RPS School Board Study Session - 2/15/22

001hi one yep that's a spare one i don't know there's no batteries no i don't know where she's going you can put it in my desk thank you hello yeah i just want to make sure foreign this study session of independence school district 535 school board is called to order at 502 pm tuesday february 15 2022 in room 137 of the edison building the board acknowledges this site and all rps sites are situated on the ancestral land of the dakota people and we honor the dakota nations and the sacred land of all indigenous peoples interested members of the public are welcome and encouraged to view this meeting remotely at youtube.com isd 535 where the live stream video may be found present at this meeting our school board members superintendent kent pacquel a non-voting ex officio

002member and assistant board clerk ms michelle severson ms severson will you please call the roll thank you director ahmanson here clerk barlow director garcia here treasurer mclaughlin here chair marvin here vice chair nathan here and director workman here thank you at this time we offer the opportunity to say the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance of america and to the republic of which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty 2.01 approval of the agenda are there any changes to the agenda move approval second it's been moved and seconded to approve the agenda all in favor say aye aye opposed agenda is approved 3.01 school resource officers contract and school safety strategy and as just a note today is school resource officers appreciation day so [Music] thank you dr marvin directors of the board

003let me just briefly we were doing it earlier a moment ago make sure that tawanda and monique and jess can you hear us here if you can wait we're good that's great so i want to thank the three people who are with us remotely at the beginning of this session because i wanted board members to have a chance to meet you they're the three very talented facilitators who will be working with us as part of a medium-term strategy i believe to and investigate make some decisions on and enhance the role of school resource officers in our schools and school safety more broadly sometimes it is i think most important for an organization to do its own work in facilitating and managing processes and sometimes working with external expertise is incredibly valuable and in my experience

004that's true especially when you're working across not just organizations but sectors like law enforcement and education like community and school like historically advantaged and historically marginalized communities and so we're bridging a lot of divides here after we have a chance to uh just have our three facilitators introduce themselves and tell the board a little bit about their background i'll then be uh bringing up executive director of operation scott sheridan and we'll be hearing from some colleagues from rochester police department and we'll be able to talk about next steps for our school district and thinking through these issues so very briefly to highlight the three individuals and then i'll ask them to unmute and just tell uh the board a bit about themselves and should you have questions you certainly could pursue them but very briefly

005and scott will walk the board through this in greater detail um tawanda berks is a leader in the mayo clinic's project management and strategic planning arm and also has a consulting and facilitation business on the side and i heard about her work from many different folks in the community and what tawanda will be doing is facilitating monthly meetings between rochester public schools the rochester police department and some community stakeholders to monitor and enhance our implementation of our current memorandum of understanding with the police department and the contract which also governs our work and that will be facilitation to come together around how are we doing with our existing agreements monique davis is a phd student in applied economics at the university of minnesota whose research and i won't steal any of her thunder here touches

006on some of the issues that we'll be thinking and learning about and so what monique would be doing is looking at the published research on school resource officers their impacts in schools and very importantly on alternatives to them what are they and what do we know about them jess roberts uh is a talented facilitator who most recently facilitated the very successful work that the city of rochester did around with other community partners in planning a pipeline for women of color in rochester entering the construction uh industry that was recently awarded a grant from the bloomberg philanthropies and jess has a specialty in co-design and he would be picking up the the groundwork that we would be laying through these other efforts to be leading an effort that helps us make long-term decisions about not only

007the role of school resource officers in our schools but um school safety more broadly and so these are three steps the board members have uh deeply influenced the development of this strategy and let me say finally before i turn it over and i'll ask tawanda just to start with a bit of an introduction none of these steps preclude the boards making decisions about the contract with rochester police around sros for next year these are options for us to think through these issues and and that'll be the subject of our discussion following this opportunity so let me just start uh with tawanda if you want to unmute and have a chance to introduce yourself a bit about your background and how you're thinking about this project what interested you in it when i was uh referred

008to you by many people in the community who sang your praises i think we're still hearing mute are you maybe on mute or looks like we're changing something on our end nope at least they could hear us yeah sorry everybody we're the suspense is killing us at least me i mean this wouldn't be the covet era if we didn't have technical difficulties with video conferencing very true do you have it on a machine we could use all right we're going to try it again what if one of you speak something how about now hey we heard something can you hear it yes yeah not very loud though yes we can if it's not very loud but we're trying volume here on our end and anything you can do on your end to speak loudly would

009be great thanks and and let's go absolutely so i think you gave a great introduction about who i am a project manager at mayo clinic i also own and operate a consulting firm here in rochester i did a lot of educational teaching as far as my experience working with kids i do serve on various boards including the black data processing association as well so lots of experience there um as well as giving back to the community as well so i think when i got the phone call to facilitate this first phase i thought it was a great match just because of the work that i also do when it comes to diversity equity and inclusion as well um that you know that being said i've been hired several times to facilitate the various groups within

010the community so lots of experience there i've been talking and reading through some of the previous work that was done already in the past um so it looks like we'll be ready to go around february 23rd i believe as long as we have the rest of the group participation agreed to and we'll be ready to start that first kickoff meeting thank you so much full-time student at st mary's as well in a phd program taking my educational leadership degree i'll just add when i heard that wanda was finishing her phd in educational leadership i said after this project we might want to talk to you about some other opportunities so it's great to know there's local uh talented leaders pursuing that direction um why don't i have take a chance thank you so much and

011i'll introduce monique and just a chance to um unmute and introduce uh yourself and and your piece of this puzzle uh sure thank you ken and thank you for inviting me here today to introduce myself to the rest of the board um as kent mentioned my name is monique davis and i am a third year phd student in the applied economics graduate program at the university of minnesota up in the twin cities and i'm also a research assistant with the opportunity and inclusive growth institute which is housed at the federal reserve bank of minneapolis my research interests include generally speaking policy analysis labor economics applied econometrics and stratification economics but specifically i'm very interested in racial disparities and inequities in the u.s and my dissertation research is focused on investigating the nexus between the u.s

012criminal legal system and other key u.s institutions like education and specifically one of the research questions i would like to answer is what are the impacts of school resource officers on academic and post-secondary social economic outcomes so of course um kent and i were introduced uh fortuitously through a different project related um and that's how we discovered this intersection of research interests and so conducting a comprehensive literature review of the peer-reviewed academic literature is going to be mutually mutually beneficial both to rochester public schools and other districts around minnesota as well as my own research objectives thank you monique and i'll just say to board members i'm excited that you can expect to receive a proposal at some point in the fairly new future for monique and a faculty member at the university to conduct

013some analysis here in rochester of what we what our data says about the intersection between student outcomes in literacy and students participation in disciplinary processes in our schools separate project but that was the project where i got to meet monique and we'll be bringing that for your review and potential approval but i said could we talk to you about a an additional project that would be interested potentially in um so thank you monique and how about you jess sure can you hear me yes great um thanks for the invite um it's good to see everyone virtually even um so i'm an expert in human centered design and with an emphasis on facilitating uh co-design which really is about recognizing that um we need to really think about redesigning systems that actually respond to the way

014people actually experience the impacts of these systems of of the resources of the programming of the policies that are out there so in design we'll oftentimes refer to this as an outside-in design approach so you're really designing to meet people where they are and so that expertise um i i work on a variety of issues impacting people's health and well-being education being one of them i actually did a co-design effort um with the young people around regional planning with the met council under a mcknight grant several years ago that i think not only sort of recognized um sort of the the process itself but the untapped value that young people have in really seeing systems with a fresh set of eyes in fact i often note in my teaching i also teach in the school

015of public health at the university of minnesota that i i am oftentimes teaching people to see the world through younger people's eyes and perspectives because they ask fundamentally different questions which is really what the co-design process is about is asking some fundamentally different questions about the systems in play about the assumptions we've sort of had for a long time that maybe are no longer all that accurate and so i look forward in building off of the work of tawanda and monique to really bring that lived experience to contextualize and prioritize some of the opportunities moving into the thanks jess i'll just add jess has a very structured process that brings a small team together to do that kind of co-design and in addition to some of the insights i know we'll gain from the monthly

016meetings that tawanda will facilitate and the review of the research that monique will be conducting will also be sharing with that co-design process the findings of the perspectives project that as board members will call will ruffin and equity specialists are leading with some support from wild research which is capturing youth voice and staff voice around these issues and we'll mold all that into this collaborative process that will take place this summer with the broader lens of safety including but not limited to the role of school resource officers and so with that opportunity to meet these three folks virtually i wanted to put some faces to their names as we consider this board members have heard about this process but not the people and now we're engaging it as part of this discussion we're about to

