June 18, 2020 School Board Study Session

001all right we've got everybody on hey kevin is burning dead on by chance i don't see bernadette hello director leon hello hello thank you do we need her before we begin i'll send her a quick message one of us can pick it up if she's not available to join us okay so we're ready to call the order yes kevin are we ready we're tom good evening i'd like to call to order the study session of the tacoma school board of directors thursday june 18th 2020. and before we get into the presentation um i want to note a couple of things one as you can see we're still in a virtual environment and we know we've all been through a lot together the last several months uh i believe we're 14 weeks into the distant learning

002and stay-at-home order uh school is coming to a close tomorrow the pandemic continues to wreak havoc on our country i think we've all been impacted by the death of george floyd the death of manny ellis i think that it's raised some really important questions and considerations it prompted tonight's study session i know in talking with my colleagues on the board and the superintendent we have heard the loud voice of the community we have heard a variety of perspectives we hear that there are kids in our schools that that don't feel safe we hear that there are kids in our community that don't feel safe we know that there are school districts that have ended relationships with police departments and we know that there are school districts that have continued relationships and tonight really is about

003the board continuing to listen and to better understand safety and security on our campuses in the classroom the impact that it's having the board's top priority is the the social emotional psychological physical health and safety of our students and their families and our staff and so tonight we're going to hear about our policies and the board can examine if there are new policies that need to be adopted changes to policies we're going to listen to our superintendent as the ceo of our organization to make recommendations on how we can continue to ensure that uh well-being of our students and their families and our staff and i think we're going to have some important decisions to make in the in the weeks to come on the path forward tacoma so i'm appreciative to you all to

004be here tonight i think it really is an important conversation it's complex um and i i know that we have all uh greatly appreciated the input that we've received hundreds of emails and voicemails have come in expressing those different perspectives and we appreciate that input and it's going to help us to make decisions going forward and i think an important uh first step for us is this study session this evening uh superintendent i believe um you and your team have a pretty comprehensive presentation this evening so i'm going to ask my colleagues to hold questions until the very end because there are a number of pieces to this and i think for the continuity of it it's going to be important for the presenters to get through the presentation in its entirety and then we'll

005be able to ask some questions and with that i will hand it over to the superintendent thank you um yes we uh wanted to do really good we wanted to get some good information and a short amount of time to let you know uh what our what our thinking is and thank you uh director hines for the entree that um you know we know we're gonna have to do uh some additional work also and um you know it's going to be important and if you look at that uh we're gonna do a quick we're gonna do a powerpoint that um provides you with some of the information that we've put together so if you put the first slide up it's really just an overview slide that talks about all the different layers that are a

006part of creating and maintaining a health healthy and safe learning environment and so you'll see there's many components around that outside edge you see are our goals so i'm going to ask uh dr garcia to start just kind of talk about this whole multi-layered uh safety and security and how important it is dr garcia thank you superintendent justin kevin next slide please so in the tacoma public schools security is we do really have a multi-layered approach there is not one specific strategy that is measured all aspects of keeping schools students staff and community safe we ground the strategic approach in our health and safety uh benchmark and then within the foundation for that teachers administrators i think tanya we're getting a lot of background i'm not sure others are hearing that as well uh teachers

007administration staff who are uh fostering a caring school and community that values respect and trust between adults and students we want all students to feel connected and understand what's expected of them and receive any behavioral and mental health support they need our safety and security is designed to try to approach it from a 24 7 safety and security response meaning that we do have staff that we work to layer throughout the days throughout the weeks to be there in response next slide please we're going to start with giving you some basic definitions of some of the roles that are played tonight we're going to talk to you about some of the numbers behind those how many staff are at each of these roles so you can get a kind of a feel for how many

008are school staff how many are district-wide staff and then how many are actually tpd staff in addition to that we're going to talk to you about some of the numbers uh the data that we've been able to identify and collect we're going to talk to you about some of the policies that are out there we're going to tell you the difference between discipline school discipline and the role of uh tacoma police department uh we're and that's gonna be done by one of our principals uh and then we're gonna share with you uh a greater conversation around justice and our restorative justice practices so the first role in this is our campus security officers these folks are wonderful community and staff members that promote lawful behavior and protect the welfare of our secondary school students and

009faculty that are our middle schools and they are at our high schools uh these are tacoma public school employees and they are called csos oftentimes you'll hear about them csos next slide please the second uh piece of our military layered approaches are school patrol officers these are uniformed tacoma police or excuse me tacoma public schools employees these are not police officers but they work in partnership with the tacoma police department they provide safety and security support across the district and there is a a team of these folks that are not assigned to specific buildings but they are responsive to all of our sites uh elementary middle school and high school next slide please the third layer which is uh president hines identified as one of the key conversations tonight is the school resource officers otherwise

010known as sros these are on duty armed uniformed tacoma police officers they work full time at each of our tacoma's five comprehensive high school as well as their regular position in the tacoma police department so there are is five of these folks uh assigned to schools and then there is one uh sergeant that is um helps with the relationship with our director of safety security mike grouper next slide please so as we think about a multi-layer approach uh it's more than just the to come a police department it's more than um uh the school patrol officers and it's more than the community resource or the csos the campus security officers but specifically when we think about the tacoma police department these are armed and uniformed on the police officers who work directly with the toyota

011public schools as i mentioned and when they're off duty they're also addressing students doing welfare checks and supporting any additional security needs so remember when we think about a school year that is not the same as or a school day as a regular shift for a tacoma police department so they do additional support of students outside the day as well in addition to that we partner with the city of tacoma and pierce county on emergency management and that ensures that we're constantly assessing our ability to respond to any forms of disaster or safety threats and so these folks are uh part of that liaison group as well um but it's important to note that we also do partner with the city of tacoma in pierce county next slide please i believe our director of safety

012and security mike i think this one you're going to let us lead us through yes sir thank you dr garcia so our 25 campus security officers are ours in our secondary schools and our seven school patrol officers are our mobile units that are unarmed officers that are hired through department through our tacoma public schools our five resource officers are at our comprehensive high schools and that includes one sergeant all five of those comprehensive high school resource officers also help uh go to our secondary schools when asked we have a great partnership with them they help us on the training during our drills or lockdown drills at all the schools as well next side slide please just one subtlety on the uh tacoma policeman department the sros those are uh folks are hired on a six-year

013rotation um and so they are committed to the schools uh with the desire and idea that they build relationships within the school staff and the school community and so part of our work with them is to maintain that same person for an extended period of time thank you mike thank you and i'd just like to add to the primary uh job responsibility for the whole team is is not to make it rest on on our students it's to support them in their learning environments and they they all know that and that's why i'm proud to look at this next slide i have and i really want to put out a big shout out to um our superintendent santorno and her hiring philosophy when i was hired for this position approximately two years ago carla made

014it very clear that our goal was to support the kids learning environments not to make arrests and as you can see in the last three years how that's been trending so it was very easy her onboarding was very simple hers and dr garcia's was uh might go in there and i've had a great team to work with and the partnership with tacoma police officers have been uh just phenomenal so the trending on the numbers of investigations uh even with the complaints uh are very low and as far as the preliminary numbers for the arrests are are trending in the right direction as well so on this slide it's also important to note as you see those trends um through this conversation we've identified that we we we have an opportunity to work closely to examine

