TRUTANICH “MISLEADING VOTERS” ON REALIGNMENT, SAYS GOVERNOR

With just a few days until the May 21 general election, Gov. Jerry Brown has recorded a message to voters calling out City Attorney Carmen Trutanich for spreading misleading information about prison realignment. Trutanich, who is running a decidedly uphill battle for reelection was originally a supporter of realignment. Now, he has changed his tune, and is bashing opponent Mike Feuer for supporting it, inaccurately pronouncing realignment the “get-out-of-jail early law,” and more.

LA Weekly’s Gene Maddaus has the story. Here’s a clip:

In a mailer, Trutanich calls the plan “the get-out-of-jail early law.” The mailer describes Tobias Summers, the alleged Northridge kidnapper, as “one of Feuer’s get-out-of-jail free graduates.”

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has disputed that, saying that Summers was not released early.

Brown endorsed Trutanich in his failed D.A. campaign, but is now supporting Feuer for city attorney. In the robocall, Brown faults Trutanich for “misleading voters by suddenly attacking a public safety plan he once supported.”

We’d kind of like a city attorney who bothers to check his facts on legal matters, but that’s just us.

WILLFUL DEFIANCE NO LONGER GROUNDS FOR SUSPENDING L.A. KIDS

Tuesday, the LAUSD school board voted to ban suspensions for the catchall, “willful defiance,” in favor of alternative behavioral disciplines. L.A. is the first district in the state to take this large step toward school disciplinary reform.

The state bill on the same issue is making its way through the legislative process. According to Public Counsel spokesman Michael Soller, “AB 420 passed the Assembly Education Committee, and is headed for an appropriations vote on May 24 or 25. If it gets out of that committee, then it’s on to the Senate.”

WitnessLA will certainly be keeping an eye on it.

LA Times’ Teresa Watanabe has the story on LAUSD’s vote. Here’s a clip:

The packed board room erupted in cheers after the 5-2 vote to approve the proposal, which made L.A. Unified the first school district in the state to ban defiance as grounds for suspension. The action comes amid mounting national concern that removing students from school is imperiling their academic achievement and disproportionately harming minority students, particularly African Americans.

“Now we’ll have a better chance to stay in school and become something,” said Luis Quintero, 14, a student at Augustus Hawkins High School in South Los Angeles. He attended the board meeting, along with dozens of other students and community activists who have been pushing the proposal by board members Monica Garcia and Nury Martinez.

But the vote came after an impassioned discussion over whether the proposal would give a “free pass” to students and shield them from the consequences of misbehavior. Board members Marguerite LaMotte told students that they needed to pay for their mistakes, while Richard Vladovic said no student had the right to disrupt learning opportunities for classmates.

“I’m not going to give you permission to go crazy and think there are no consequences,” LaMotte said.

U.S. KIDS’ HIGH EXPOSURE TO VIOLENCE AND TRAUMA

According to a new report from JAMA Pediatrics, four out of ten kids in the U.S. were exposed to physical violence in the last year. In addition, an alarming 13.7 percent of the 4,500 children surveyed reported repeated mistreatment from their caregivers.

The Examiner’s Sharon Gloger Friedman has the story. Here’s a clip:

…Survey results showed:

*Physical assault in the past year was reported by 41.2 percent of respondents.

*Assault-related injuries were reported by 10.1 percent of respondents.

*Nearly 11 percent of girls ages 14 to 17 reported sexual assault or abuse.

*Repeated maltreatment by a caregiver was reported by 13.7 percent of respondents; of that group 3.7 percent said they experienced physical abuse.

More than 13 percent of kids reported being physically bullied; one in three said they had been emotionally bullied.
According to Dr. Michael Brody, a child psychiatrist in Potomac, Md., these numbers may be low.

“I think, unfortunately, this [violence] is so endemic to our society, it’s overlooked. It is considered like a cold,” Brody, who often works with victims of childhood violence, and who is a spokesperson for the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, told HealthDay News.

Brody added that witnessing or experiencing violence as a child can result in rage, lack of security, feelings of powerlessness, nightmares and other psychological aftereffects that last long into adulthood.

Of particular concern are children and teens who suffer frequent exposures to violence. Survey results showed that nearly 15 percent of study participants had been exposed to violence six or more times in the past year and about five percent had been exposed to 10 or more violent acts.

A similar study by the National Survey of Children’s Health found that nearly 48 percent of US youth had experienced at least one major childhood trauma.

Jane Stevens expertly lays out the consequences of this exposure to violence and trauma on her blog, ACEs Too High. Here’s a clip:

Almost half the nation’s children have experienced at least one or more types of serious childhood trauma, according to a new survey on adverse childhood experiences by the National Survey of Children’s Health (NHCS). This translates into an estimated 34,825,978 children nationwide, say the researchers who analyzed the survey data.

Even more concerning, nearly a third of U.S. youth age 12-17 have experienced two or more types of childhood adversity that are likely to affect their physical and mental health as adults. Across the 50 U.S. states, the percentages range from 23 percent for New Jersey to 44.4 percent for Arizona.

The data are clear, says Dr. Christina Bethell: If more prevention, trauma-healing and resiliency training programs aren’t provided for children who have experienced trauma, and if our educational, juvenile justice, mental health and medical systems are not changed to stop traumatizing already traumatized children, many of the nation’s children are likely to suffer chronic disease and mental illness. Not only will their lives be difficult, but the nation’s already high health care costs will soar even higher, she believes. Bethell is director of the National Maternal and Child Health Data Resource Center, part of the Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative (CAHMI). The Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Health Resources and Service Administration, sponsors the survey.

Those numbers are already formidable, and they get much higher when looking at kids in the juvenile justice system.

KRIS KRISTOFFERSON CONCERT TO RAISE MONEY FOR HOMEBOY INDUSTRIES

And on a happier note, Kris Kristofferson will be performing a benefit concert for Homeboy Industries’ 25th anniversary, at Pepperdine’s Smothers Theater on June 23. (WitnessLA plans to be there.)