017begin tonight so open the floor if there are any observations or questions and and thank you again all three of you so much for helping us get started here board members members yeah my first observation is i am incredibly impressed about three people um on the tv in front of us so i look forward to working with you on this very important issue to our district and uh welcome at less uh of being impressed and more of a statement i'm not surprised okay so we're looking forward to hearing uh and seeing the results and being able to view things from a different lens of perspective and uh capacity so thank you okay thank you all so much you are as i mentioned uh it probably wouldn't exceed 5 30 and we even were a little

018bit less on your demanding schedules but i'm really grateful you could join us and we will be looking to connect with you and move these investigations forward in the weeks ahead thank you thanks again thanks so madam chair and board members if i might i might then uh ask scott sheridan our executive director of operations to come up and i know scott has some some colleagues from rochester police department um as scott comes up i'll just slightly more pointedly i guess reiterate what i sort of said indirectly uh before we welcome those three consultants the process that we've outlined here is really designed to help us think through a long-term strategy the board still has the more immediate opportunity to review how we're doing with the current sro and decisions that the board might want

019to make about uh the 22-23 school year regarding that contract as i talked about with a number of board members my recommendation would be to renew that contract for next year with whatever enhancements that the board might want to recommend to the rochester police department that they consider understanding that that's the board's prerogative and its decision that you need to consider we would be doing that concurrent with the three uh efforts that you heard about a moment ago but they're not dependent on that the board can make the decisions that you want to make and of course rochester police department will also be have the opportunity to look at whatever proposals we might have alongside the efforts that we just described which i think will be of value to us whatever direction the board ultimately

020elects to take regarding that contract so i want to thank scott for his leadership of this effort many board members are where i was julie clayman who is our lead on these efforts is away this week and so i wish that you had the chance to interact with julie those of you who have may know her for her own long time service as an sro and now a new member of the team and so she's a key leader in this work for us i wish she could be here but it was very important and i agree with and i'm grateful to board members who who really urged us to move this session up on the board calendar so that we have uh plenty of time to take uh your questions your direction uh potentially even

021launch an ad hoc committee that could look at some issues that may come out of tonight's conversation so scott's really going to give us an update and um and we'll be able to have a conversation with you know two very critical members of the force and really of our school communities so scott thank you superintendent good evening board members i just want to be sure good evening it is i think you know me better than that um what i'd like to do here we go um i'm just going to take off from where the superintendent paquel uh did a brief introduction and then with our our three facilitators that were on the tv screen as well personally i've only met tawanda julie clayman who is our coordinator of district safety and security and i met

022with her last week had a great engaging conversation to start out planning phase one of this as you may or may not know but we broke this down into three phases the first one is we're looking at if you remember back in a year ago that we brought to you a memo of understanding based on information that the board wanted us to go out and seek we created a committee back then we met a number of times captain stilwell who's on the far left of me was on that panel as well and we created that mou that the board implemented prior to approval of the contract last spring and in that meeting that we had last summer there were some other ideas that came out from the board that you asked us to to review

023and the results of all that are these three phases the first one we're going to look at is the implementation of the sro mou what type of work the sros are doing how they've taken that mou and are now implementing it into their daily work the the way that we're quantifying it qualifying it all the data that they're doing on a daily basis and that's why we have sro our zola here as well he's eventually going to give you a snapshot into a day in the life of an sro phase two is the one that's working behind the scenes i'm not going to have a direct work on that that's more of monique's work where she's going to be out on her own gathering doing the research and information regarding best practices related to sro

024programs schools that have several program schools that don't have sro programs schools that used to have sro programs that no longer have sro programs and schools that are implementing sro programs so there's a lot of different things that she's going to be looking at and looking at alternative approaches to an sro program and what those types of things may look like and then of course phase three is the co-design with jess roberts and again that's separate from the sro program per se we might facilitate some work with the law enforcement community but there's also a lot of other partners that jess is going to be working with to work on creating a plan for school safety and and that's been related to the entire district's school safety so you already have the wonderful introductions oops

025with ms bergs ms davis and mr roberts and so take off on phase one uh as you can see what the goal of this is um we're going to be working we selected a committee that is going to be working on all this uh we work with tawanda to create what that committee might look like and we came up we didn't want to make it too big we wanted to make it to a level where we could have direct input from a variety of partners but we didn't want it so large that it modeled the work so we have about 11 members and from rps we're going to have uh chris lingan from the director of uh elementary and secondary education uh julie clayman myself we have denise moody she's kind of working in the

026background she's working on her strategic plan but she also worked to facilitate the contracts with our three facilitators as well rob scripture the principal at phoenix nicole mueller from special ed will represent special ed willie tipton works in hr working on working to figure out ways to hire more people of color from rochester police department captain stillwell lieutenant thompson and sergeant blonic they're the three supervisors that oversee the sro program we also asked child matala who is the diversity equity and inclusion coordinator for the city of rochester she's going to be a partner in there as a parent we have stephanie whitehorn who's going to be on the panel and another parent also a community organ organizer is nikki niles who is currently the director of uh dodge film or olmstead county corrections uh with

027that works in the three county area for corrections so aft at the end of the facilitation with tawanda we plan to have two hour meetings at least once a month our first meeting is scheduled for february 23rd a week from tomorrow i believe if my days are right and so that will be the kickoff meaning that we're going to have all our partners there and we're going to go through all uh tawanda's griegan agenda for us putting down her vision as far as how she would like this process to go and we'll have that kickoff meeting on the 23rd at the end of phase one we hope that tuwando will write up a detailed briefing on uh the findings of what the committee came up with and bring that report back to the board phase

028two i should say i'm sorry but phase one is actually going to run we're starting like i said next week we plan for it to run about 2 july depending seeing how quickly we get the work done and these dates are just a guide it could be shorter they could be longer that one definitely goes through 2023 so because that one would run for the oh it runs the entire time yeah so it's like so all the way through what would be this contract if it's approved would be thank you yep so phase two uh this is a like i said the uh where uh monique is gonna go out and do all her research um and this is gonna be running along in about the same timeline that we're doing uh the phase one

029again she's going to go through i assume 2023 as well but she's going to get a lot of work done starting in may i think is when our contract starts with her but that's obviously up maybe adjusted as necessary and she's going to inform part of her work is going to be informing jess as well in phase three and the rest of us as we get together to cohesively put everything together in phase three when all this is done of course another report will be created brought back to the board and base three this is the co-design that jess roberts is going to do the process here is it's really kind of a unique process this is going to begin in the summer of 22. it could extend obviously much much longer than that but

030again like i said it's working with a diverse group of communities as i mentioned earlier it's not necessarily all just law enforcement related is a lot of community partners that he might bring in i haven't had the opportunity to sit down with him yet just to talk about what his uh vision of this is he's obviously a very intelligent person just like the other two and uh he's going to bring he has a lot of background in this type of co-design system again he's going to talk about the overall school safety plan for the district see what we're doing right what we're not doing right what we can implement what potentially we don't need any more it could include best practices that include enhancements to the practices we currently have regarding safety including i assume

031student behavior and any physical type of work that we need to have done here along with the work that will and his group is doing with the wilder project are there any questions on those three phases that before we move into the next part of this julie i have i have a couple process questions um so on and slide four which is phase one could you give a brief description of what you mean by professional partners and who who those people might be not individually but drawing from the community as i mentioned we have the law enforcement piece of it we have nikki niles from the dfo head of corrections okay the parent facilitator the parent representative nikki is a parent as well but then we have the parent and stephanie wild white horn that's

032going to be on the panel as well and from the city itself with ciao it was the dei coordinator for the city i had one more okay quickly um phase two slide six um will any of that research be specific to um rochester i mean will any of the research be done in rochester schools or would you anticipate more generalized um research which then could be coordinated when once we get into uh phase three with mr roberts i don't really have a really good answer for that one um we haven't sat down with monique figure out her course of action i don't know if you have superintendent on that one yeah that's a pretty limited project it's really a review of the published research as opposed to doing new research okay um there will be

033because there isn't much published research on alternatives to sros because it's very new monique is going to do some interviews with districts like 287 in the cities winona a few others that have come up with alternatives to find out how they think it has gone that obviously won't be published but it's going to help us but it's mostly a review of the research literature as opposed to new research so frankly it's not a particularly large contract and as she mentioned she needs to look at this research literature anyway for her dissertation so we're kind of getting the deal on this one the separate project that we're going to bring to you for consideration around literacy and discipline would be original work here in rochester that is separate from this and that she'd be doing with