015the data with more detail and some of the things that we've identified is these arrests reflect a variety of different uh incidents everything from felonies to gross misdemeanors to some misdemeanors but these are not a school discipline it is also that noted that as we're looking at this data we do have a disproportionality of students specifically males of color compared to other groups and so as our numbers continue to decline which is what we'd like to see and that special note in 2020 this is three months of data so often times we look at data from a school calendar this data comes from the police department it is an actual year a calendar year um and so in 2020 we only had three months the numbers were um obviously one but we're not able to

016break it down any lower to this at this point for a public because of the um the u the numbers are so low at this point that the end size may uh be identifiable for a certain student or a certain subgroup of students next slide mike so next we're going to ask ms bernadette ray principal wilson to talk a little bit about the role of a school resource officer in comparison to an administrator good evening um i um just have a a couple of um anecdotes and and um just ways to explain some of the bullets here um so the first bullet the sros do work closely with school administration staff and students to help them feel safe most often the school resource officers are utilized as just that a resource so often students will

017come in and say at wilson it's officer minor i'd like to speak with officer minor um i have some questions and sometimes it will be a situation like uh of course students will say i'm asking for a friend i have a friend who got a ticket and they'll talk through scenarios they'll talk through um their understanding of citizenship in the community and what that looks like so they'll utilize him to understand um how to how to act appropriately in the in the community the second bullet speaks to the relationships and as dr garcia mentioned with that six-year rotation the school resource officers really are able to develop relationships with students i have had a couple of students who make it a point to let the officer know that they are not necessarily friends of the

018police but most often students are utilizing the officers as resources and developing relationships for instance um i i did speak with a couple of other principals just about examples our resource officer speaks with students and staff about the threat of the possibility of an active shooter at school and when he speaks about that he doesn't use the language of if he uses the language of when and in thinking about that school resource officers are really there to protect our students from outside threats not necessarily to protect from our students who might be threats it's really to think about what's coming from the outside um i know that there was a weapon incident um fairly recently at oakland and jon jones spoke about having resource officers um being able to come in and deal with those

019threats that are often coming from the outside administrators do handle all of the school disciplines so for that third bullet um it's important to know that most often the resource officers will ask principals about decisions so in looking at we saw the slide about the arrest data if for example a student had a large amount of a controlled substance in their possession the officers will often say how would you would you like me to step in um and so we talked through those situations of is this a first offense um is this uh a second or third offense for this student what do we know um and so we partner with the resource officer to make some of those decisions about discipline but it's really the principal who makes the decision as to whether or

020not it's exclusionary um and if there if there is ever an arrest which as you saw on the slide is very rare um and then i wanted to just make mention of the the seven um school patrol officers who are working around the district with all of our schools um sometimes while they are very responsive because there are seven of them sometimes they are not able to get to one of our 10 high schools or one of our 12 middle schools so the the secondary schools really utilize the sros um more than the spos uh during the school day because there are only seven and so that's something that we've just that's been our practice is the school resource officers are really handling secondary so that the s p os the school patrol officers are

021available for the elementaries and i'm happy to answer questions um about more specifics but that completes this slide thank you bernadette i think school board members are going to hold their questions until the end of the presentation uh but i think if you're able to stay with us i would anticipate that we might have some questions for you certainly thank you very much the next slide if uh you don't mind transitioning to that please tom real quickly thank you um so good evening renee trueblood general counsel um for tacoma public schools and uh this last year 2019 uh the state legislature passed a really important bill h.b 20 uh 1216 and it was a bipartisan bill that was designed to enhance the expectations for school resource officers in the state of washington uh what the

022bill requires for us to make some changes before the beginning of the 2020 2021 school year so the timing of this conversation is really relevant because we need to be making some changes in order to be in compliance with this bill uh but in addition to data collection like dr garcia talked about earlier it's going to make it more robust for us to monitor issues of disparity and also monitor any possible additional corrective action or training that we would need to take with school resource officers it also specifies uh training that school resource officers need to take as the legislature noted that school resource officers play a very special role uh that we hold them to a higher standard as they're working with our children and giving them additional training in de-escalation techniques in mental

023health and in diversity and equity so um mike rupert our director of safety and security who you heard from a minute ago who is former washington state patrol himself he's partnering with the tacoma police department to um make sure that this training is completed uh some of the esds are offering training and they're working together to make sure that that training is completed before 2020 begins we're also as a district looking to see about having our school patrol officers and campus security officers take the same training so that all of that multi-leader multi-tiered uh approach those folks are all on the same page the bill also requires some um changes in the memorandum of understanding or agreement with tacoma police we currently have a contract with tacoma police that expires august 31st of 2021 um

024so this is a perfect time for us to also be sitting down with tacoma police department to put an addendum in place to that contract to come into compliance uh with hp 1216. so if uh as a result of the inquiry we're doing right now there's additional things that we want to put into that contract some best practices uh this would also be a time to do that and next slide please the bill also requires that we put into place a policy on school resource officers and i'm jumping down a little bit to the bottom of the slide but wazda which is the washington school uh directors association puts out model policies for school districts to use it's a great place for us to start and then often we will customize the policy to meet

025the specific needs of tacoma so there is a model policy that was just released in may and uh that that would also be a great place for us to start and then decide if there's some other best practices that we would want to put into a policy for school resource officers um it's been a frenzy trying to i have a lot to learn about um best practices and so i've been reaching out to some of the experts out there uh a big shout out and thank you to kendrick washington of the american civil liberties union he provided me with some great best practices as well as karen dopey from the washington school resource officers association so we're trying to gather together information but i know that there's also other community groups that we want to

026hear from before we put into place a policy about school resource officers there are a few other policies as well that i think would be relevant for us to look at the first one i put on here i don't think that we need to make any changes to but i just wanted to bring to the board and the public's attention and that's our isolation and restraint policy it was updated in 2016 it's in compliance with the requirements of the law regarding the ways that adults physically touch students when it's necessary for students or other students safety there is training that all of our school patrol officers and campus security take on isolation and restraint and uh none of those isolation and restraint techniques involve anything like a chokehold or any other dangerous practices to a

027student we're also required to report to the state anytime isolation restraint is used the other two policies there there have been some updates by wazda our policy 4310 relationships with law enforcement that one um hasn't been updated since and the wasda update addresses some of the relationships with law enforcement as it relates to immigration and that's a very timely topic for us the superintendent made her position very clear a few years ago about whether or not the district would allow ice or other immigration officials into schools our policy is no uh not unless there's a very specific warrant um so i think it would be timely for us to also update that policy to be consistent with the superintendent's intent and then also policy 43 14 a notification of threats and violence we haven't updated

028that one since 2017 and there's a more robust definition of threat of violence of harm that i think would also be positive for us to include so um last year we updated our school discipline policy and i really thought the process that we used to do that was really good um we used experts from ospi uh we talked to experts like team child we involved all kinds of community groups including the black collective and one of the folks who really led that on our team was laura allen who um oversees our whole child practices and she was instrumental in helping us to update our school discipline policy with an eye toward reducing disparity um in discipline based upon students uh immutable characteristics color race gender uh identity anything like that so um with that i