FishbowlLA’s Richard Horgan has more details on the concert.

PUSHING KIDS OUT: THE DAY SCHOOLS VERSION

There are so many ways for a kid to get lost in our modern educational system. So many holes that they can fall through or be shoved through by adults who are overwhelmed, or overmatched, or not paying enough attention.

Of late, there’s been a lot of focus on school suspensions and expulsions. We now know that, for tens of thousands of kids every year in California, zero-tolerance-driven disciplinary sanctions are doing more harm than good. Researcher have gathered plenty of evidence that clumsily over-disciplining a student too frequently backfires and results in that student eventually giving up and leaving school altogether. These kids aren’t kicked out of school. They are “pushed out.”

However, the “push out” problem has many guises. And one of the least talked about causal threads in the push out phenomenon is the state’s system of “day schools.”

Day schools are the sort of last chance U’s that were created to be a temporary fix designed to help kids who have fallen way behind academically to catch up, or to give struggling students better tools and/or treatments for problems they may be having at at their regular schools or in their home lives.

Homeless kids, or kids in the foster care system, or LGBTQ kids, for example, are among those who have, in the past, been frequently transferred to day schools for reasons other than disciplinary. Poor kids of color wind up in day schools more often than their white contemporaries.

This might be fine is those students were then able get the extra help their situations require, and thus be better able to go on with their educational lives. But, unfortunately, much of the time, this is not the case.

Too routinely, it turns out, kids are involuntarily pushed out of their mainstream schools and placed in these alternative county community schools and community day schools, many of which turn out not to help them at all.

And, once there, even if they are aided to some degree, rather than being returned to regular school after they’ve gotten what the day school has to give, the kids find themselves stuck in limbo, with no way to return to a traditional schools once they are ready. As a consequence, many of those kids end up dropping out. Or, if they do return to regular schools, they arrive less prepared to succeed, not more.

ENTER AB 744

AB 744 is a new bill authored by Ricardo Lara (D-Long Beach) that was introduced Wednesday, and which aims to fix the worst of the Day School system’s ills.

According to Laura Faer of the Public Council—which is one of the bill’s sponsors—if passed, AB 744 will close some of the systemic holes that kids are slipping through.

“We shouldn’t be transferring our young people with the highest needs to schools that don’t have the right programs to help them,” says Faer. “But that’s what we’re doing. This bill offers protections for students and for parents that will ensure due process, and will allow parents to participate in choosing a school that is the best educational fit for their son or daughter.”

DAY SCHOOL PUSH-OUT TALES

At Wednesday’s hearing for AB744, a string of students and advocates told individual stories that translated the problems of the Day School system into human terms.

For instance, there was the case of the gay-identified Latino kid from San Joaquin County who received homophobic bullying starting in grade school. In middle school, the bullying escalated, complete with humiliating Facebook posts, online death threats, and suggestions that the boy do everyone a favor and kill himself.

The boy became understandably fearful about his safety and, not knowing what else to do, since the adults had been no help, he started skipping school. That got him some adult attention, but instead of addressing the problem directly, and finding a safe school for the now-thoroughly traumatized student, officials transfered him to a day school, where the bullying simply continued with a different cast of characters. Had it not been for the agressive intervention by lawyers from California Rural Legal Service, the boy “would have dropped out of school,” wrote Franchesca Gonzales, an attorney for CRLS.

And then there was this story told by Abigail Trillin, the Executive Director of Legal Services for Children, who has been representing kids in expulsion hearings for 20 years.

A few weeks ago our office represented a young person in a case that is, sadly, quite typical. Our client was alleged to have sold drugs. He did not sell drugs. As his lawyers we assured him, “Don’t worry. You have the right to a hearing. You will be able to tell your story. You won’t be kicked out of school for something you didn’t do.”

Part of what we told him was right: He had a hearing, he told his story and the school acknowledged they had identified him based on a witness who had never met him. He easily won his hearing. Yet, just as he feared, our client was kicked out of school for something he didn’t do. Even though he won his hearing, he was transferred out of a school that was not only his neighborhood school but also his family school where both his brother and his father had attended. He was an honors student in AP classes whose school year was completely disrupted for no reason.

When students are involuntary transferred after winning an expulsion they lose their friends, their teachers and their school stability, but they lose something else too. Students like our client lose their entire faith in the system—–a system that turns your life upside down even after the hearing that was supposed to protect your due process proves your innocence. When this happens our students learn a terrible lesson about the school system: they learn that the system is fundamentally unfair. And that very damaging lesson, along with their loss of academic stability, will make it that much harder to engage in school and be successful in the future.

I urge you to support AB744

We agree.

AND IN OTHER NEWS….LA TIMES EDITORIAL COMMENTS ON TANAKA INTERVIEW

Thursday morning’s LA Times editorial, presumably written by the excellent Sandra Hernandez, calls for the LA County supervisors to move ahead with an Inspector General and civilian oversight for the LASD, the sooner the better. And who can disagree? But, an IG has no real power so, while potentially helpful, that fix can only take us so far.

Mostly, I suspect, the editorial indicates the LAT board, like the rest of us, is still reeling from the multi-leveled, jaw-dropping implications of the Tanaka interview, the full affect of which, like bomb shrapnel that travels far beyond the first-level blast radius of its original impact, is not going to be truly apprehended for a while.

The essay opens like this:

Paul Tanaka was once a trusted aide to Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca and, in the view of many department critics, the real power behind the badge. But earlier this year, Tanaka was forced out of his job, and now, in a jaw-dropping interview with The Times’ Robert Faturechi, he has accused Baca of a variety of misdeeds, including nepotism, fostering a culture of abuse and putting politics (and foreign travel) ahead of public safety.

Whether those charges are accurate or merely the angry allegations of your typical disgruntled former employee is not yet clear. After all, Tanaka himself has been repeatedly accused of encouraging misconduct and abuse; he’s got plenty of incentive to try to shift the blame.