034a tenured faculty member that that we'll be bringing you in the next month or so great thank you that helps melissa mine is also a process question dr pickel i'm glad you pointed out that the memorandum of understanding would continue past the uh the july end of july but um if i look at the actual document um it refers to being in effect through the end of june 2022 so would the new contract coming to us have these things then folded into that or will we be signing another memorandum of understanding i believe that's precisely the the conversation tonight is that the separate from the let's call it the analytic efforts and the collaboration efforts we've described we face before us the board's decision about what you want to do with both a contract and

035the mou that do expire this year meaning this school year and so we you there is a and of course rochester police department has the opportunity to consider whatever changes if any we might want to make and so we are beginning that conversation tonight about what the board would like to do in terms of the i i continually say the mou and the contract because both are linked but separate you know the contract is about what 10 years old in most of its provisions the mou is less than one years old both have been approved by the board and both expire i know we have to give rpd notice in may so i assume the expiration is maybe end of june or something and that's roughly when the mou expires too so we are looking

036to begin a discussion and receive board direction on that really critical question well to be more specific about that then i mean there are there are a number of things listed in the mlu saying you know these are things that we plan to do and these are our changes that you know were made are we assuming that everything there is going to be in going forward or do we need to go item by item and discuss it or how do we know what's working and what's not we're going to begin that discussion literally tonight it's one of the reasons why i'm grateful that you know scott is going to give you an overview of how things are going this year and we have captain stilwell and officer arzola to share that perspective and i'm imagining

037board members will want more information beyond tonight and we do have additional times on the agenda ultimately we would be bringing to you whatever modifications that you might want us to consider first for the board to consider and then of course rochester police department would have the opportunity to consider those as well if uh director ahmedson i'm maybe inferring from some of your questions one possibility and i really am not trying to recommend this one possibility could be to take things that are in the mou and propose they be put into the contract which is distinct from the mou right now we have two guiding documents you know one that has contractual force and one that doesn't that might be one possibility that board might want to consider um that's not a recommendation from me

038but it we do have these two linked but separate vehicles here that are that are shaping our work with the police department i would just say as a clarifying point in the contract the contract itself ends on july 1st 2022 but if either side wants to terminate their part of the contract we have to figure that out by may 1st in writing miss nathan so speaking to the timeline of the the decision about the contract next year the work that tawanda is doing to ensure successful implementation of the mou we have in place the time frame goes through the end at least of this mou will we have any feedback putting that may date in our head right will we have any feedback from her process that will let us know how those components of

039the mou are working that might help us to craft what the contract might look like for the next school year before we go through all the phases given that we're thinking of monthly meetings i would say some maybe preliminary findings given that it's as scott mentioned they're looking at the first meeting in february just of the group uh tawanda's uh describing as scott's going to describe in a moment other work is already underway for sure around the mou so i would say monthly meetings between february and um i guess a final as dr garcia pointed out a vote in may we might be able to share some insights but as i think your question director nathan suggests the the biggest conclusions from that would be should you choose to continue the contract having that group

040in place over the course of the next school year that's where the real i think real insights would come from that process and from tuanda's work miss mclaughlin i think we might have touched on this briefly a couple months ago but i think what we talked about is that it's on the school board calendar for april and that we have to decide we have to vote before may 1st yep i don't want to get us into buying what we're in at the wrong time um i wanted to clarify one thing just because you corrected something that mr sheridan said that towanda's contract goes from february 22 to july 23. the the it's a it's a it's an important really important point should the board not elect to continue the contract obviously her work would stop

041in the point at what that scott had on the date it would terminate with the end of this contract because we wouldn't need a joint working group should we as i would recommend renew the contract with whatever changes the board might want to propose it would continue throughout the next school year as we're in that implementation and i guess the question that i have then is that could we look at potentially shifting that date to like a february date so that if we're making a decision again in april of 23 we would be done we would have everything we need to know rather than having it trail out a little bit further you know that we need to advance things fast enough that i think that that would be a better end time because that's

042when the board would making decisions about this rather than waiting until july so that would be my influence thank you other questions just to comment um i like the process and i think it will definitely position us to as a board me as an individual a board member make a decision that goes beyond my personal experiences and or those who may reach out to me and share with me their experiences and it will allow a larger lens of consideration so i'm i'm looking forward to each phase of this being completed and having the opportunity to go along in the process i do agree with the superintendent as it relates to a need to make a decision regarding uh maybe morphing the mou into the contract uh so that we can successfully manage these together versus

043having different time frames and and different considerations is nathan um so for phase two and phase three do you anticipate that we're going to have to schedule um dates on our board calendar to receive those reports at the end of the time frames that we have outlined here or are you thinking of a bigger package of information on at a different date um director nathan i think that could be something we could talk about executive committee certainly we would need to schedule the summative reports but if the board was interested in some interim updates as you know we've been trying to do more of that we could also schedule some some interim progress checks that aren't necessarily waiting until we have those efforts the progress check idea for monique's piece probably doesn't work a lot

044because she could say well i've reviewed a third of the studies that's not as much but for the other two efforts we could potentially have a you know check in uh with tawanda and certainly with jess who's and just very briefly when we say school safety is is a umbrella term it really is the issues we've been talking about around safety and belonging and how do we actually have a very big discussion about uh having our schools be welcoming safe spaces um for all kids um so that piece for sure uh board members being very apprised of how that's moving forward is really important will we be given the opportunity to hear updates from these meetings like specific either specific like an email with general ideas or presented after because i think to me and

045i brought this up in the last study session it felt like the same issue that happened to us last time was happening again in which everything was just pushed so far to the edge that we don't like our hands are almost tied in the sense that like no one wants to leave the kids un safe and unsupported and we don't have a good alternative and they're all this all of this wonderful work like i want to see it and i'm anxious too that there's going to be work done and we're going to miss out on some key opportunities to hear really important voices in our community before we actually make that decision yeah i see no reason why we couldn't build it i think it's a little bit like director somewhat related to director nathan's

046point we could build in some explicit um feedback points into that process i think that's particularly relevant for the the joint group that tawanda is going to be facilitating because that's really our on-the-ground collaboration how is it going effort but i think that'll also be true for jess and the design uh co-design process as well which we need to come back to you with more discussion of that piece because that's a very big piece that needs to reflect the issues board members are thinking about around school safety and belonging broadly um but yes i'm sure we could add some periodic report outs from the working group that i mean it's what tawanda does in her day job at mail every day all day is keep everybody apprised of how the project is going so she's

047very skilled at that it's one of the reasons when i met her i said oh that's kind of the skill set we need good facilitation and very good project management and communications so yeah what we'll do is and scott can help me we'll loop back to tawanda and we can let the board know if there's any reason that those things couldn't be integrated and i don't see any reason why they couldn't so we'll we'll strongly assume that we can and then we'll let you know if there's a problem but i don't anticipate that karen and i guess just to follow up on that would you anticipate potentially the first one could be before we vote to renew the contract this this year right yeah if we're starting in february and then we'd be meeting again

048in march and then we're voting in april yes thank you so i'm hearing from everyone is that this is a really intelligent plan as a way to go forward not only do we have an expert who is looking nationally at what's working what's not working what are the possibilities how does the kind of school safety plan that schools have influence the students and the staff at that school in the greater community and then also we're looking very specifically at what's actually happening in this city in this district so we're being informed by the entire nation and also by the specific situations that exist here and it's it's going to take a while to get that all together but i think it's absolutely an intelligent plan because this is too important to rush you know having

049an intelligent sustainable plan is just something that has to be really thoughtfully informed and um and discussed with the greater community other questions well uh just a point of clarification and ensure that i'm that my level of expectation is uh proper so separate from the efforts that uh tawanda will undertake as it relates to the mou scott and staff will uh present shortly uh how things have been going as it relates to the mlu correctly okay thank you act right right now ending the thank you doc cheers yes it's not me i'm glad i wasn't the only one that was hearing that well as superintendent pickela mentioned there's already work underway even during the development phase of the development of these three phases we were already doing our own behind the scenes work in order

050to respond to what the board ideas that you presented to us as far as the qualitative and quantitation of the data of the type of work that the sros are doing particularly related to the sro duties and the implementation of those deliverables that are within the mou itself and so what was done is we created nine deliverables categories and those are highlighted in the powerpoint the first one is the work with the school administrators to promote school safety what that entails is the documentation piece of having regular meetings with administrators at the site where the sro is working where they discuss concerns they talk about things that the sro might talk about things that might have happened over the weekend that might have involved particular students that were involved in the school any potential issues