029want to turn it over to laura who will talk a little more about our restorative justice i appreciate that renee uh next slide please okay so restorative justice let's talk about it it is a relational approach to conflict it seeks to answer the question how do we create the space for accountability and simultaneously build relationships the roots of restorative justice originated in 1970s as a mediation between victims and offenders in the criminal justice system but when we put it into practice with fidelity in the modern school-day setting students experience greater safety a sense of belonging and we see a decrease in exclusionary discipline less bullying less violence because restorative practices make our schools more caring more equitable they disrupt institutionalized systems contributing to the school to prison pipeline and students get caught in punitive discipline

030cycle and we really focused on this last year we know that negative perceptions of education are formed and students spend time out of class they become there's a further achievement gap between the haves and the have-nots when you look at the chart up here you'll see that in the green arrow pointing straight up it's this typical uh belief of a school or a classroom that we there's either high and very strict discipline or there's none at all and it's chaos but i would offer to you that there is another continuum and that is one of support so restorative practices ben blend the best of both worlds where there is high expectations boundaries and that's met with encouragement and nurturing because at the premise is that people and relationships are valued first and foremost when people

031make mistakes or cause harm and we all do restorative practices help us to understand the impact of our actions and that's important we know our intent right we know when we do something what we meant for it to happen but to really own our intent is a learned skill so is taking accountability showing empathy conflict resolution building relationships these are all skills that i know i'm still learning because they take a lifetime to perfect but as humans we're hardwired to connect and we need strong and meaningful relationships to thrive next slide please okay these are our five restorative practice principles it comes from the national center of restorative justice and the first one is that conflict happens right students and adults are taught to avoid conflict rather than to lean in and have a conversation

032to help maintain that healthy relationship conflict is defined as a difference between what we expected and what actually happened when we experience conflict and that's common it's often in our lives it feels like we're disconnected like we're untrusted and unvalued and the restorative approach believes to overcome the negative effect of conflict we need to look at it as an opportunity that we can lean in and take a risk and actually develop a tighter closer relationship number two there is to engage all stakeholders teachers uh parents and students are not historically consulted in disa disciplinary decisions but we want to bring them in with the restorative approach because we value their perspectives and it's important empowering author and victim again victims rarely participate in the process punitive systems punishments are not about addressing healing for the

033victim restorative justice creates space for victims to have a voice to have input we empower them and we empower the author to create meaningful acts of apology because in uh restorative practices a mumbled sorry it's just not enough next principle is that we value empathy we use vulnerability to move the conflict away from shame and towards empathy and i want to create a quote one of my favorites bernie brown that empathy is the antidote to shame shame is this intensely painful feeling of believing that we're flawed and unworthy of acceptance and belonging shame is how we see ourselves in others eyes it separates it isolates and on the flip side empathy involves understanding another person's situation from their perspective so as such you must be able to place yourself in someone else's shoes and feel

034what they are feeling without judging them empathy moves us to a place of courage and compassion when we feel empathy we can't feel shame and the final principle is developing agency so we encourage youth and adults to create our own locus of internal control and define what we need and want we are asked to connect our actions to the impact on others and actively make it right we become problem solvers in this process rather than passive recipients of punishment so there's active accountability not passive accountability next slide please okay so what is the what how do you do it right how do you restorative just these are our practices uh that we implement these are systems and practices and there's two of two key sections one is proactive things that we do to build relationships

035and the other is responsive to harm so we're going to start on your left side there and when we talk about building relationships we want to strengthen our connection with each other to create kinder classrooms kinder schools we do this through circles through community circles and in a circle and it might be for students with students it may be staff with staff many of our schools that are implementing use this at all of their staff meetings but it's an opportunity to hear and learn about people that they wouldn't normally sit next to at the lunch table and this is the genesis for empathy and belonging this is how we build social emotional skills and cultural and racial awareness i want to just pull out real quick in green there where it says effective questions and

036tell you a little bit about that these are very simple questions it's a shift in how we ask um about what happened in an event and they seem simple but they're genius so we'd ask what happened who has been affected and what was the impact what are you able to take responsibility for what would you do differently next time and what do you think you need to do to make it right so when harm happens and we know it does conflict always does then we're going to lean in to repairing that harm and that's on the right hand side a very low level version of practice is called an accountability circle many of our schools do this weekly in classrooms and this is an opportunity for students to learn how to actively take responsibility for

037actions to own it to be vulnerable about that sometimes that's hard to say i did this and then talk about the impact and what they can do to to make a difference an example of when we would use an accountability circle is maybe they had a the class had a rough time on the playground or maybe the substitute gave a bad report so the class would um talk about where they could take accountability for not being safe respectful or responsible the other two restorative conferences and re-entry circles are more formal restorative conferences often bring in parents and other community members that were impacted re-entry circles are for when students were expended suspended or even expelled and they are re-entering the school and the community circles around and says how can we help you to re-enter

038with success next slide please so to help schools implement we have what's called the restorative justice academy this is through a city of tacoma grant and we have partnered with the national center for restorative justice this is a local organization but they're nationally renowned they have built a robust program implementing restorative practices they also help in therapeutic sessions after school programs and started in the criminal justice system for this program each school sends a team and that team has to include one member of administration the principal or vice principal to do four weeks i'm sorry what 10 weeks total of a 101 course and that focuses on systems and practices before harm occurs and then another 10 weeks on a 201 that looks at what happens after harm occurs what do we need to put

039in place for that um and it's followed up by a full staff training by the national center for restorative justice next slide please these are our sites that are beginning their journey to implement restorative practices there's 28. they are changing their belief systems it's a shift in mindset it gets to the very core of how we look at a justice system which is typically a system that excludes it isolates and it punishes youth and we move it towards restorative now without supports and interventions then schools often can operate out of fear and compliance rather than trust and positive relationships it requires a transformation from each and every person who uses fear and compliance as a management strategy to become somebody who uses compassion and empathy to mold and model citizenship in our student body these

040schools they are filled with champions and they are committed to doing better they haven't arrived yet we have some very far along and some just beginning the journey but uh it is commendable the heart that they um have at these schools next slide please so here's a little bit of data for you um this shows the times that restorative practices were used in the discipline system now this does not include some of those low-level accountability circles that we talked about and it definitely is not the community building circles but these are the formal um conferences that take place usually with families the goal is not to create a record that leads to progressive discipline but instead we want to strive to eliminate disparities because we do not want to get them to perform out of

041fear but rather because they truly care about each other wouldn't you say it's better for future generations to live their lives in fear of instead of in fear breaking rules or laws but instead to be empowered with empathy and awareness and skills that are necessary to make the right choices no matter who is watching next slide please so again our goal with this is breaking that school to prison pipeline approach and schools have applied restorative practices in these different scenarios we know that children are learning and i'll give you an example a boy at one of our middle schools went online and bullied girls um it said some pretty awful things to girls at another middle school those principles brought together the boy the girls and parents in circle and that boy had to take