But for this: The picture Tanaka painted of Baca is not an unfamiliar one. Erratic, confused — these are recognizable traits to those who have met with the mild-mannered sheriff. So is his apparent failure to effectively manage the people who work for him or to adequately control the vast department he is supposed to oversee.

Last year, the Citizens’ Commission on Jail Violence lambasted Baca’s management of the jails, going so far as to suggest that he probably would have been fired for incompetence had he been working in the private sector. The commission faulted him for failing to pay attention to what was happening around him and for a lack of “genuine concern” about the severity of the problems in the jails.

NEW DOJ REPORT SAYS THE US BUREAU OF PRISONS’ COMPASSIONATE RELEASE PROGRAM IS A MESS

Last month, the Department of Justice released a new report on the Bureau of Prisons’ Compassionate Release Program—and what the report found was not particularly encouraging.

Here’s a clip from the opening of the report:

In the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, Congress authorized the Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons(BOP) to request that a federal judge reduce an inmate’s sentence for “extraordinary and compelling” circumstances.1 Under the statute, the request can be based on either medical or non-medical conditions that could not reasonably have been foreseen by the judge at the time of sentencing.2 The BOP has issued regulations and a Program Statement entitled “compassionate release” to implement this authority.3 This review assessed the BOP’s compassionate release program, including whether it provides cost savings or other benefits to the BOP.

And this clip is from the results section that details what the report found:

The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found that an effectively managed compassionate release program would result in cost savings for the BOP, as well as assist the BOP in managing its continually growing inmate population and the significant capacity challenges it is facing. However, we found that the existing BOP compassionate release program has been poorly managed and implemented inconsistently, likely resulting in eligible inmates not being considered for release and in terminally ill inmates dying before their requests were decided circumstances that warranted consideration for compassionate release.

The BOP does not have clear standards on when compassionate release is warranted, resulting in ad hoc decision making. The BOP’s regulations and Program Statement provide no criteria or standards to use in evaluating whether a medical or nonmedical circumstance qualifies for consideration. As a result, we found that BOP staff had varied and inconsistent understandings of the For example, at some institutions, only inmates with a life expectancy of 6 months or less were deemed eligible for consideration. At other institutions, inmates with a life expectancy of 12 months or less were considered eligible candidates. We further found that although the BOP’s regulations and Program Statement permit non-medical circumstances to be considered as a basis for compassionate release, the BOP routinely rejects such requests and did not approve a single nonmedical request during the 6-year period of ourreview…..

Like I said, a mess.

The 85-page report contains a list of recommendations as to how the place can be straightened around.

AND SPEAKING OF PRISONS, AS CA’S PRISONS REDUCE POPULATION, INMATE COFFEE ROASTERS ARE LOSING REVENUE

James Nash of Bloomberg has the story. Here’s a clip:

California’s prison industries program, which includes ventures from coffee-roasting to furniture-making, is the largest such U.S. effort to give felons a life after lockup. Yet Governor Jerry Brown’s very success in reducing inmate overcrowding is endangering it.

Prison labor, once best known for making license plates, has grown to 57 factories doing such work as modular building construction, toner cartridge recycling, shoemaking and juice packaging, according to its latest annual report. Convicts supply closed-captioning for television and transcribe movies into Braille.
“Everyone says the most valuable product we put out there is a person who’s not going to go back and re-offend, who has job skills and dedication,” said Josh Bayer, who manages the prison industries at the California Institution for Men, Chino. “That’s our product: rehabilitation.”
Yet even with workers paid 35 cents to 95 cents an hour, business is off. Sales are exclusively to state and local governments, almost all under budget pressure. The biggest customer, the Corrections Department, has 43,000 fewer inmates since 2006, many shifted to county jails to ease crowding. Revenue slipped 18 percent to $173 million in the fiscal year that ended in June, from almost $210 million five years earlier.
“We are statutorily required to be self-sufficient,” said Eric Reslock, a spokesman for the California Prison Industry Authority. Some work programs have been scaled back and all are being reviewed, he said.
To be sure, most inmates don’t work. About 7,000 of the more than 132,000 prisoners are in industrial programs, according to the annual report.

Read more here.

MONICA GARCIA’S STUDENT BILL OF RIGHTS

On Tuesday, LAUSD Board President Monica Garcia introduced a motion that, if adopted by the board, would establish a Student Bill of Rights for school discipline.

It’s a carefully constructed motion that is supported by a range of organizations including Public Counsel, Liberty Hill, The California Endowment, Community Coalition, and a host of student groups, and it lays out a set of rules and guidelines for schools regarding the way they discipline students. Among other things, the motion mandates transparency and good record keeping in the discipline process, and a clear delineation of the role of school police on campus.

It also mandates that all students have access to what is known as School-Wide Positive Behavior Interventions (SWPBIS), a strategy that has been shown to reduce suspensions, increases attendance, and even to improve academic performance.

But, if passed, the biggest change the motion would put into place is the removal from the school discipline tool kit the use of “willful defiance” as a reason for suspension or expulsion.

Here’s the wording:

Beginning Fall 2013, no student shall be suspended or expelled for a “willful defiance” (48900(k) offense

Willful defiance is a blunt instrument that youth advocates and education reformers have been working hard to get taken off the table at a state level, but the state legislature and the governor have, thus far, balked. Thus for LAUSD to lead the way would be a positive development indeed. (And perhaps it would lead the way for passage of AB 420.)

Oddly, Tuesday’s LA Times editorial that discussed Garcia’s resolution, praised most of it, but took is issue only with the removal of “willful defiance” as an option.

We believe the Times is wrong-headed in its objection.

Here’s the relevant clip (italics ours):

The resolution, which is scheduled to come before the board Tuesday, would require schools to use other measures to combat willful defiance, including setting clearer expectations and providing counseling to get at the root of bad behavior when possible, both of which have been found to be more effective than suspension. But it also would allow schools to devise additional programs that might prove even more useful, such as detention, or setting up a special classroom, with schoolwork to be done and tutors available, so that students who act up in class aren’t allowed to continue disrupting the education of other students but also don’t fall behind in their studies.