051that might spill over into the school the administrators might bring up some concerns that they might be hearing related to potential issues that might involve law enforcement or might require law enforcement to intercede um and they would meet maybe on a daily basis maybe on a weekly basis it all depends on what their workload is like and um and that that's the first part of meeting with the school administrators the second one was meeting with the equity specialists this one was kind of new because as you know we just hired more equity specialists and so they were just brought on board and as part of this um our sros met with the equity specialists julie clayman facilitated with will uh scheduled to have them come in and meet directly with the equity specialist and those

052those two days occurred on january 24th and 25th where the srl's came in and had what i understand was very deep conversations regarding what the sros do and what the equity specialists plan for for their work as well um and coincidentally the sros are already some of them are already working with the equity specialists that were currently in the building already not necessarily the new ones that this were brought on but the ones that were currently in the buildings as well so that's the second the second deliverable there the third was to work with the counselors social workers and mental health practitioners the mhps um according to the notes i'm receiving from the supervisors of the sros is that the sros meet weekly if not daily with this group they try to wrap services around

053students so if a student's having an issue that might require a social worker it might require mhp might require a sro to be involved might require some other type of teacher or admin or whatever it might be there's a cohesive the way i understand there's a cohesive group that's working within that building to wrap the services around those students and draw and put that student student in touch with what they might need to do obviously with distance learning that that caused some issues and it has some complex concerns that have to be addressed that are unique to in our lifetime as anything that we've ever had to deal with in the past particularly related to school and we're seeing them manifest themselves in the schools no no no we're back in school in the fall

054you're seeing you know behavior issues that are unexpected or uh unique based on uh where we where we're at in the world today with the pandemic i'm not blaming you at all on the pandemic but when you're not in school in it having that daily interaction face to face with with your friends and your teachers and other people it has a direct effect if you're just on a computer all day long trying to learn so and we're learning now that we need to start addressing that as well this isn't just an sro issue obviously and so that's these are the third point there the fourth point is the meetings with students address concerns for students and families we have the sros are creating a log now on their daily work and that log goes to

055julie clayman who then hands it off to our office administrator that we hired that's working in construction services and with julie and we have a process in place where we're documenting all those logs to see what type of work they're doing a lot of the sros are doing classroom presentations where they're integrating right into the classroom and doing some of those and sro arzola will talk a little bit about that on his day in the life of sro the type of work that he's doing and so that's the fourth deliverable that we that we have here that we're monitoring and keeping track of the fifth is the meetings with the staff to address the concerns again i have limited information on this one right now based on the logs that are being pulled in i

056know that the sros have meetings on various concerns throughout their work a lot of the work is where they're meeting individually with staff members and it could be personal concerns it could be issues that are happening outside the school that a staff member may be having that they're seeking the input of an sro on and those aren't necessarily going to be documented in a log per se at least certainly not with great detail due to the privacy concerns but i know the sros with some of the sites who have had particular incidents in their school that have created um concern with the rest of the staff that the sros have had involved in the staff meetings where they address the role of providing school safety ideas and that kind of thing at the staff base

057and that's the fifth one on the sixth one pulse family community forums i'm sorry provide educational videos i know that there are specials that are creating doing in person like i mentioned classroom presentations on a wide variety of topics they're creating videos themselves on a wide variety of topics that staff can use as a resource to present in their classrooms as well particularly related to different things such as social social media use vaping and the like and the forums for the families we're still working on that julie julie clayman has worked to with heather and her group along with the sros to create dates where they're going to have community family engagement type forums and these are going to be both virtual potentially in person and also broadcast earlier on to get information where parents

058can write in questions prior to long before with the expectation that the sro will answer those questions uh during their forum and kellogg is scheduled for february 22nd gm for the 23rd of february willow creek for march 2nd and john adams for march 3rd there's we had other events scheduled but when we went back to dl for two weeks we had to we figured it'd be in the best interest of the district to push them off another couple weeks and to reintegrate them once the kids are back in school the equity training i already talked about as well where they've worked with the equity staff that's deliverable number eight and then deliverable number nine is more of a catch-all for all the other types of things that an sro might do any other type of

059interactions that they do throughout the day there's such a wide variety of work that they do it's it's really the only like al was talking to me beforehand there's only two absolutes and i know well not even absolutely two confirmed things that an sro does is they check it in the morning and they check out at night everything else you can't really predict what's going to happen throughout the day so that's deliverable 9 and what we do with that when we have we keep track of everything that they're doing uh i guess the best way to put this with these nine deliverables what we're doing uh like i described where julie's getting the logs the sros are keeping lots of what they're doing we categorize them into one of those nine deliverable areas when we

060get the information from their logs the office administrator and then she keeps records uh of in our file system too to see what type of work they're doing so we'll have actually quantifiable data that we'll be able to provide it's a work in progress we just got to really broken down nine categories and the excel spreadsheet where we can pull all that data out implemented in the last few weeks so we're still reviewing all that data now it's piles and piles of data and to be fair to the sros they don't have time throughout their day to write down every little thing that they're doing you know every little minute of the day and so what we're finding is they're putting the highlights of their day as an assumption because they're doing a lot more

061work that they're telling us about that we're just not seeing in the logs because it just isn't time to put them down in logs and so we want to make sure we get the best most reliable data and then other trainings that sros have done uh there's part of the deliverable in here has to do with uh i'm sorry the district staff training they did do the training with the equity specialists uh we're looking to create other trainings that the sros are willing would be more applicable to what they do to bring them in to do but i was provided a very comprehensive list of what sro trainings they do are required to do as far as on the police department side of it and just to give you a quick overview of the type

062of training they do is they have emotional wellness training for law enforcement they do it they do implicit bias training on part one part two they have mental health training for part one part two part three one is an introduction one's an assessment and one is uh intervention aspect for mental health part four mental health is actually a capstone where they actually go out and practice they have persuasion in the escalation training that's a regular yearly annual training they have preventing in custody suicides they have procedural justice and police legitimacy trainings and uh they're in a program called movie they can expand on it for me but it's called true north constitutional policing it's a five-part series that they're they're working on or some are enrolled in and some of this is required training through

063uh the pulse board some of its required training through the police department some of it's more specific related to the sro program themselves but training obviously takes time away as well from their duties and so they have to somehow balance all this to make sure that they're providing type of service to the school district and still provide doing all the training that they're required to do the best part about it is we have 175 days a year in person school and they work 260 days a year and so they have the opportunity to do a lot of that training on the days that we don't have school so those are the nine deliverables that we've been keeping track of we already started this process like i said and we have a stack of blogs that

064have come in and we're still refining that process i do have a sample of one of the logs i i had to redact a lot of the the information because i just want to make sure that we protect the privacy of anybody that's involved and we're still working to figure that out so that all that uh information doesn't come in that might be that we would have to redact all the time so they're trying we're trying to get them to be a little more general as far as the type of information they're putting down and not the great detail as far as the specificity that would be able to then if somebody could easily identify who was involved in it i think it's important that if we're going to share this with the board or

065something that we try to protect the interests of the students but this is a sample of a log from one of our sros from one of our high schools so as we're collecting and correlating it um i talked about the family engagement meetings that we have planned in the next two weeks and then i also talked about how we're doing the google document the template that we're doing that we can draw out so [Music] that's where we're at right now i think it's important that you hear from officer arzola i think it's important to hear from what a day in the life of an sro is i didn't want to steal all your thunder out from using some of the things you told me prior to our meeting but um like officer alex because they

066call him officer out so that's what all the students call him officer out but it's easier than pronouncing their last name yeah oh and it was a quick aside when i was on the police department i think you were hired in 2006. it was yeah and he was on the interview pound and down you might have been on the interview panel as well for officer when al came in and gave his interview on all the interviews i did from then on this was always the very best that i ever i'm so i'm just trying to patch on the bag so i just record this one right here all right so i was asked to come today and kind of paint a picture of you for the a day in the life of an sro and

067i like as he said before i explained to them the only thing that we know is when we start the day and when we end the day we try to make it as routine as we can because we're creatures of habit and routine is awesome but it's a lot of adapting throughout the entire day i show up to my school usually before students arrive the first thing i'll do is make contact with my administration like he said our police department our patrol division our intel unit has been outstanding with sharing information on incidents that may have happened over the weekend overnight that pertains specifically to juveniles they've been awesome with passing that information onto the school resource officer so that if we know about something ahead of time that might spill over into the school