042accountability in person for what he wrote online and the girls were able to really speak up and own the impact of it and how what that meant to them if you talk about learning a lesson that's very different than having a day off suspension but having to face and take accountability and make a make right what was uh what you did it's powerful next slide please so these uh i wanted to show you a little bit of our exclusionary discipline data from the first cohort there were 17 of them that went through our 101 and 201 now in the blue 2017-18 the grant was not even awarded rj wasn't on the radar in 2018-19 in the purple you see exclusionary discipline rose this is when the first team began to come together and start the

043101 course they were not systems in place yet they were building a few champions at the site and you can see in 1920 and gray how a year later after a year-long 20-week sessions that they had this foundation in place to start to move away from exclusionary discipline and lean into restorative practices [Music] and final slide please with our superintendent director hines did you want to make some comments before i do the final slide or do you want me to go ahead first no carla you can go ahead i just i think it's notable that uh laura is the person that has been leading our work on social emotional learning as part of the whole child initiative and i think the fact that she has been instrumental in the restorative justice model as well as

044our new student discipline policy and working with those stakeholders it's really about trying to nurture students build skills in them that they'll take into adulthood and i think that's an important connection so laura thank you for all of that important work that you're doing and superintendent would you please give us a sense of who you've been hearing from on this issue uh safety security in general and then i think also there's been some specific uh questions and outreach with regard to the school resource officers as part of that tacoma police department contract sure all right i want to start by congratulating the board on this study session um you know they asked directed to get it together right away and i think that's so important i think this is an important conversation it's overdue uh

045for students um the feedback that we've gotten and received from letters to the board in the community and students and staff shows that this is a a conversation that um that we need to have uh please know that i think that um for the board from the leadership team for me personally that this is an important topic i think we are all just um totally frustrated by the events um that have led to this question being and it's important to all of us to make sure uh that we do whatever we can to come up with actions that are gonna make uh the schools a better place and the community a better place for our kids of color especially our our black boys um it's easy to see and i'm going to try not to

046get too animated about this but it's easy to see excuse me that racism is alive and well uh in our community and that has such a hard heartfelt impact on all of us and you know safety and security is a right that we all share and the other thing i've learned is that um and we i knew it before but has been uh re re-emphasized through uh the the feedback we've gotten is that it's complex it's multi-dimensional and that includes both physical safety and mental safety and that there's lots of perceptions around it and yeah we heard from the community and we have heard from students and staff that have said we don't feel safe with the presence of police officers in our schools but what also is important to note is we've heard from

047students and staff that say i don't feel safe if we don't have a police officer in the schools so this is not an easy uh question that can be solved quickly i think we need to do a deeper dive and we need to look into the complexities of this issue and dive deeper into the needs of our community and i it's no doubt i want to make that clear and i want people to hear me say we know we need to do better and if there are students that are walking into our high schools and automatically feel uncomfortable because i see a police officer we need to figure out different ways to address that i'm angry i'm frustrated uh about the discrimination that continues of our black and brown students and i also know that

048um we we need to look at several different uh several different uh solutions or action steps that we can take to make it better so i don't want people to think uh that we're not gonna move we're going to move but i just want you to know we want to be thoughtful and uh consider consider the circumstances around it especially since uh there was such a you know that feedback is is not on one level it came back um you know from from different perspectives just personally i want you to know that um our experience with tacoma police department has my experience with tacoma police department has been positive they've been an important partner and the narratives that i listened to i called my high school principals and they gave positive near narratives about sros

049i'm also just as clear that the literature that people have sent me says uh that there are dangers of having police in the schools and that it can cause real harm and harm that doesn't always come to the surface um so what i think that means is what we need to get out there and hear from some of these um some of these other people we need to talk to students you know we always try to come up with solutions for for our uh for our young people without asking them uh what they really think and so we need to really talk to our students and families we have community organizations that have expertise in this and so we need to talk to them and get their um get an understanding from them about what

050they've seen work we need to look at what's working in different communities you see some of the lists there of organizations and community folks that will that will have advice to give us and uh number one i want to make sure is that we talk to those families that have been marginalized or have been afraid and uh see if we can uh you know look at um some different solutions so uh this board has already always been good and has shown a record of supporting kids of color by the different things they've done the access policies and the ways to get credit they have always shown that they are committed to making sure that we uh take care of kids in tacoma so i propose that um you know that we continue to do that

051that we talked to and that we that you asked me or you direct me to come up with a process that doesn't take a hundred years all of us have been on committees that were started when people were uh upset and aggravated and ready to act and then uh nothing comes of it so my my commitment is that we uh hear from these um the community and uh we get a commitment and we get some work done now we're also my leadership team uh and uh and i are going to be trying to get uh are gonna try to get school opened in eight weeks with all the guidelines that we have and so we do know uh that there's lots of things on the plate but this is important our community thinks is important

052uh the volume of mail on both sides shows is important and uh this is the work we need to do if it when it's such a big component of how our students feel at school because certainly how you feel at school makes a big difference in what you learn at school so we're we're ready to do that work director hines ready thank you superman uh and before i uh invite questions uh from school board members i think it's important that um we think about going forward uh what information we're gonna need from the superintendent so please is there there's a lot of great uh pieces presented this evening as you're thinking about questions or clarifications from the presentations but also specifics that we would want the superintendent to bring back to us i think we're

053probably going to want to direct her to do some uh specific things to achieve some targeted outcomes that relates to the safety and security of students and families and staff with that i will open it up for questions from the board vice president cobb do you have any questions or comments i do have a few comments and questions um i just wanted to clarify something from one of the earlier slides that in which we were overviewing the role of the sro it said one thing on the slide but dr garcia when you're speaking i i feel like you kind of said um in addition to their regular assignment but i think you met as their regular assignment so i heard you speak to the fact that the sro's work day is different than our school

054day and describe you describe some of the activities that they engage in in the rest of the day but can you clarify whether or not these um officers have uh instances when they're working in their in another capacities and not as sro as part of the role so this is their assignment for the six year with the intention of that six year time period it's not like they go and rotate to some other roles on the force is that correct mike i'm going to ask you to clarify because i believe that there is times where they are also uh outside of regular school hours where they do tpd functions so mike can you learn about that i absolutely will and and that's a great great question because uh that's an important question because you you're

055probably alluding to that some officers could come in on uh you know be over overworked and tired and not make good decisions these uh five officers including the sergeant they are on our schedule and what that means is they are not doing extra activities unless there's overtime activities which most of them don't do because our schedule is is pretty uh good for them in their in their family lives you will see them on occasion at our sporting events that they support but other than that they're they're ours uh during the school year now when the school year's over they go back to tpd and that's when they'd get all their training in thank you for that um also just as a comment in one of the early pictures on one of the earlier slides you

056had a picture of what looked like some of the staff and i recognized some of those people we talk a lot about diversifying the teaching force so that students see folks who represent their racial or ethnic background can you talk a little bit about the diversity of the security force and whether or not we're intentional about trying to hire um members to be on that team who represent the different demographics of our student population oh yes i'd love uh can somebody put up the the picture of the uh the workforce of my crew is can someone put that on the slide uh uh another great uh question director cobb my i'm very proud of my work group is i believe is the most diverse work group that we have in one particular work group uh