Where the resolution goes off course is with its zero tolerance for suspending defiant students under any circumstances. The district still has not figured out how to deal with the most persistently disruptive students, those who don’t respond to counseling, and it shouldn’t completely tie the schools’ hands....

We don’t agree.

As we briefly outlined here earlier this week, in 2009, Jose Huerta, the principal of Garfield High School in East LA, not only took willful defiance off the table at his school, he took the radical step of doing away suspensions and expulsions altogether (except in extreme instances where demanded by state law). The result was, after less than two years, Garfield had a much healthier, safer campus, and suspensions went from 683…down to one. A year after that, the school’s state achievement scores (API) had jumped 75 points.

There are other examples elsewhere in the country. But Garfield is the closest, and the best.

Garcia’s motion will be voted on next month. We hope those behind the Times editorial will have done some further research and thinking on the issue between then and now.

(You can read Garcia’s motion here, but scroll down to page 24, item 44.)

ARCH CONSERVATIVES URGE CONGRESS TO GET RIGHT WITH STATES’ GANJA LAWS

Tim Dickenson of Rolling Stone has the story. Here’s a clip:

There’s a new congressional push to end the federal War on Pot in the states – and it’s being spearheaded by some of the most conservative members of the Republican conference.

The “Respect State Marijuana Laws Act” introduced in the House last week would immunize anyone acting legally under state marijuana laws from federal prosecution under the Controlled Substances Act. Depending on the state, the legislation would cover both medical marijuana and recreational pot, and would protect not only the users of state-legal cannabis, but also the businesses that cultivate, process, distribute and sell marijuana in these states.

The legislation is in keeping with poll data released last week from Pew Research that found that 60 percent of Americans believe the feds should allow states to self-regulate when it comes to marijuana. The same poll finds that 57 percent of Republicans also favor this approach, which may explain why this bill is attracting arch-conservative backers in the House.

The three GOP co-sponsors are:

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California, who is best known to liberals as a villainous climate denier for theorizing that global warming is the result of “dinosaur flatulence.”

Read the rest, to find out who else—from both the (R) and (D) sides— makes up this ganja gang.

LAPD SAYS ZERO TOLERANCE RE: PERJURY

The story by KPCC reporter Erika Aguilar is a sad one, really. Two LAPD motor cops may have made an innocent mistake in the way they wrote up a DUI stop, which led to the officers perjuring themselves—even though it seems there was no reason to do it. Nothing to gain. But Chief Charlie Beck said (in so many words) that the LAPD is firm about zero tolerance for lying on police reports and perjury.

That is, obviously, as it should be. Holding the line on a principal means holding it everywhere, no excuses. Let us hope the line is consistant throughout the department.

Here’s a clip from Aguilar’s story:

The criminal trial of two Los Angeles police motorcycle cops accused of lying under oath about conducting a DUI traffic stop began this week.

Craig Allen, who was fired, and Phillip Walters, who is on suspension from the force, were charged last year with perjury and falsifying a police report.

The incident occurred in Highland Park just after midnight three years ago. LAPD traffic cops were on watch for impaired driving. A DUI task force was in full force that night.

Officer Cecilio Flores watched a driver roll through one stop sign and then another before pulling her over. He said she had bloodshot eyes and smelled of alcohol. Flores radioed over officers Walter and Allen to assist him with the stop and then take over, a “hand-off” as described in court or a “gimme.”

The DUI stop continued its fairly routine course. The driver was given a field sobriety test, arrested and transported to jail, and Allen began the paperwork.

That last step, the written police report, is the meat of this case.

“He wrote that he was in the area when they observed and pulled over the vehicle,” said prosecutor Rosa Alarcon in her opening statement. “He didn’t mention Flores.”

Alarcon said Walters later testified during a Department of Motor Vehicles hearing regarding the woman’s driver’s license that he saw her driving that night. She added that officer Allen testified at another hearing giving specific details about how they pulled over the driver — but admitted that he hadn’t personally observed the offense after audio of the dispatch recording was played.

“The defendants made a conscious decision to lie,” Alarcon said.

When it comes to overly punative school discipline policies, Meridian, Mississippi, arguably leads the pack.

But a new federal consent decree filed on Friday promises to force a change in Meridian’s severe approach to punishing students—and could, say experts, provide a blueprint for school discipline reform nationwide.

In Meridian the need for reform is particularly extreme. Here students are reportedly routinely arrested for any one of a string of minor reasons. When kids are arrested, children as young as ten are taken away by police in handcuffs, and thrown into juvenile detention centers—often without being allowed access to a lawyer.

For example, one girl with a bladder disorder was arrested after she raced frantically to the restroom without getting permission from her teacher.

Other kids were arrested and incarcerated for minor dress code violations, like the wrong color socks, or for having shirts untucked.” Tardiness and “flatulence in class” could be arrest-worthy offenses, as could using “vulgar language, or yelling at teachers.”

And in an alarmingly disproportionate number of instances, the students receiving these outsized punishments were “African-American children and children with disabilities.”

After warning Meridian to clean up its act or face legal proceedings, the civil rights section of the U.S. Department of Justice filed a legal complaint in October 2012, in which they wrote in harsh tones about Meridian administrators’ “school to prison pipeline” diciplinary policies:

Collectively, Defendants engage in a pattern or practice of unlawful conduct through which they routinely and systematically arrest and incarcerate children, including for minor school rule infractions, without even the most basic procedural safeguards, and in violation of these children’s constitutional rights.