068day when we meet with our administration we would say hey this incident happened over the weekend um just a heads up this is gonna come in this morning and if something's a little lost this might be uh it goes both ways if admin has wind of something that may require our intervention or assistance throughout that day they'll let us know at that time it's usually pretty informal i walk in hey mr captain mr uh mr gates how are you doing this morning anything i need to know about no good it's going to be somewhat good day then right here i got something for you just keep an eye out i'm always usually sros are at the main entry point or the main traffic way when the school day starts and students are coming in one

069the students know we're there they walk in they say hey there's officer owl high five oscar all's in the building and we get to maintain the security of everybody coming sometimes that changes sometimes we'll go outside if there's traffic concerns in certain areas will help with that but most of the time it's it's giving those students the hey good morning welcome to school how are you doing that's also gives us a good indicator on how the rest of the day is going to go the responses you get from the students hey officer al good morning how are you right now all right i'll come and talk to you later i know in my schools i have john adams and willow creek so i deal with young teenagers 11 to 14 years old i like to

070pop into the advisories in the morning watch willow or jag tv on you know with some of the students with the classes just to see what information the students are getting from their admin and passing times i try to be very visible and passive i don't like infringing on students educational time when the teachers are trying to get them educated passing time with in the hallways with students is the best time to build that rapport hey how are you doing how's your day how's your weekend high five that's it's all about report building for me every day that i'm at both my schools john adams and willow creek i have at least two presentations scheduled with students scheduled presentations that my admin and i have worked out too officer al is going to be in

071your classroom in this date and time and he's going to talk about social media i've been doing that for i think i'll finally be done with the social media classes here at the end of february but again that's that's my time to talk to the students one-on-one and give them information like i tell them to keep you out of trouble this is why i'm giving you the information so you make good choices because you know the school resource officer isn't here to hammer you into the crowd i'm not here to charge you a crime and to haul you off to jail you know i give them that information and so far it's been very well very well received by the students presentations in the classroom uh lunchtime uh lunches take forever they start at 10

07220 10 30 and they last until about 1 20. that is prime time for us to build rapport with students walk around sit down with them have lunch ask them how their weekend went they asked me how my dog is all the time how's your dog doing now he's great he hate all the people here but that's that that relationship building that rapport building so that they don't see scary police officer with the uniform they see officer al the person that's supposed to be in the school and that they trust throughout the day during class time i'll have students seek me out they'll come knock on my door they'll come to student services they'll leave his offspring available i need to talk to him that can be anything from having an issue at home i'm

073feeling down right now i don't know what to do i need some advice i'm so mad i just need to sit down for a little bit before i'm going to get in the fight i don't know what to do what do you think about this and like mr sheridan said it may not be an sro problem but am here that can listen to them and that's where we start reaching out to our our counselors our social workers our admin uh maybe a trusted teacher that they have we try to blanket them with services and give them the best possible support i'm not there to well this is the law you can't say a cuss word you can't punch somebody in the face and give you a ticket uh no students won't respond well to that

074it's more of a hate less the police side let's give you time to calm down and let's get you the person that you need to talk to um towards the end of the day i'm always visible when students are let out i like to wave at the buses and send them on their way on certain days certain events dictate that i stay after school and do events after i did a pta meeting for john adams recently after a pretty big incident that made a lot of news parents were interested in talking to the sro i went to pta meeting and kind of said hey this is the bare bones that what i can share with you is under investigation parent-teacher conferences i try to be around for those in case the parents want to see

075the sro and have any concerns and talk to me because of distance learning we haven't had the opportunity to do too many of those but i do let you know hey i'm available let me know when your future parent conferences are and i'll be better we do make videos for our tv programs in our schools regarding certain issues that are happening i made one at the beginning of the year when the devious lick trend was going through tick tock everybody remembers that paper towels and the sensors are gone i did a short video again an educational video for students think of your classmates you know i just did one on monday because we're seeing an increase in vaping and specifically thc cartridges in the schools so i made a short two minute video just reminding

076them hey this is not it's not just marijuana it's it's more important than that and the consequences are way worse once you come to school several students approached me today and said hey we saw you on tag tv and a lot of kids got scared wasn't my intention i just want you to make the right decision and stay out of trouble again throughout the day stuff changes if a fight breaks out yes the sros will intervene because that's a safety issue we can't have the students usually we don't intervene up front as law enforcement as far as the punishment aspect i like to let my admin i'll separate the fight then i let my admin deal with the school side of it you know with my parents and then once parents become involved they make

077an informed decision on whether they want law enforcement to investigate that that being said we've recently started using three rivers restorative justice for most of our investigations i think i've made three or four referrals in the past two months situations where normally our only recourse was here's a citation or a case referral to the county attorney's office and you have to deal with the criminal side of it to now talking working with both sides of the issue and saying you know this is an opportunity to do some restorative justice and avoid that criminal justice system altogether it doesn't mean you get off scot-free but we have an outside mediation partner that can take that on so the victims can get kind of like a remedy and relief and the suspect for last lack of a

078better word goes through that process and instead of ending up in the system there's an alternative method to deal with it so i haven't written a citation to students for at least months now and it's working for getting good reviews back from the three rivers restorative justice and again we can keep the students out of the criminal justice system and law enforcement is um anything else any other questions i might have left something out of my day i just wanted to note that i did get to see part of your like cyber security presentation when i was at willow creek this past week yeah most interesting times were coming out of my mouth yeah their eyes were real big um so thank you for that because the students certainly were i think and you're hitting

079home some point to them that they were clearly you know they were taking from many times during my presentation and so their eyes will go big and then they'll whisper yes everyone's quiet and on the edge of their seat like in addition to the logs i've been sending out kind of like an sro feedback form to the teachers before i visit their classrooms and asking them that they return them to me i'm putting them i've been forwarding that up to my chain of command as well so if reviews from from teachers or students are you know wanted they should be available go ahead uh two quick things one uh scott the second point you made dealt with uh sros and equity specialists uh and i know it's relatively uh the expansion is relatively new but

080i'm curious as to what that might look like if you could share if you don't mind and then additionally in terms of trends i i'm using the term trends i was unaware you know i thought we had conquered vaping you know uh only to hear you know that the it's trending once again uh and so i thought it might be useful not that we as a board can do anything about it necessarily other than evaluate our policies but it would be useful too and maybe a director clayman will potentially brief us as to what the trends might be the areas of concern might be so we're at least as a board aware unfortunately for me oftentimes my level of awareness evolves around facebook post or what people will call and say that you hear that

081you know and how come or why and so i i don't know if there's a way a mechanism to perhaps uh make us know what's a good idea on the equity specialist piece i think that's still trying to be defined as far as how that's going to work i really don't have a solid answer for you i do know that the groups the equity specialists that were already working in the schools that the sros did have a relationship with but when you bring on on more it's going to take some time to build that process and more clearly define the expectations of both groups but based on the feedback i received from the january 24th and 25th training that they had was i heard it was excellent do you want to provide any input on

082that i don't mean to put you on the spot sorry yeah but you just did so there you go all yours there's even a bike here did you plan that we did it i think um when julie kleiman reached out about the partnership between the sro as an equity specialist i thought it was a great idea for one but what we landed on is we don't we're hesitant to work with people that we don't know so that was the point of the two days where the people spent together i think it was important for the sros and equity specialists to get to know each other on an individual level before they started to engage and work with each other so that was the point they just spent some time answering questions such as like what

083does respect look like to you what does disrespect look like to you we sat there and we listened to each other and then i think it gives you a little glimpse into now i understand that disrespectful can be my tone of voice so now i know that when i approach a student or a different staff member i'm conscious about disrespect can come off with my tone of voice so i'm acknowledging those things as i'm approaching people so i just think the two days were powerful for both sides to listen and learn from each other in a comfortable setting before they have to go out in the buildings and work together were you ever able officer all to be at the were you able to be there at those the days yeah what was what were

084your perspectives i'll just will just downplayed it because i had a meeting with him and he walked out and they you did a circle in here they did a restorative justice circle and we just had another meeting and will said god just came out of it was great and i said what's happening it's like the sros and the equity specialists are doing restorative justice circle i was like is it are we is it working and he said yes it really was if you could share your perspective it went well it was nice to meet all the equity specialists and like i said get it get an insight into their own personal feelings and ours um i have new equity specialists that mine well knew i know i know them from past experience but uh now

085the process is getting together every day with them and just like i do with admin is there anything i can help you with do you have any ideas that we can use to to build that rapport with students if you want to walk with me down to the lunchroom and we'll go say hi to a couple of my friends and you say have a couple of your friends and they'll see us together and maybe your friends my friends my friends have become your friends and those relationships will spread um it it's kind of an exciting thing we have another another resource to use and the equity specialists can count us as a resource if they need something if we're there and we need something officer could you give an example of something that would happen