057it's coming up here soon i think it's one flight back one slide yeah it's that's right there right so if you look in that picture look at look at the the diversity there of the uh i mean the ethnicities the gender we i have a very uh representative work group of our students did that answer your question are we intentional about that absolutely okay um we're intentional director cobb with our recruiting and we follow all the uh required hiring practices but a lot of our folks are also coming from tacoma and our tacoma residents and so uh we're intentional about those recruitment practices on a regular basis yeah i told others on the call that one of the sros taught my high school civics class and is a family member of a close friend so

058i know that we keep like tacoma pride going in all aspects of the district's work i have another comment um renee was talking about the policy landscape and mentioned house bill 1216 that's passed recently and some of the additional requirements of that legislation are effective next school year so i just want to raise on that bill or offer i've um mentioned that i really think that that is a significant piece of legislation but it calls attention from my perspective to the fact that this is kind of a two-prong um decision-making and engagement process that we need to be engaging in i think the dish the board clearly has the role to determine and to decide whether we continue our relationship with the coma police department and um moving forward but he but in the event

059that we do continue our relationship that law makes pretty clear that we need to adopt an agreement with tpd using a process that parents students and community members so i just want to connect this discussion that we're having back to the conversation that we had previously about family engagement and community engagement and raise again what i think is the importance of continuing to maintain that list of those legal requirements that the district has to really engage families students and community members i think it's easy to move forward with adopting agreements and to do outreach to community to get feedback but to really that to me is something different than really sitting down with students and sitting down with families and community members with the explicit purpose of giving them the opportunity to weigh in on

060that agreement that feels like something different to me and it feels like something that's warranted in this case so again i encourage everyone out there to read that legislation because i do think it provides a really strong framework to start the conversation about school resource officer programs in schools in the event that we do continue to build and to improve our relationship um from where we are now so that's really just a comment and the last thing that i'll say um it's just on the context of restorative justice and i and i've said this before when we talk about our approach to restorative justice the one area of concern that i continue to have is with regard to um making determinations about when someone has done harm i think in some instances like the example

061that was given about the student who made comments about a group of girls online it may be clear that harm was done but in a lot of other instances and this used to be and continues to be the source of a lot of subjective discipline disparities really honing in on who's done harm and who's the source of the conflict i think can be challenging in the school context and challenging in the context of adolescent relationships so i continue to wonder about your actions and wonder um how determinations about who's committed harm or who's the source of the conflict get made and to hope that no student leaves the interaction feeling inferior to or superior to one another and that on all sides the interaction feels good so i i'm just honing in on i think

062we always and need to continue to work to make sure that the community that we're restoring was whole for students felt whole for students to begin with as we build out our approach to restorative justice and um i heard really good things about our approach and our continued rollout of the approach and i continue learning about it but i just want to surface again that i continue to feel like i want to be mindful of the dynamics around our continued disparities in discipline and who is who gets pinpointed something wrong so that's my last comment thank you vice president cobb director leon did you have any questions or comments thanks yes i appreciate um everyone's attempts to this matter it really is as extremely important not a new issue for our country that uh and

063the or this world that racism exists um and that's why it's at this point because it's become put in everyone's face in a way that that was dramatic the reality is that our community has been struggling a long long time so i think importantly the um that uh kicked off the uh well some of her last though i may um repeat something she may said here but i'd like to just start um the idea that this is not an issue that is just relegated to uh policing or security effort but it's institutional system-wide society-wise so i think that it's important for us to understand that and we are a role regarding education with a large part uh to play with the card to get safe in school so um there are a few kind of

064questions i may have here their comments too so i'll just continue on the we as superintendent and president that we have heard from the communities and um bargaining groups for and against this issue of squad school but it's not as simple as saying yes or no um stay or go i think there's a lot more uh research that we're doing while we're beyond this meeting and i would like to call for having a discussion around a deep survey of our community students parents and teachers uh to understand their feelings uh in favor or again really the nuances around security school police officers and schools so that would be something that the superintendent could consider in the future i do think it's important to include those organizations like uh the naacp if you already mentioned the

065aclu and people have already mentioned other black collective but those voices need to be up front and center uh we may hear from a white family that says they feel like everything's going great with the officers and it's safe and they want to continue with that i think that's valid but i think we all should give a lot of weight to the families of color um who have positive or negative feelings i think we should look at ways to get that information from our community i think the mission really of this is to promote safety and improve uh educational environment this is the mission of sros as has been stated in one of the documents that was sent to us and restorative justice of course plays a very large role in this so i appreciate

066your discussion around this and this is something that our whole school district is um has been working on for quite some time and i think that it's also something that uh will get to the root of prevention um in the school to prison pipeline uh discussion that we've been having i think uh evaluating how the sros are selected um is an important piece to put into our memory environment of understanding um and it sounds like we've from feedback i've gotten from the community is that the five we have are are outstanding by many many measures but we did we do need to get more input on that i think when we figure out what this memorandum of understanding looks like as we do on your contract figuring out who is in charge of determining if

067a certain officer maybe does not fit is not a good fit for a school is it the school's decision to ask them to be reassigned or is it the department's decision the police departments i think that that um more weight should go to the schools on things like that but those are details uh i think that have been brought up to me by the community i just want to i want to bring forth um student rights of course are important what are the student rights and making sure they understand what they are so i think the key to this also is that we all as a community understand that we all have implicit bias so many people may have heard that term before that really means that we're all biased we all have potential racist

068um deeds somewhere down deep in our in our psyche that we um may be conscious of or unconscious of so i think it's important that the whole community understands that um to improve how we teach our kids and how society works policing works it's important to come to grips with and understand people's implicit bias and cultural competence of course is important as uh director cobb was mentioning i think that was what does the security force look like is it culturally competent and it looks like it is and and and i've heard it is so i'll pause there and i'll let some other directors um give some questions so thank you director leon director bombright do you have any questions or comments yes yes thank you um first of all thank you to superintendent and team

069for a um a nice in-depth presentation that really i think explains a lot more about what is currently our structure and our and our system for safety and security across the uh schools um i i really appreciate uh all the input that's come so far from um director cobb and director leon and just want to reiterate that i also am um extremely concerned about what the community's perspective is on this and i and it is twofold i mean people feel pretty strongly um one way or the other and i i'd like to um and i heard superintendent santorno say that she is really about a deep dive the proper conversations with the appropriate you know all the appropriate um audiences um and and and for me it's primarily the students i i i think that

070as director leon said that you know we all have an implicit bias and we're certainly hearing a lot about this every day in the um and many of us are going out and and speaking up um by going and support uh various demonstrations that have been going on um to speak up for uh for people in the community to to feel safe and to not um be worried about the different senses of bias and racism that exist in our society and i think it's the perfect time for us to be talking about this as we're looking at our own anti-racist uh process for putting into place in our in tacoma public schools so that it is completely um clear to everyone that that it is about every student every day and we we want every

071student to come to school feeling comfortable and welcomed and supported and i'd love to talk to the students who who don't feel that and who feel challenged or threatened by a police officer being um in school and maybe the answer is to is to take the uniform um you know to you know separate that i'm not sure if it's uh you know how to get at it but i think we have to ask the students we have to ask the parents and and as we many have said the other community partners i've been doing a lot of reading um before this session and i think i've seen a lot almost all of the documents that i've read allude to the um critical importance of training the appropriate training that these sros get before going into