Defendants do not afford children in the juvenile justice system even the minimum procedural safeguards required by the Constitution. As a result, (1) the City of Meridian engages in a pattern or practice of arresting children in school without probable cause; (2) Lauderdale County and the Youth Court Judges engage in a pattern or practice of authorizing the repeated incarceration of children without essentials of fairness and due process such as a timely hearing to determine whether there is probable cause to detain them, and meaningful representation by an attorney; (3) the Mississippi Division of Youth Services, Lauderdale County, and the Youth Court Judges engage in a pattern or practice of placing children on probation and incarcerating children for alleged probation violations without affording children constitutionally required protections such as reasonable opportunities to understand their probation requirements or hearings to challenge alleged probation violations that could result in incarceration; and (4) Defendants collectively engage in a pattern or practice of imposing disproportionate and severe consequences, including incarceration, for technical probation violations such as school suspensions, without any due process whatsoever.

Defendants’ concerted actions punish children in Meridian, Mississippi so arbitrarily and severely as to shock the conscience, and deprive these children of liberty and educational opportunities on an ongoing basis.

In January, the Advancement Project issued its own report titled: HANDCUFFS ON SUCCESS: The Extreme School Discipline Crisis in Mississippi Public Schools. The report made clear that the habit of criminalizing kids as young as five was not exclusive to Meridian but was happening all over the state of Mississippi.

THE FEDS LAY DOWN A LIST OF RULES WITH A CONSENT DECREE

After conducting an investigation that began in December 2011, the Feds gave local officials plenty of time to make progress toward correcting the most harmful of the issues before beginning with legal proceedings. But, instead of complying, Meridian officials reportedly tried to keep documents away from the DOJ people.

So the lawsuit was filed last October, followed five months later by the consent decree that was filed last Friday.

The following is from the DOJ press release announcing the move:

“The American dream is rooted in education. In Meridian, that dream has long been delayed by discipline practices that deny students access to education,” said Jocelyn Samuels, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. “We commend the Meridian Public School District for taking this huge step toward ensuring that its schools are safe and welcoming to all students and that education is a road to success instead of a pipeline to prison.”

A BLUEPRINT FOR REFORM BEYOND MERIDIAN?

A consent decree—like the one that the Los Angeles Police Department operated under after the Rampart scandal—is basically a plea bargain in which the agency being sued avoids court proceedings by agreeing to a set of requirements.

The main terms that the Meridian consent decree lays out are the following:

· Limits exclusionary discipline such as suspension, alternative placement and expulsion, and prohibits exclusionary discipline for minor misbehavior;
· Prohibits school officials from involving law enforcement officers to respond to behavior that can be safely and appropriately handled under school disciplinary procedures;
· Requires training for school law enforcement officers on bias-free policing, child and adolescent development and age appropriate responses, practices proven to improve school climate, mentoring and working with school administrators;
· Revises policies at the district’s alternative school to create clear entry and exit criteria and provide appropriate supports to speed students’ transitions back to their home schools;
· Requires enhanced due process protections in student discipline hearings
· Expands use of a behavior and discipline management system known as positive behavior intervention and supports (PBIS) at all schools;
· Requires teachers and administrators to use developmentally appropriate tiered prevention and intervention strategies before removing students from instruction;
· Requires monitoring of discipline data to identify and respond to racial disparities
· Requires training on all revised policies and procedures, and
· Implements measures to engage families and communities as partners in revising policies and as participants in regular school and community informational forums.

But here’s where it gets interesting.

Many youth advocates hope that the full 44-page consent decree, which expands on the points made above, can act as an instructive model that any school district can use as a blueprint for its own reforms.

“This is really an incredible document,” Miriam Krinsky, policy consultant for the California Endowment, told me on Friday. (Note: Krinsky is also the executive director for LA’s Citizens Commission on Jail Violence.) “It provides a detailed and thoughtful roadmap for elements of best practices that can be incorporated in school discipline reforms around the nation.”

A look at the still depressingly high suspension and drop out rates that plague too many American school districts makes it clear that reforms are badly needed.

“Even one court appearance during high school increases a child’s likelihood of dropping out of school,” writes the DOJ. “And court appearances are especially detrimental to children with no or minimal previous history of delinquency.”

13_03_21 Barnhardt and US v. Meridian Joint Consent Order – FILED

Photo from the Advancement Project’s report, “Handcuffs on Success”

Most every weekday in a parking lot in Long Beach, clusters of LA women, ranging in ages from 18 to over 50, are learning to become skilled at the use of power tools, training to be certified in clean up of hazardous materials (HAZWOPER), grasping the skills necessary for certification to work in confined spaces. Some also become proficient in operating a fork lift.

These are “WINTER women.” The classes and apprenticeships they are taking part in are provided by WINTER Inc., which stands for Women In Non Traditional Employment Roles. More specifically, Winter is a non-profit economic development agency that was started in 1996 by a group of tradeswomen who wanted help economically disadvantaged women with employment. Now Winter trains and certifies 40 or 50 women a year in construction and related professional fields

Then Winter helps the women find jobs in those fields.

Some of the Winter Women are on probation or parole. Many have been referred by judges. Others have just heard about the program and need help getting a job that pays decently.

Like construction.

“It’s hard work so we also help them condition themselves,” said Mary Mercado, one of Winter’s program directors. Not everybody makes it through the program, she said. But those who do make it are ready to take on a new career in an environment that used to be reserved for men.

“I’LL BE AN OSHA INSPECTOR!”

I learned about Winter Women from my friend Frances Aguilar, a former gang member, now married and the mother of seven kids—eight with her step daughter. (You can read more about Frances here and here.)

Frances is a bright, talented, hard-working woman who had a horror-show upbringing, followed by a string of scarringly unwise choices. Yet, while Frances has long-ago turned her life around, finding reasonably paying work in this economy, with her background, is anything but easy. She was thrilled, therefore, to hear about Winter Women.

“It’s great! For one thing, I’m getting a certificate to be an OSHA inspector!” she told me, her excitement spilling through the phone line.

LA COUNTY’S WOMEN ARE OUT OF WORK

Right now a lot of LA women, like Frances, urgently need the kind of leg up to employment that Winter Women provides.

