know um a great idea and then whenever your meeting is that you're going to make a decision you know I think I heard clearly like hey you know promote that make sure people know but um in the end you know you're going to make a decision and I think that's what I love hearing you say but you're being thoughtful about it and um just again to last acknowledge the students I know they're frustrated they have a lot of great legit points but I also just know that as a governance team there
339is a proc and so the process is a positive one um I'm encouraged by it um yes there are examples of other districts we can include those samples as well in that discussion about how other districts have moved forward but um I think you all are in a great space and I'm um you know encouraged by you I know it's late night but it sounds like you have a plan so whatever you need we'll be here to support I extremely appreciate that support um that we're able to lean on you on this work I really appreciate that um and I know I speak on behalf of every everyone and perhaps we could even model it a kind of a a a comprehensive what could become and be brought forth at a future board meeting as
340an equity plan right an equity action plan that includes several tabs of not just Theo but it's comprehensive so we address it at various levels and perhaps in this next study session we can pick out some of these items that we can include in this so when we pass it it it's again robust in in being able to address uh various at various levels um so thank you Nicole for that suggestion now I turn to Dr Moore are you um do you thank you we're all there we're all mentally trying to get there now um do you have what you need I I think I can take what the original conversation that the board gave when you guys were giving direction and um Nicole's uh guidance here and I think what I can do is
341bring something back for the board to react and respond to and share input into as it relates to this Equity action plan because that's not an overnight plan that's going to be put together and have nicely in aot tie in the next month it really is you know and we're gonna have iterated iter iterative copies of that and revision so as long as we all understand that um then yes I think I can take all of that and put something together and come back at a study session and and engage with the board in our community sounds good um is there any other comments from my colleagues on the board I just say uh we have the time I mean there aren't any children in the classroom this you know there's no program in place
342at the moment and uh you know so I think we she has time I mean let's let's do a good job and give us everything to think about so no rush but I would have liked to see this when the kids were back but yes we will prioritize it for sure but just recognizing just so we all understand we have a reopening of school plan that we are anticipating like there's just other things and so when I'm yes we will bring this back and I will definitely work with Nicole and her team and our team so that we can put something really meaningful together that is is what the pleasure of the board is asking but I just want you to understand that it it's not going to happen overnight that was my point well
343I'm willing to give you I I I I you know I am for giving you as much time as you can due to the circumstances in light of the circumstances thank you thank you um thank you um and I appreciate that trusty Murray I just want to thank the the superintendent and cabinet for for all of their work bringing this forward and and the work that we'll do in the in the future I want to thank Nicole for for sticking with us this whole time and um and to our students and community members for their input and and um and helping us to really look at this in a in a different way um so thank you to everybody and should I make a motion or you gonna um no uh yes thank you to
344our students I really wanted to um highlight that once again uh those those voices that took the time uh to speak and to give several comments we hear you and we're not just hearing you we're listening to you and that's also very important to us so I do want to acknowledge that um before we adjourn tonight um I'd like to honor the memory and adjourn in the and in in the memory of Philip wise so let's just take a deep breath you know it's been a lot of information that has come up but I wanted to um put this forward before we adjourn so The Honorable Philip Weiss was a South San Francisco School Board member who passed away on Monday January 11th trustee wise started uh serving in our district in January 1993 as
345a Personnel commissioner uh he was elected to the Board of Trustees in April 1997 where he provided more than 17 years of his dedicated time and service to this District before retiring in December of 2014 Mr wise uh had also served on the county committee on School District organization um on behalf of our board superintendent and Cabinet in our entire District we send our deepest condolences to all his surviving loved ones and we acknowledge his passing uh please join me in a moment of silence thank you all thank you to the presenters thank you everyone um have no further business to come before this body this meeting is adjourned please take care of yourselves and each other thank you and good night good night