086in a middle school that um a social worker a counselor couldn't handle a situation where you really need a police officer to be involved okay a very generic one yeah yeah say the counselor calls me and says i'm talking to a student but the students making claims of abuse at home that student is terrified to go home and wants to speak to a police officer then i would get involved i would be able to create a safety plan i'll look into the allegations themselves reach out to our investigations division get some assistance from someone who's obviously well more versed into that type of investigation um another one is during distance learning the sros were still available to the schools we did work some patrol work but we were always available to the schools students were

087still reaching out to their counselors during business they would get that call saying i'm i'm not feeling right i want to hurt myself they would reach out to the school resource officer and say this is an issue with the student we're concerned um can you check on them absolutely we'll drive out to their house right now and do a welfare check with them make sure parents are aware and if they need to get down to generals or if they need others mental health resources um we'll take care of it we'll get back with you and give you an update on the student once we make contact another one might be simply the report that we have with certain students within within our schools counselors may be dealing with the students that's feeling afraid i'm walking

088the halls afraid i think this group is coming after me i think they want to hurt me i don't feel safe they'll get a hold of me and say hey do you know this other group yeah i do absolutely how about i pull them into my office and we'll squash this before it becomes something physical always with the student safety in mind you know i'm not gonna go and tell the other group this kid snitched on you but hey i heard that this is an issue between you and another student and most of the time say yeah i have an issue with that student i don't like them how about uh how about we take some steps to avoid the physical confrontation and i've gotten a lot of times when students will tell me officer

089out i promise you nothing's going to happen today all right i believe you i'm taking your promise and nothing did happen some vague examples and then could i don't mean to put you on the spot again which is what i'm doing but at a high school let's say that there's a student at a high school who has during the school day broken a law and you can name whatever the law is that might be broken how does that get handled you know a student brings a weapon to school or is dealing drugs or something how does the sro handle that i mean what steps get taken and again it depends on the situation um if someone is dealing drugs obviously a very serious defense um we would investigate it usually any crime actually gets investigated

090like a real crime um we have to do our job as a police officer we have to make sure that we have all of our evidence all of our facts documented um with three rivers restorative justice we go through that process except that we talked both sides involved in the incident we asked them are you willing to participate in outside mediation to handle this without bringing in the criminal side of things most of the time they agree that report still kept it still filed but at the bottom instead of referred for charges it says referred to three rivers restorative justice for mediation and that's where we leave um obviously some offenses we're not going to be able to give to three rivers if the worst the offense obviously parents have a big say so in

091what happens in their juveniles in life sometimes we do get the parents that say absolutely not we're not doing mediation we're not doing anything i want charges filed and unfortunately we have to we have to do our job thank you karen um after all i have kind of a follow-up on that just because um your experience may be different than the public perception of things like that so even what um chair marvin was asking about you know if there's some sort of drug activity at school does that necessarily mean that you need to take somebody into custody or what does that process look like what kind of discretion do you have making that decision i unless it's a extremely serious crime i'm not arresting any of my students and hauling them out in handcuffs usually

092when we're talking about charging a student it's some type of referral as long as everyone is safe regardless of the crime if everyone is safe you know i can refer charges i have the discretion to send the charges to the county attorney's office or the city attorney's office without actually placing handcuffs on somebody and taking them out of the building it it would take a very very serious offense for that to happen and just to kind of follow up on that with you being in middle school do you feel like your high school colleagues have to do things anywhere different or just how does that differ um that would be a little bit different i was gonna say i don't i don't think it's fair to ask him what's going on in high school but

093there's a reason he looked at me when he said he hasn't written a ticket because uh i don't monitor what they do on the day-to-day basis but i do monitor any charges or anything because again regardless of the school uh we believe that kids staying in school are going to have more chance for success than kids leaving school and and so they all have the same sort of marching orders that um you're gonna have to come and tell me the reason why this kid had to be taken out of school and we had an incident uh it's probably been a month or two ago now where a student committed a criminal act over the weekend the patrol officer that handled that call showed up at his school on on monday morning to arrest him and

094i said absolutely not you know he's in school now again i work in a system where i don't have complete control out every piece of that system they next showed up uh at his work site uh again i think he ended up in the backseat of the car on the way to dakota county and again the rochester police department is working on a philosophy that um these kids that get kicked out of school uh we know what the result is and that we have a part of making sure that doesn't happen so we had turned that squad car around and had a meeting at the at uh the north precinct and i wasn't involved in that patrol captain was so again this is this this is something that permeates our belief and how to how

095to police adolescent behavior let's let's say what it is and how to decriminalize it and i think it's important to note and that um you know we met last week with the county attorney's office who who our county attorney mark ostrom who absolutely supported it was our responsibility to divert these cases not to send his office to divert and i think um it's one of the powers of having sros that understand what services are around to actually evaluate these cases and say is there another alternative and and it is our goal to divert as many of these cases as we can uh because first of all the backlog in the justice system doesn't provide justice in a timely manner and some of these kids have long moved on by the time they even get in

096front of a judge so again i think it's important to note that again we don't typically arrest kids now i've been on the sites where administrators and teachers are could be frustrated and and you know my my point to them is if you're a victim of an assault and and you don't believe there's another way then the system will will will refer i mean i'm not people need to feel safe in their work space and but uh i mean i'm aware of cases where al uh has went above and beyond because i see all the videos too where others would have definitely charged a kid for assaults on his person him personally and other staff and again i think it speaks to the quality of the individuals we're putting in the schools that understand that

097adolescents don't there's a lot of adolescent behavior that over time has been criminalized and maybe it shouldn't right and and that tends to have a disparate effect on families where they don't have the level of support from the family uh and and and so we're we're constantly trying to work through that issue and i think that's another you sort of bring up the social worker issue you know we're aware some of these kids need services in their house but like the system is siloed right so i can't help a kid if i'm a social worker with olmstead county i can't help necessarily a child until he gets on probation and if it's a parent that has mental health or drug addiction problems well we don't do that that has to be somewhere else and so

098we believe that we have to bring these systems together and that's why i'm so excited about nikki niles being on the team because what happens in the school carries out into the community for the weekend and then carries back in and like the silos well necessary on many many issues privacy of information everything our hindrance to us really getting these kids the services they need and their families the services they need and again i don't spend a lot of time in the schools but i spend time trying to break down some of these walls and and really trying to find a better way to to get the support to these students that they need so they can stay in school they can thrive and again we often have parents that are we had a theft

099suspect i believe it was at one of the schools and the mom of the suspect subject was absolutely they know to go to the system they need to get on probation you know and i think i think you spoke of misunderstanding the system doesn't necessarily hold kids accountable that well either until they've done something so bad that the system can lock them up and take away their freedom and that's what we're hearing from a lot of parents is i needed help before my child committed a felony level of salt or did something really bad so again this is vital to our strategy city-wide and it's vital to uh really changing the way business is done so these kids get the services they need and they and they can actually survive and thrive and and we're

100all for that and again i think just briefly we deal with lots of threats in schools scottish air knows that and it's not uncommon for an sro to be on a zoom call with uh with the street officer uh in fact this has happened this week in the middle of the night you know hey we got this threat and the sro goes okay i know who the child is i sort of know enough about him to know what the proper response might be and pull briefing let's go out and knock on the door and talk to the parent and sort of diffuse this to make sure we can actually start school on time tomorrow morning and then again and then get the school to deal with it because most of these kids have an underlying

101issue i think everybody knows this that it's you know a child is getting bullied so what do they do they they make threats or they make social media threats and then it comes to our attention so that part i think for the safety kids i have two or one grandchild in the system now all my kids are rps graduates and uh is vitally important um and and um fully support us trying to find the best way to do it uh and and learn from mistakes of the past but we are committed to that that's why we're here again and we'll be here anytime you guys call and we really appreciate i know a lot of you have been out to the sites have met with our sros and they do phenomenal work i mean i

102i don't i don't like to brag but i have nothing to do with the way the middle schools work on a day-to-day basis but that was good that was going to be my original answer i'm the jv guy i got two middle schools i can't do i do things they can't i have been part of the privilege to be able to stand up to people in the system based on uh you know rank and tenure i guess in term of i actually have a follow-up on that um officer ali didn't mean to direct that question to you i wasn't debating who i would ask i should have done that differently um um it's lieutenant stillwell right that's right right yeah okay sorry um what i'm hearing you say though from what you're described there is