In December 2012, in Los Angeles, the unemployment rate for women 20 years and older jumped from 7 percent to 7.3% in a single month, while men’s numbers remained the same at 7.2.

For the county’s harder to employ women—women without special training or who have been out of work for a while, or worse, those who have a felony conviction on their records, as many of the Winter Women do—then matters become even bleaker.

In addition, many of the economically distressed women who are out of work, are single parents heading households, thus people who need to at least aspire to jobs that pay well enough to support their kids.

Matters are not helped by the fact that the gender wage gap for all women nationally, widened in 2012, rather than lessening.

SOLUTION: ENTER A TRADITIONALLY MALE FIELD

Of course, for both men and women California’s jobs situation is complicated. With 9.9 percent unemployed statewide, California is now depressingly tied with Rhode Island for the nation’s worst unemployment rate according to figures released on Monday.

But along with this bad news, there is also the very good news that, despite its unemployment numbers, the state is actually a leader in job growth. Naturally, these new jobs are being created at a faster clip are in some professions than others.

The construction industry is one of those that is seeing the most growth, with more than 7,000 construction jobs added in California from December to January.

Unfortunately, as Mercado said, construction is not a profession that has traditionally employed a lot of women.

Or as Winter’s website puts it: “Women are dramatically underrepresented in areas where employment opportunities are plentiful and wages are livable.”

Winter Women is doing its best to change all that—one training class at a time

ROSIE THE RIVETER

In addition to training women, Winter also trains “at risk” girls from ages 16 to 24, helping them to graduate from high school or get their GEDs while they are being instructed and mentored in professional skills, similar to those of the women are attaining, in Winter’s Rosie the Riveter Youth Program-–named for the cultural icon who represented the American women who worked in factories during World War II.

PS: IF YOU WANT TO HELP….

As is usually the case with non-profits like Winter, they are always looking for donations and funding. (If you’re interested go here.)

Also, on Thursday the 21st of March, Winter is having its yearly gala fundraiser at the Maya Hotel in Long Beach, from 6:00pm-8:30pm. Tickets are $125 per person. And everyone—from trainees to supporters and fans—is asked to wear 1940′s dressy attire—in other words, fabulous garb from of the Rosie the Riveter era.

Should you wish to attend, call: 213-749-3970

(Last time I talked to Frances, she was looking for the ideal 1940′s floor-length gown for Thursday night. I have no doubt about the fact that she found it.)

EDITOR’S NOTE: LA’s primaries are (thankfully) over, with most of the major races headed for the May runoffs. So, as a palate cleanser, here’s a cluster of stories on the linked topics of juvenile justice, school reform—and what strategies in these arenas really work:

(NOTE # 2: More stories On LA County Probation and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, coming soon>)

ONE COUNTY’S “SECOND CHANCE” JUVENILE JUSTICE PROGRAM IS ABOUT TO BECOME THE MODEL FOR THE STATE OF GEORGIA

Rhonda Cook for the Atlanta-Journal Constitution reports. Here’s a clip:

Quantavius Poole was a school brawler, a drug dealer, and he was facing five years in juvenile detention.

Now, at 17, he is a sous chef for a caterer. He hopes to enlist in the National Guard so he can pay his way through a military college. He wants to enter the Air Force.

The program that may have saved Poole, called Second Chance, is a blueprint for legislation to overhaul Georgia’s juvenile justice system. It’s credited with steeply reducing juvenile offenses in Clayton County, and its supporters believe a statewide program could save Georgia hundreds of thousands of dollars per offender.

The goal is to divert offenders who are not violent or could be saved into community-based programs instead of locking them up. Even some who commit more serious crimes could see less time locked up…

The Chief Judge for Clayton County’s juvenile court, Steve Teske, told the AJC that Second Chance has helped dramatically reduce juvenile crime in the county since it started in 2003. That year, 4,774 Clayton teenagers were accused of crimes; last year the total was only 1,936. At the same time, the program gets kids back in school and, in so doing, has increased the region’s graduation rates.

As you’ll see in the video above, Judge Teske is a colorful and extremely intelligent juvenile justice reformer who wears bow ties, is a prodigious storyteller with a flare for the dramatic, and is someone you’ll be hearing a lot more from in the next year, we promise.

“There is a better way,” Teske says, “and it does work.”

TAVIS SMILEY SPECIAL: “EDUCATION UNDER ARREST”

Radio and TV host Tavis Smiley has a new PBS special coming up at the end of the month (March 26, PBS) in which he looks at the connection between the juvenile justice system and the dropout rate among American teenagers—as well as promising efforts by educators, law enforcement professionals, judges, youth advocates and the at-risk teens themselves to end what has become known as “the school-to-prison pipeline.”

In the course of his report, Smiley takes the show on the road, looking at programs and policies in Washington State, Louisiana, Missouri and California, to see what strategies are working well, and what policies are spectacularly unproductive. (I don’t know if “Second Chance” is featured in Smiley’s program, but it’s exactly the kind of successful “evidence based” program that’s proven to work.)

“This notion of zero tolerance is that everything requires extreme action,” says one expert in the series. “And it doesn’t”

In any case, mark your calendars and tune in.

ADVOCATES WORRY THAT MORE COPS IN SCHOOLS WILL MEAN MORE KIDS IN THE JUVIE JUSTICE SYSTEM: BUT SOME SAY TRAINING COPS IS THE ANSWER

Susan Ferris, the excellent reporter for the Center for Public Integrity, has the story about tension that is occurring between the struggle to keep schools safe—while, at the same time, making sure that those same schools are emotionally healthy and non-destructive environments for the kids who attend them.

Here’s an explanatory clip:

….the push for more cops or other armed security personnel in schools is running headlong into another movement that’s been quietly growing in states as diverse as Mississippi, New York, Utah, Texas and California.

It’s a push to get police out of schools, or at least to end their involvement in routine discipline matters that principals and parents used to address without involvement from law enforcement officers.