072the schools and uh i think that's very in line with as a district how we are approaching the both the um restorative justice as well as our own look at anti-racist um infrastructure and behaviors and that's this new sets of training with looking at it with a new eye so i would certainly encourage us to incorporate this whole discussion around safety at school and security at school with the con the larger conversation around anti-racism um um anti-bi uh branches biased approaches and um also look at who we're hearing from i did notice in in in in the photograph we have here that they're you know and from um from what you know has been said about what you know whether we that we have a diverse group but i also want to know about whether

073or not the sros are equipped to to communicate with uh the you know the students um that english is not their first language and also with the families that they were interacting with that are um ethnically and and linguistically not english speakers and i didn't know um i'd love to hear back if any of our sros are when um speak multiple languages or if it's um if there's some way that families can and kids that are not uh english speakers um can interact with these with the estros that are relative to them so i'm not sure if someone has the answer to that um but when i'm done maybe we can see um anyway i i think we have a long way to go um and i think this is as duck director leon and

074director cub have already said this is we're part of a process and there's some we have the opportunity um to make some changes and i think we should do it thoughtfully and in in timely fashion i think the fact that we're going to be looking at how we're all going to come back to school um and it's not going to look exactly the same as it has in the past gives us another opportunity to um sort of phase in some new offer some new approaches and i and in particular um i want to give a big shout out to the restorative justice practices and how that's been um cycling into our tacoma public schools i've heard fabulous things from families from teachers and from students about how that's working in in our schools and so

075thank you to the team at whole childhood educator um laura and her group about getting that in in um instigated into the system so i think i'll i mean i don't want to repeat with uh director um cobb had said most of her things were also uh top of mind for me so um i'll just see if anybody can answer the question about uh linguistic connections and we can move on [Applause] go ahead go ahead josh i was just gonna i don't have that information off the top of my head but we can get that and see if there are any um multilingual staff members amongst the sro group okay bernadette raised her hand bernadette do you know i don't know i'm unaware of languages spoken by our current sros but i am aware that

076they have called in officers to assist um with different situations at school uh most recently um just this year actually um our sro connected a family with someone who speaks vietnamese and someone who speaks spanish thank you i appreciate that and actually that was one of the um hopefully one of the approaches that i think might be very valuable is to look at how we're um bringing in and integrating in the other mental health and social services i'm not i don't really i'm not sure i really have a complete understanding on how uh the sros are working with making those connections with the appropriate social services that will help families and help mitigate some of this behavior um and and that kids are bringing to the school so um that was good that's good to

077hear that that is part of the part of the plan all right thank you director bombright uh and i would ask everyone to please on the line make certain that your phones are muted so that we don't get the feedback so that our viewing audience can hear us clearly director keating did you have any questions or comments uh yes i actually have two questions and i believe they would be directed at mike um one of the questions i have of the arrests the data that was shown um do is it clear or date um noted how many of those students or whether or not they have ieps as well no it was not noted and like i believe as renee was saying this this is preliminary uh data and we can definitely uh look into

078that and get that information for you okay and then my other question that i i still think is um directed towards you um so um i've been through the sexual assault um advocacy training um and so one of the things i wonder about um because through that training they're reporting sexual violence and and rape um has um often goes unreported and and in large part because of the treatment that the person who um uh experienced the the um trauma um often people in positions of authority like police there there's a lot of shaming there's a lot of um victim blaming that happens so i'm curious what training if any training happens around um the sensitivity and understanding of sexual violence and rape when being reported by students and or staff that's again that's a great

079question so so we do partner with the pierce county center for sexual assault and we do partner with our our detectives from tacoma police department so before i got into this position approximately two years ago i was the title ix investigator and uh they the excuse me the tacoma police department detectives sexual assault unit does a fabulous job at confidentiality at uh treating these cases with dignity and respect and and using um just total empathy for the for the people involved that i witnessed so those are the two entities that we use and there's other resources out there as well okay thank you very much no problem um and then um just some general comments i do see director or vice president cobb's hand is raised too um yeah this uh issue has weighed really

080heavily on me in terms of um recognizing and being someone that practices anti-racist um and practices anti-racism and it is it is impossible for me to um not acknowledge the violence that the black community um it continues to be perpetuated by police um and i've had really intimate conversations with superintendent santorno on this vice president cobb and dr josh garcia and others just around the complexities of this issue and how do we best make sure that our students are safe um and there is a huge amount of responsibility that i um take from being a part of this board and addressing and being a part of addressing these issues and it is also not lost on me that it is pride month and pride started as a riot against police brutality by black trans um

081black and brown trans women and so every pride and i am also someone who identifies within the lgbtqia community and so pride has um historic purpose and meaning to me and um and and within the queer community and so i think that as we think about the other voices that should that need to be at the table around stu around safety and security um it is imperative to me to also include voices particularly students um who identify um within the lgbtq spectrum and also those who are also black and brown students because that intersectionality is really critical and they receive more discrimination and oppression than some other groups or have additional layers of oppression so i think that i'm i'm one grateful to be a part of this work and to be um working to

082find the best solution possible and also want to acknowledge that there's a lot of hurt and there's a lot of um i mean there's centuries of hurt and i'm committed to doing everything i can to um assuring that there is um equitable decisions and choices made moving forward so and with that i will pass it back to you president heinz thank you director keating vice president cobb i believe you had a follow-up question or comment yeah i think let me back in there was one thing in my notes that i had forgotten to say i'm sorry there's one thing [Music] it's hard to hear uh vice president cobb i don't know if there's a microphone here as school board members and she alluded to this we take in a ton of information and we have

083a huge responsibility to make the best decisions we can in all that information and we often talk a lot about hard concrete numbers and lose sight of the fact that students and families feelings matter and the way people feel in schools and the way that they are able to engage or not based on those physical and mental feelings matter so i think it is incredibly important to continue to engage students like circle bombers in particular about this it shows the perception of the feeling in addition to the hard data matter and the one example that i give in this current context is the fact that nascar just began deleting a you're a person of color you go to nascar and you see the flag waving it impacts how you show up in that space regardless

084of whether or not you ever have one negative conversation you're interacting with people so i think the uniform in the presence of police and the way that that makes students feel matters so as we continue taking information in i think it's ultimately super critical as you already said you hear from students about their feelings to move [Music] thank you vice president cobb uh i just have a couple of questions uh i guess renee with respect to house bill 1216 the comprehensive school safety bill we oftentimes we've heard from constituents that have expressed concern about active shooter drills was is that a part of this bill are active shooter drills uh voluntary or is that something that the legislature requires of local school districts and i'm looking again i've got my notes on the requirements it's

085a very robust bill um and one of the requirements is that a school resource officer is not involved in school discipline that they know when to interact with students and when to enforce the law um that they clarify when they're asked to intervene that it has to come from the school annual collection of data a process for families to file complaints um confirmation that the officers receive the required training there is also de-escalation techniques that are required and the drills are i believe a different section from ospi ospi requires nine drills per year and i don't think that the drills are addressed in hb 1216. okay thank you so i would be interested to understand if there is if school districts have if we are required by state law that's passed through the legislature or