103that it seems like there's still more work that rpd needs to do in the community to avoid officer coming to school wanting to arrest a student do you feel like that's something that i mean you're working on do you feel like you're making progress that yes i mean um captain pending who runs the patrol division has you know a variety of experience level there that's getting younger every day and so we are really working together to make sure there's crossover that they understand and you know they don't come to school without calling a school resource officer and these guys know to stop at the door unless they have to call a supervisor they will again this is one an officer that made an error in judgment my view again is nothing he didn't do anything

104necessarily wrong but he didn't do anything necessarily right either and uh he was just getting ready to take four days off and he wanted to close the circle on this and do you think there's need to be changes in your policy or is it there no i think i think it's you know you can't expect a nine-month police officer to understand all the bigger pictures of what we're trying to do i mean that again when we talk about what response to schools will be like without you know 2006 what's that i'm not that good at math but you know the level of experience of most of the officers that are in the schools to understand i mean they just don't know that there's in that case it's different but they don't know all the services

105and all you know but we are trying to move the three rivers model to patrol for for cases outside the schools because we are finding the accountability is there just as much as it is in the system and it's quicker and actually offenders are telling us that you know this is the first time i actually had to sit across from somebody in here the impact i had because the court system you know doesn't often allow time for that and if i can j if i can add to that a little bit i think the relationship between the sros and the students that helps de-escalate the situation immensely i've had several instances where i've either been on vacation or gone and patrol officers are called to the school to deal with the situation one in particular

106i mean the patrol officer ended up getting bit on the hand and the end result was the student getting put in the back of the squad car and taken home charged with a crime i came back to the school the next day and i heard what happened and i asked that student i'm like what the heck happened what what what happened and the student's response was where were you i said would you have done that to me i would never do that to you officer al where were you i was looking for you and they said you weren't here and then these two showed up they made me mad and now i'm in trouble um you know even out in the community during distance learning uh i know a couple of us sros when we

107work in patrol we would hear calls for service come out usually persons in crisis someone being aggressive and we recognize them as students that went to our school and we made it a point to respond to those calls and as soon as those students saw us step out of our car they were like oh i know you i i'm sorry let me let me gain my composure can i talk to you yes absolutely um situations where the other officers were looking at each other like this kid's going to end up going to going to jail we're going to get assaulted here soon that kind of rapport that kind of relationship with the students is awesome that's the best part of being an sro when the kids look at you when you come back from your

108days off or when from vacation and they're like where were you you left us alone we missed you awesome that's the best part of being an sro those relationships that kind of trusts and if i can get a student to look at me and say you know what officer howell is all right and when they see another officer somewhere be like you know if officer owls all right i'll give this officer a chance melissa my understanding is that within the police department roles are often shifted every few years not just srs but within all the various um functions that are are in your department and i see five five years okay and um and i'm i'm wondering whether or not us heroes would be included in that and whether they could be exempted from that

109because i think number one not everyone has a talent like officer l for for children number two there's a learning curve we saw a reference to training participating in training um in relation to equity but i would also add i would hope that it would be also training regarding discipline issues in general and it seems to me that the district is making an investment in the the officers as well as the reverse the officers are making that investment in the relationships and so i i would have a little bit of concern based on a a flat policy with a number of years that doesn't take into consideration all all that i just mentioned and more agree with you 100 again i think uh i i've been a police officer for over 30 years and i

110don't believe there's a tougher job or a harder to get right job than the sro and and i put that much value on it i for the first 25 years of my career i couldn't have done it now maybe i had can because i've done a lot more listening than talking in the last few years and uh but i have no uh wouldn't consider moving an sro that's being successful in their school out at at this point in time and i don't think my opinion is going to change over the next couple years now there is sort of the question about burnout but uh if we keep getting the right people in those thoughts and there's times we've had you know i think it's really a relationship between the site principles and the sros sometimes

111those haven't worked out so we've made moves on those we're committed to putting people in a place where they can succeed but yeah i mean i'm not going to take an experience sro you know and remove them from a school just because um you know there's sort of this tenure thing and likewise um you know srl used to be sort of uh for lack of a better term of jumping off point you'd be an sro for a year or two and then you'd go to investigations or some other job that you wanted and and we've really tried to rewrite the sort of the program there where if you're gonna if you're gonna ask to be an sro we're expecting that you know because it's gonna take you a year or two to learn the job

112and be really good at it at least five years if not longer and the other investigative units that like to pick quality people to understand that i'm [Music] going to fight very hard if someone tries to take an sro out of a school where they're affected again it's not for everybody you know we've put people in schools and it hasn't worked out or we thought it was a good fit and it wasn't we've removed them but the current team is performing well in their schools and again there's not going to be some term limit that they're going to be removed from because i think the work is just too complex and too important to be retraining somebody every couple of years yes yeah so um i appreciate catherine stowell some of your comments about the

113need to decriminalize normative adolescent behavior um and i'm wondering i don't know just looking at some of the language in the contract it seems like the city slash rpd rps could be in charge of what training you get and i'm wondering if either one of you can speak to whether you've engaged not just in like the mental health and like implicit bias that you were talking about but also like these culturally responsive trauma-informed like developmental neuropsychological trainings yeah so i think that's on the agenda we were going to do last again i think it's very important to realize that taking these guys out of their out of their schools during the school year is like a lot of calculus goes on because the site and the principals don't like it and but we are really

114trying to plan their summers around first of all they get to take a little vacation but then then getting i think the trauma informed is not only some sros they're probably better at it because they're around professionals that understand how you know a touch could trigger a violent reaction when you're not expecting it but uh so yes we're committed to that i i heard also about the training the other week from some people that were there on my team and you guys might not i'm shocked to hear this cops aren't really good about restorative circles or they haven't had a lot of experience but i don't and i've done a lot of them now because that's sort of my day jobs listening to people that have been traumatized or are victimized by the police depending

115how you look at it uh but i never find once we get them in those settings and really start understanding each other knowing each other having enough trust to to say you know to say the things that you need to say and and so i think that is like a huge first step i think those equity specialists uh and sros can can really fill their own lanes but also support each other kind of like officer house but so the short answer is we had something scheduled for last summer and got cancelled but i'm i've worked with a lot of people on in that are working in re-entry from prison space and and they've been pressed upon me and i've seen enough videos of how interactions go wrong and you can't really quite figure it out

116because it wasn't really it was just you know a touch on the shoulder and and those types of things particularly with youth so we are committed to that and we i think a lot of what went into the mlu i was really happy because again i think in general i don't mean to put down my own profession but educators are a lot farther ahead in a lot of this stuff than than your average street cop like i was for 20 some years you know so um again when people sit down and talk and they they understand what triggers people's reactions that don't expect because the life experience isn't the same that's vital and successful outcomes and so we are committed to that um and the district wants to help us with that that's fine i

117i have another provider who's worked a lot in the youth space that's already volunteered to sort of co-teach a class in the summer i just sorry i just wanted to follow up on that i'm glad that you're willing and i think that it is incumbent upon us to make that a requirement for anyone who's working with our students and i just had one point uh of interest i guess really one of the comments that you're making about distance learning so in the contract language about like what constitutes school property it seems like any student wherever they are in distance learning any virtual thing that we're holding perhaps rps online also is included in school property and or thing like how do you do you know what my question is like how are you how do

118you engage in your work in that virtual sense like the school property piece had some contractual meaning but again i think i i think um you know we we started doing some work last year where we were just like and i think this is a testament to what the relationships like that we would go out and check on some kids that hadn't checked in right that we knew that we knew it wouldn't be you know officer al knocking on their door wouldn't cause an uproar in the house right and and so again i think um but you know you talk to the principals and the minute i take hell out of the school to go to somebody's house who's not pretty happy so again i think that i don't remember i remember the discussion around

119school property and again i think there's some other things in the contract that could be sort of more technical that you know we've talked about after school events and should we should we be more committed but i think you've seen that we're committed uh partners with the district i think we've shown that you know in our willingness to sort of put our best people forward when some of these meetings have been contentious and those type of things i mean that's you know i can't state enough how important the work you're doing here is and we're we're facing sort of this conflict that in a lot of spaces around town over a lot of issues that don't necessarily appear related to me but somehow they are related by certain segments of the community and so i

120mean we're willing to help students wherever we find them and i think that's an important part these guys in the summer will do some patrol time we're working with some community groups to maybe do some youth leadership camps where we partner with and and really trying to build you know i'm trying to bridge what they do in the schools to what we're doing in the outside it's really my job and we were just in phoenix academy last week proposing a a project by where the kids could um not exactly sure where it's going to go yet but i have somebody have a relationship with in the community that's uh into the sweatshirt hoodie industry and also has a little bit of history with the hip-hop industry and we're trying to do a project at phoenix