Civil-rights groups and juvenile court judges — and even some officials within the Obama administration — argue that because the ranks of police began growing in schools in the late 1990s, the criminal justice system’s involvement in student discipline has gotten entirely out of hand in some communities. That has put students, especially ethnic minorities, on a path to failure, they say — the so-called school-to-prison pipeline.

In Los Angeles, for example, scores of students, most Latino or black and many just 11 or 12 years old, have been ticketed by school officers for minor infractions often categorized as disturbing the peace. In Austin, Texas, a 12-year-old was forced to court for spraying on perfume in class. In DeSoto County, Miss. officers and a school district were sued after a bus surveillance video — seen in part by a reporter — revealed officers unjustifiably arresting black students, the suit alleged, and threatening others with a “a bullet between the eyes.”

Optimists — Education Secretary Arne Duncan among them — say cops in schools are not an either/or proposition: careful training, they say, will ensure that school police deployed in the wake of Newtown protect, rather than intimidate, students.

But many civil-rights advocates are worried. They say plenty of cities and states are only beginning to come to grips with allegations that schools, and school-based police, have unjustifiably sent students into the criminal-justice system.

As it happens, Ferris used Clayton County, Georgia’s Judge Teske [see above} for her story, and here’s what she found:

Chief Juvenile Court Judge Steven Teske, of Clayton County, Ga., is not against police in schools, but firmly believes that a school-to-prison pipeline exists.

When Teske took the bench in 1999 in his Atlanta suburb, which is 66 percent black, one-third of the cases in his court were kids referred from schools. By 2004, he said, 92 percent of the 1,400 cases in his court came from schools, mostly for alleged disruption and disorderly conduct.

Lt. Francisco Romero, Clayton’s school resource officer at the time, told the Center for Public Integrity that he was disturbed to discover that one year he arrested more people — students — than any other officer in Clayton.

Fed up, Teske called together school and police leaders and hammered out a protocol requiring counseling and clear warnings before students were sent to court. Teske credits the protocol with improving relationships between students and police, and driving down juvenile felonies by 51 percent and increasing graduation rates by 24 percent.

“If police are placed on campus without written protocols defining their role, the results will be disastrous — just as removing existing police from campus can have unintended consequences,” Teske wrote in the publication Youth Today after the Newtown killings.

Los Angeles Judge Michael Nash also weighed in on the topic:

Michael Nash, presiding juvenile court judge in Los Angeles County, said in an interview that it’s hard to argue against placing police in schools — if they stay out of discipline matters.

As president of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, Nash sent a strongly worded letter to the Obama administration on Jan. 15, responding to the administration’s call for ideas on school safety.

“Research shows that aggressive security measures produce alienation and mistrust among students, which, in turn, can disrupt the learning environment,” the letter said. “Such restrictive environments may actually lead to violence, thus jeopardizing, instead of promoting, school safety.”

A student’s odds of dropping out of high school quadruple with a first-time court appearance, Nash wrote. Last summer, the judges’ council began a national campaign “to support school engagement and reduce school expulsion.” Putting more armed personnel into schools, Nash said, could prove “counterproductive” to this effort.

Read on to see what the Obama administration plans to do regarding all of the above, which will, of course, affect LAUSD, the nation’s second largest school system.

THE CALLING OF DELIGHT: AN INTERVIEW WITH FATHER GREG BOYLE

And, just because it’s entirely cool to listen to, here’s a link to a purely wonderful interview with Father Greg Boyle (of Homeboy Industries), by Krista Tippett, host of American Public Media’s fine show on faith, called “On Being.”

NATIONALLY, ALL EYES ARE ON LAUSD’S SCHOOL BOARD RACES

It’s big enough news that even the NY Times was driven to report on LA’s school board contests.

Here’s a clip from the NY Times’ Jennifer Medina’s story:

On Tuesday, voters in Los Angeles will go to the polls for a mayoral primary. But much of the attention will also be on the three races for the school board, a battle that involves the mayor, the teachers’ union and a host of advocates from across the country — including New York City’s billionaire mayor — who have poured millions of dollars into the races.

The outcome of the political fight for the school board seats will have a profound impact on the direction of the nation’s second-largest school district. But the clash has also become a sort of test case for those who want to overhaul public education, weakening the power of the teachers’ union, pushing for more charter schools and changing the way teachers are hired and fired.

After years of pressing to take power away from local school boards, some advocates have directed their money and attention directly to school boards in the hope that they will support their causes, as unions have done in the past.

Last month, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York City donated $1 million to a coalition formed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles to help elect candidates who will support the current superintendent and the policy changes he has promoted. Students First, a national advocacy organization created by Michelle A. Rhee, the former schools chancellor in Washington, donated $250,000 to the same cause.

(As we mentioned last Friday, we generally support the reform candidates—especially Kate Anderson.)

TWO LAUSD BOARD MEMBERS TALK ABOUT THE INSIDERS V. OUTSIDERS DONATIONS FALLACY

In an Op Ed for the Daily News, LAUSD board members Marlene Canter and Yolie Flores about the controversy over the out-of-state money coming in for the school board race.

Canter and Flores make the point that, for years, UTLA—LA’s teachers’ union--poured big buk into school board races, where the union stood to gain specific to gain by having “their” people on the board . Now, they write, the playing field has been leveled (or even tilted the opposite direction) by school reform groups and the unions are crying foul.:

Here’s a clip from their Op Ed:

Recently, there has been much talk regarding the “outside groups” who are trying to influence the LAUSD school board elections. But, as former board members with a total of 12 combined years of service, we know first hand the pressures facing LAUSD board members and candidates for the board. Both of us fought for significant changes at LAUSD, and we felt firsthand the strength of the powerful forces that are out to preserve the status quo.

When people with no vested, personal interest in the outcome try to help elect reform-minded candidates, they are branded as “outsiders” who are trying to “buy elections.” This is perplexing. These individuals have a longstanding interest in closing the opportunity gap for poor kids and kids of color, and improving educational achievement for all students.