086if it is because i thought that that came through a few years ago but i haven't seen that connected to any of our policy i know we talk about the nine drills but those are all hazard drills i believe that includes uh when we have uh drop cover hold for earthquake when we have fire alarms and those sorts of drills but if if you could please provide back to the board and make public if those active shooter drills are required got it thank you uh thank you i have a question around and i'm thinking about outcomes that we have heard from our constituents desired outcomes for students and families and there's been a lot about mental health this may be for dr garcia what is the apportionment that comes through as part of the state

087legislators formula for school districts how much money do we get to to hire mental health counselors is there a ratio or what does that look like i'm i'm not aware of a dedicated state fund to hire mental health counselors uh president heinz i think we have flexibility within some of the categorical uh decisions um and in situations like special education um and uh in obviously in the use of local levy but for example even in special education um based uh those are um programs that are not fully funded at the state level so the the short answer we will dig in to see if they're i'm missing something but i'm not aware of a a funding source for mental health professionals so the counselors that are funded by the state are more guidance counselors is

088that correct that is correct and they receive training at a local level uh in social emotional mental health awareness but they are not um some of them may have mental health training as part of their uh own personal backgrounds but that is not a requirement to have a mental health professional certification of some sort to be a guidance counselor and what's the ratio of funding that's provided how many how many of those guidance counselors do we have in our school district of 30 000 students i would have to get back to you on that exact number you have a ballpark is it 100 i believe the ratio works out uh it depends on the school levels um we in tacoma we allow schools through some of their other uh funding sources local dollars title to

089uh hire additional counselors but i believe the ratio is above 400 in our high schools per uh per uh one 400 in our high school students population so um i could do rough math for you if you gave me a 60 sites 10 high schools uh probably realistically 30 another middle school is 50 you're probably a real i'm a hundred for the 30 000. so you have a hundred guidance counselors who each have approximately a caseload of 400 students so i'm assuming that if we were to have truly dedicated mental health counselors that we would need i mean one to four hundred for mental health seems like i don't know what the industry standard is but but that to me just seems unmanageable so so it is realistic that within just the tacoma school district

090we would need several hundred mental health counselors to meet the needs of what we hear from students and families is that i'm just trying to get a ballpark number well even if you this is carla even if you had one per you know one per school which you'd have to have probably more than one for high school you know you're talking at least you know about um you know 60 to 80 uh you know based on and based on uh you know the need but the other thing you know uh like dr garcia was saying is that we get a very small apportionment for that it's not based on what we have at all and as an urban system that has a higher number of students that may have um you know issues for mental

091health you know we have to take we we would have to take most of that from our levy funding because even though it would not count you know it does not get i mean it may be general ed but the amount that we get is very is very small you know if you look at psychologists i can't remember how many psychologists we get um but it's dismally different than what we need and so we end up using the levy to to supplement those numbers thank you for that clarification carla that's where our psychologist when i refer to the special ed they predominantly work in the special ed arena helping special ed students laura do you know the number of counselors that we currently have i was looking to fight to see if i could get

092an exact count quickly but it is close to a hundred um asca the school national school counseling association does recommend um per counselor and at this time that is not where we're at many are closer to four or five hundred and then i would say one last comment to that uh president uh as you're aware the uh state actually passed some additional funding for school counselors uh this year but due to coped uh that money did not move forward that's right so that was a fun so that was it passed the legislature but not it was not a high enough priority for the legislature to pass it with a veto proof margin and so with projected revenue shortfalls the governor vetoed the funding for those counselors is that accurate okay and then uh laura thank

093you for the contacts when you say the one in 250 that's guidance counselors we're at one in 400 and then dr garcia i just want to make certain that i understand that the state provides zero dollars for mental health counselors and that local school districts can use levy but the state's paramount duty is to the education of our kids and they don't provide any dedicated funding through apportionment for mental health counselors currently two subtleties i don't want my high school counselors uh calling me up because they have more than one to 400 because some of them do so when i use the number 400 it is not to say it is a ratio many of our high schools have above one to four hundred to be fair to them they're extremely hard working so yeah

094and i think that that i mean that's my point is that we have an abundance of need for mental health and and i can only imagine that that need has exponentially increased during uh school closure and uh in a global health crisis and all of the things that have happened uh financially and otherwise let alone specific academic related uh so i so i think that uh are there are there vouchers are families able to go and get money to go see uh it's not school provided but are what does that look like in in pierce county or the state are there resources available for kids that are in crisis but maybe can't afford can't afford the services yep two two questions i want to re-clarify when i say there is no i'm not i have

095to go back and look at the dedicated funding there is money that comes through special education we have school psychologists in there but those are local decisions on um how many and how many we can afford because special education is not fully funded we do and i'll turn it over to laura we do have opportunities through local city grants through the tacoma city and with comprehensive life and greater lakes that also volunteer and spend additional resources inside of our schools so laura can you add a little more context to that i can so um it is a partnership where they are able to serve some of our schools and they if students qualify for medicaid then those agencies are able to build a bill for medicaid um so because of that they do not charge

096our students and nor do they charge our district so it's a um a zero exchange of funds for these community partners to come to our school sites uh they uh while it's fantastic it doesn't help all kids and um and they hire as fast as they can and they want to help more and they are tremendous partners uh very grateful for them and um i'd just like to say one quick thing we do have uh we have shifted to the language of just calling our school counselors counselors and we went ahead and dropped that uh the guidance the g word so thank you okay okay so vice president cobb i i was going to uh close i see you have a hand up you have a question or comment i do have one comment i

097just um i appreciate the conversation that we're having about mental health but i also just want to know for the public that i think the community the side of the community that is pushing for us to sever our relationship with tpd i don't think i would imagine that the concerns are not about us having the support we need to respond to emergencies and emergent situations that are true emergencies i think of i assume that a lot of the concern comes from us being a part of increasing students proximity to law enforcement and the potential negative consequences of that proximity on contributing i guess to the quote unquote school prison pipeline so i i think that as we continue forward we need to keep sight on the school teams that we have in place and how

098they are are aren't able to respond to the holistic health and safety needs of kids but also being mindful of just the the potential um that comes from having that closer proximity and understanding where the community is on that so i just didn't want to lose sight of that as we have the important conversation about our mental health capacity too yeah thank you i appreciate that and uh and i asked those questions because of the hundreds of emails that we've received a lot of those have asked us to redirect tpd resources to mental health counselors so i'm trying to contextualize what the need is and understand the funding streams because what i am hearing is that our counselors are overworked on a daily basis that there is no dedicated funding that comes from the state

099that there is for mental health counselors that are that are formally guidance counselors that are now counselors that help uh in a variety of ways are overworked and understaffed and now that we're that we need hundreds of more counselors uh i think also it's important to note uh to your point vice president cobb that i think we have heard uh tonight that the school resource officer program has been mostly positive in terms of what happens on campus i think we also know that because of systemic racism those students and their families have different experiences when they leave campus and when they're in their neighborhoods and when they're in the community and i think that superintendent santorno what i'm hearing from my colleagues is that we need from you a plan going forward to evaluate the