121academy just to engage those kids on a different level introduce them to small successes whether that's designing a phoenix academy hoodie that they can show some level of pride in and then hook them up with mentors in the community for after school kind of so again i think bridging is really the answer to a lot of the community's problems you know making sure there's that because these guys go home on friday just like teachers and principals do and like who's there over the weekend or what what supports can we can we can we help facilitate i mean we're not trying to take on more we're just trying to facilitate different groups that all have sort of the same goals in systems that don't always work um hand in hand or they're siloed or they you

122know that's not my job that's their job so we're trying to be a vital piece with that in our community members of that community engagement non-employees the police department are helping us through a lot of that space because you know we just don't have the expertise or necessarily the time to do it all ourselves uh thank you uh chair marvin just really briefly i appreciate dr garcia you're raising the point about you know we're kind of supposed to be experts in education adolescent development and so the idea of us providing our sros with some of that understanding when i first got here i conducted professional development for school teams around the research that i did on relationships and officer smith came with the mayo high school team and right after he said this was great

123you know all the sros should get this and i said yeah that's a really good idea and then seven months happened and we have not followed up on that it would have been a very simple thing actually to do and i mean we've all been overtaken by events in our lives in the last seven months but that was a very practical thing that he came really just because the principal said i think you should come to this you know day on relationships it was great to have his perspective there because a lot of it was team based and he was dialoguing with a diverse school team which included a lot of their student support staff around these issues so we should make sure that we follow up not just around the relationship piece but around

124a lot of these different uh things that we could be providing uh some enhanced support for and chairman i kind of haven't taken that when and i may have been the one that originally had this idea or maybe not um but my idea was to offer our professional development to the sros the entire catalog of what's available they can join us for any of those that was my original intent of having that idea so i expect that you know perhaps that didn't happen as quickly as we would want to but i think that's the idea is anything that they can benefit from they should have open access to anything that we're offering um i would make the distinction of i i had already heard from well about this event on the 24th and 25th i

125don't see that as training because i think they're learning from each other i think it was a collaboration and a start to a great collaboration which it sounds like was wonderful but it was the relationships and working together it wasn't each of you training each other on anything specific so i kind of view that a little bit differently um captain still i want to respond to what you've been talking about that i think all those things are wonderful it's great but i also look at the contract as being really outdated and that what you're telling us tonight needs to be in that contract and i think that that would make us so much more comfortable with recognizing the changes that your department's making the cha what you talked about about doing things in the school

126and then doing things in the community that is to be in that contract for us to to partner to the extent that it is needed for those things to be followed through with yeah i 100 and i will you know thank the district when they went to the you know the teacher whatever they're calling that sort of rest day or the wednesdays no it's a hard worker it's like how can we how can we get some things done that are mutually benefit for the district and and the sros so i thoroughly agree again i think the you know being purposeful about you know it's easy to say like let's get training let's do that but being purposeful these are the things the district offers or this or the resources and so what can we you

127know i'm a big fan of uh getting things done vocally or with the resources you have that understand your system better rather than always like like send somebody to wherever to to to get you know get this learning when when again the more they can be on page with what the school staff and support staff are and i think and i see that as a dual benefit too then you're interacting with the staff and getting to know each other so there's there's benefit of that as well and i totally agree with you you know my position on this contract it probably sat and was a rubber stamp every year for probably five six years too long and and we are committed to every year again just like we are today taco okay what's working what's

128not what do we need to change and i think we can get there i provided again i know there's a lot of moving parts here and decisions are going to have to be made but i think if the right decision is to continue to make this program the best it can be we are committed to making it better every year and i believe in my heart the outcomes for students will show that we've collaborated at a level that we hadn't in the past so we are running up towards seven o'clock and certainly we can continue the conversation but what and i know miss nathan you have some comment you want to make but uh karen to your comment and captain stillwell you were doing such a good job until that rest day it's kind of

129the deal anyway um so we should have a list of words not to say what what i'm hearing is is something that dr pickell had suggested is that maybe the board wants to have a task force who will look at the contract who will look at the mou and look at the language that's in both and come up with a draft of possible changes they want to make that of course work with a police department after seeing that so that when the time comes for us to decide are we going to approve the contract basically as it is for the next school year we will have language there that is satisfactory so the task force i did is that yes i approved yes yes yes and are there volunteers would be interested i'd volunteer karen

130[Laughter] but i think that task force and then either see if the mou is appropriate if it needs tweaking the contract needs tweaking if the two are going to be combined so that the document that we vote on we will know exactly what that says miss nathan and this is a perfect segue um i i really appreciate hearing the day in the life because i think when we were putting together the language for the mou we had a sense of the areas that needed to be addressed and the actions we wanted to move toward but we didn't have specifics so when i hear about the three rivers and the restorative justice the first thing i think is is that happening everywhere or is it because of the efforts of an of an individual sro who

131is taking some best practices and implementing it and how and because we've heard a lot about consistency from building to building and that it really you know it depends on the sro or and and it shouldn't right because we should really have our students having the same experience no matter where they're attending so um i'm hoping i'm glad to hear that we're talking about the contact but talking about a process to get the content of the contract and mou updated because i think i'd like to see some of those best practices that we're finding are working be more specific i mean i think we say restorative justice um and diversions from um charging in the mou but it's nowhere near as specific as what i heard you talk about tonight so i'm hoping that in

132the first few months of tawanda's work that's the kind of information that can come back to us so that the people working on that contract language can can walk that fine line between being you know too general and and too specific so that's been really enlightening thank you i'll just second that because i've also had conversations with lieutenant thompson and the things that i'm told were not the things that we saw and i i think that that would absolutely help clarify so sure marvin it sounds like then the task force uh would be tasked with doing this everything that we're now hearing should be not necessarily kicked down the the rails that may be uh collated before april i just said we would please provide the right level of administrative uh partnership with you to

133support that work um in terms of understanding both content and process and so i can connect with you directly and then maybe with the chair and vice chair to figure out exactly how we how we staff that effort in a way that uh really puts us in a really good place to consider uh perhaps a unified revised contract that includes components of the mru or um and other changes because i know there's other issues that we weren't thinking about and so we'd be pleased to put that in motion i think to your point director barlow let's let's maintain this momentum and get that underway soon absolutely so gentlemen or dr pickel anything else you're a gentleman too right there with you captain still love it i i want to thank scott for the leadership he

134provides it's a it is a real accident and not entirely an accident of history that his previous uh job uh is a constant benefit for us in our current job and i want to thank captain stillwell and officer arzola for the work you do and by extension our school resource officers i have been educated since i arrived here continually about the ways that school resource officers go beyond what we would traditionally think of as the role of resource officers some of which you touched on here today but i have heard about resource officers taking kids to the er who are having suicidal ideation parents who have disagreements in our parking lots and today a potentially very serious situation that is entirely resolved that sros were on instantaneously and so we thank you for that work

135even as we are going to consider what we know and need to know about the impact of the fact i think when captain stillwell you reference the fact that you go to places around the community and you experience attention that in some ways is not about you i know you also know that it is also about the uniform you wear and the institution you're in 20 years ago the profession that has been the focus of my life which is schools underwent something that at the federal level was called no child left behind and its basic assumption was we were responsible for kids who can't read and for the achievement gap and we had to do a deep reckoning and we still haven't come through that but it was a pretty deep rejection of the educational

136enterprise as it was and we all know that since the murder of george floyd policing has had that but as i've talked with the chief and others i think both in the interest of the kids in rochester and more broadly we have the potential to really forge a much better path because whatever decisions this board ultimately makes about police in our schools there are police in our society and we need them and i want students of rochester to not be afraid of them and so this is tough stuff and we need to name those tensions and that's why i'm glad you were here when you got to hear a bit from the fact that soon to be dr davis is going to look at what we know about the research on sros and despite what

137we've heard tonight about the incredible work something like officer alzola is doing does your presence cause trauma to some kids through no direct fault of your own and so this has been such a positive discussion i'm not trying to bring us down i want to say we're gonna i think look at both of these paths how do we make this this progress that we're making even better and how do we provide the board with information on what the alternatives down the road might be i would love it if two years from now considering the role of school resource officers in rochester public schools was not something that was an annual endeavor and instead was something maybe periodically every five years took place because we kind of found a good fit for a period nothing's permanent

138so thank you for your willingness to lean into this and thank you chair marvin for letting me even despite the fact that i'm not a gentleman rambla at the end well the truth had to come out anything else all right then thank you again so much it is seven o'clock and we are adjourned