100effectiveness of that relationship with tpd we need to have a dialogue with them to tell them that while it appears that the relationship on campus is mostly positive that there uh there are issues that may be fleshed out through a deeper surveying of our students and their experience and that there are things that absolutely have to change regardless if we're in a contractual relationship or not uh with tpd and people of color in tacoma and it occurs to me also based on conversations that i've had with my colleagues and hearing from members of the community of this recurring theme around systemic racism and i think we've looked at it narrowly through the lens of law enforcement and that certainly is impactful and that needs to be addressed i think if we're going to undertake this

101as a school district it's incumbent upon us to understand uh as part of that survey process how kids feel when they come to school generally how do they feel in the classroom how do they feel in the lunchroom uh how do they feel as they interact with with our staff so that we can truly understand what the root cause is for institutional racism within the tacoma school district and within the city of tacoma and i think it would be very helpful for us to understand through superintendent what our collective bargaining units are willing to commit to in order to address systemic racism in the school district i think that there are practices that are happening throughout the district that need to be investigated i'm encouraged that we have some training in place i think restorative

102justice is a piece um but i think that if we're gonna take the time to ask students in a meaningful way to share their experience that we should ask them comprehensively to tell us what their experience is like on a daily basis when they come into our schools and then when they go out into the community i think that is really valuable information that we're going to need going forward i see that we're at 7 34 i see director leon you have your hand up do you have a quick question or comment and mute myself so the um important it's important that we raise the remind everyone that that three-year data was going down with a number of arrests really glad to see we also need to have the community know that we heard you

103um eighty-five percent meals we got uh to endeavor or change the relationship with the police department but we can't do that responsibly with um more more data but also part of that is the survey um it's a 500 budget or so that we have for the with the with the police at this that pay for five to seven other counselors that's not going to fix the problem no but it could be step in the right direction i don't think it's a decision that we want to obviously take at this point we've said that but the community needs to know we've heard them um and we know we have lots of work thank you so in summary superintendent i think what you've heard from the board is an interest in the policies that we need to

104revise or adopt general counsel true blood gave us a high level overview i think that in our responsibility as policy setters that's something that the board will need to undertake i think uh and part of our oversight responsibility from you understanding you alluded to some engagement that you want to have additionally with individual members and groups in the community i think that we have a school board business meeting next thursday i think it would be helpful to the board to have some sort of an understanding of what your strategy is going forward so not that you would have connected with every group by next thursday but for the board to understand what you anticipate that process will look like and any recommendations that you might have be it a task force or some sort of

105a committee um i do it was alluded to earlier tonight that the process that we utilized to create the new student discipline policy i think was very effective and it's the first time i can remember that the board actually engaged these community members and groups to help write the policy i know one of my frustrations when i first got on the board is we might right at the very end of the creation process and as the board was ready to adopt we might run it by somebody to see what they thought and we have evolved to the point now where we have subject matter experts and people that are directly impacted and can offer valuable perspective that are involved in the creation of the policy and so if we're contemplating our relationship with sros and

106other things that we might be able to do to help students and their families and staff feel safe i think the board will look to you for a recommendation on how are those stakeholders going to be engaged and over what timeline understanding that there's a lot going on right now that we're trying to reopen schools uh but this is a pressing issue in the community that this is on the the forefront of people's minds i think folks are rightfully angry about it i think they're concerned we're talking about how do we help students feel safe to return in the middle of a pandemic how do we help students feel safe to return as we're dealing with societal racism and so i think by next thursday a general overview would be helpful uh and then i

107think understanding as we move forward what from you what what is your recommendation back to the board on ways that we can begin to root out systemic racism throughout the district so as it pertains to the sro program and our relationship with tpd and other areas of opportunity to work with our bargaining groups i think that that's going to be an important consideration as part of our oversight responsibility and uh and as our ceo we're going to look to you for your recommendations back for actions that the board's ultimately going to have to approve well um i can um you know i certainly can um you know take a look at this and start to begin a process as far as um you know i can do an overview that talks about the different things

108that we can look at and pursue i certainly won't have a detailed process about how to root out systemic racism but i definitely uh can start to talk about different ways that we can engage we've got budget you know budget um systems coming up so the timeline you know we're gonna have to really look at that timeline because um you know we do have major things all going on at the same time i just i don't want to say we'll have all this finished by the end of you know uh end of july because i just know it's around the corner so but we will we will give you a general overview and timeline that is realistic that we can actually pull off yeah thank you i think that's helpful for the board and that's

109important for the community to understand you know i think that the what we're seeing and hearing from the community is um they are done waiting and i think it's incumbent upon us uh as a school board in tacoma to identify ways that we can be a part of the solution so i think finding that balance with everything that is going on is going to be important uh but i would argue that if this isn't at the top of the list it needs to be near the top of the list because of all of the different things that it impacts and if and if you're going to come back to us with a recommendation of how we would survey students i think it's a missed opportunity if we ask them about their experiences with the sros

110if we don't also ask them about their experiences with history and english and other and other things that are under our control within the district so that we can truly understand what their experience is like in and out of school i'm just a little caveat there as we think about the timeline and and calibrating expectations our students are out of school tomorrow um and so as we think about gathering their input and having conversations from them and hearing from folks that are that we need to hear we'll need to keep those in consideration in our timelines yep understood and i think also the dr garcia that the board understands that summertime now we've been in a distant learning mode for a while but summertime as the weather gets nice and as the health restrictions loosen

111and people are able to be out in public more the dangers still persist for our kids and their families in the community so i want to make certain that we recognize that their accessibility the way we engage them may need to be through tps channels and it may need to be through partners and i think that's where we're looking for for the guidance back from the superintendent on the best way to do that um i think also you know understanding how we're going to engage with tpd because it's apparent that the board wants a little more data before we make any sort of a decision i don't think that that precludes us from immediately having conversations with tpd to express concerns from a tps perspective they've been a good partner they've been a listening partner

112i know post parkland after that a terrible's tragedy where we were getting actually a lot of community messaging asking us to put in metal detectors and more law enforcement and more security that we were able to work effectively with tpd to come up with measures that were balanced that did not uh require us to increase the police presence but created a way for people to report concerns and i think if we looked at the data for arrests made this year i think one of them relates to an incident that occurred uh as a result of the see something say something campaign so i just want to keep that this isn't something that can be put on the back burner i think you're going to have a board that understands you and your team have a

113variety of things that you're trying to get done but the community is telling us you know we work on their behalf and they're telling us that this is an important issue to address so i think we need to figure out how we can effectively and efficiently do that along with all of these other things that we are required to do all right uh thank you all for this important thoughtful conversation i appreciate the community for all of your communication with us we have heard you we are listening to you it was the impetus for tonight's study session uh we want to continue to hear from you we're going to try to make factually based decisions that are in the best interest of all of our kids and we know that students of color have been

114disproportionately impacted negatively for a very long time and we're committed to identifying the solutions that help our black students our male black students especially feel safe in our schools and feel safe in the community i invite y'all back next thursday june 25th that will be our business meeting for the month of june uh six o'clock is there anything else for the good of the order with that we are all adjourned thank you very much have a good night bye