Personally, they stand to gain exactly nothing if the candidates they are supporting get elected. They’re willing to put their money where their mouth is when it comes to improving education, and their participation is critical for leveling the playing field and keeping these school board races competitive. Yet, when “insiders” who do have a vested, personal interest in the outcome contribute significant funding, this is somehow seen as more acceptable…

JIM NEWTON LISTS WHAT TO LOOK FOR WHEN VOTING FOR MAYOR

Book author, and LA Times’ roving columnist, Jim Newton, is a very smart cookie, and he’s written an interesting column about the field of candidates running for mayor that flies in the face of what has become conventional wisdom—namely that the front five—or front three, really, Wendy Greuel, Erick Garcetti, and Jan Perry—are basically tepid, light-middle weights who have inspired the public to doze off.

It’s a stronger field than conventional wisdom would have you believe, Newton writes.

Here are some clips from Newton’s story:

This is a stronger field than people tend to think. All five of the leading candidates are smart and committed. Three already hold public office and have accomplished some important things while serving; the other two bring new ideas and insights. And they all seem to be driven by the opportunity to lead rather than by the prospect of skimming or doling out jobs and contracts to friends.

Still, as usual, the minutiae of the campaign has tended to swallow up big ideas, leaving instead a pile of cliches that obscure more than they illuminate.

[SNIP]

One reason the campaign has been so banal is that the leading contenders aren’t really all that far apart on the issues. So how should you make up your mind? Here are some suggestions for what qualities to look for in a mayor.

And then he lists qualities of courage, judgement and tenacity, creativity and personality—with examples of just exactly what he’s talking about.

A good read, and a good list of ideas to help you decide, if you haven’t already.

EDITOR’S NOTE:

NEON TOMMY WILL HAVE LIVELY ELECTIONS COVERAGE ALL DAY!

Annenberg’s Neon Tommy will be bringing their own smart and energetic brand of coverage to Tuesday’s races all through the day. So, consider keeping NeonTommy open from morning on as we all wait for returns.

AND IN OTHER NEWS…..

THE NEWTON TRAGEDY BRINGS ON A SWING BACK TO ZERO TOLERANCE & STRING OF SILLY AND SAD SUSPENSIONS

Education News rounds up a spate of the new and sadly foolish suspensions.

Here’s a clip:

On Jan. 10, five-year-old Madison Guarna unwittingly committed a “terroristic threat” while waiting in line for the afternoon school bus.

During a discussion of butterflies, ladybugs and “kitty cats,” the kindergartner told her friends she was going to shoot them and herself with her Hello Kitty bubble gun, which was not in the girl’s possession at the time.

[SNIP]

Since the Newtown tragedy, at least 15 students have been suspended from school – or threatened with suspension – for dubious reasons.

Just last week, a seven-year-old Baltimore student was given a two-day suspension for “biting his breakfast pastry into a shape that his teacher thought looked like a gun,” reports The Daily Mail.

Six of those suspensions were given to elementary students who made “gun gestures” with their fingers.

A Pennsylvania fifth-grader was “threatened with arrest after she mistakenly brought a ‘paper gun’ to school,” reports PrisonPlanet.com.

[SNIP]

A 10-year-old Virginia boy was taken into police custody and fingerprinted after he showed “a toy gun with an orange tip” to a friend. He was charged with “brandishing a weapon,” and now he has “a juvenile record and a probation officer,” reports the Washington Post.

And in Colorado, seven-year-old Alex Evans was reportedly suspended from school for “throwing” an imaginary grenade into an imaginary box, which resulted in an imaginary explosion.

The Sandy Hook shootings may be the reason for school leaders’ heightened sensitivity to all things gun-related, but it’s the “zero tolerance” policies put in place by local school boards that often require administrators to hand down these absurd discipline decisions.

HOWEVER SOME NEW SCHOOL SAFETY MEASURES BEING INTRODUCED IN SACRAMENTO ARE STRANGELY…..SENSIBLE.

In the face of the vexing news about outbreaks of zero tolerance craziness, there is some good news. Michael Gardiner at the San Diego Union reports that school safety measures that, post-Newtown being introduced in Sacramento. Here’s a clip:

California lawmakers have introduced nearly two dozen school safety measures that have been largely overshadowed by the more divisive debate on gun control.

The emerging campus security bills involve: inside door locks, panic alarms, mental health services, school safety plans and funding for other prevention programs.

A similar story has unfolded in Washington where Congress remains in conflict over regulating assault weapons, background checks and the size of ammunition magazines. But there is movement on other proposals to secure schools.

“The bottom line is it’s got to get done and it’s got to get done right,” said Marc Egan, who tracks federal school safety issues for the National Education Association.

The general consensus on both coasts is it will take a comprehensive approach to prevent a repeat of the tragedy that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. just days before Christmas….

WitnessLA isn’t offering any endorsements at the moment. (Okay, maybe one little endorsement. But we’ll get to in a minute.)

Instead, we have linked to some of the more interesting and informative articles, interviews, mini-debates and what not that we thought you might find helpful as you make your decisions:

FIRST AN OVERVIEW: SO WHO REALLY HAS THE POWER IN LA ANYWAY?

Obviously, everyone knows in general what the Mayor does, and the City Council Members, and the City Attorney. But, past the generalities, a great many of us don’t have a really firm grasp on the details of who has control over what in Los Angeles.

With this in mind, LA Magazine has put together a handy GUIDE TO POWER IN LA that explains…well….everything (or nearly so.)

We highly recommend taking a look.

WHO’S GOT WHAT ELECTIONS $$$ AND WHERE DID THE MONEY COME FROM?

KCET has a great Who’s Funding Whom Database, which you can find here.

And here’s a rundown about how to get the most out of the database.

MAYOR

Warren Olney interviews the top 5 mayoral hopefuls—and the interviews are particularly good. Here’s the link, but scroll down, for each interview.

And for individual takes on the candidates:
KPCC’s Frank Stoltze looks at Eric Garcetti and asks if the candidate is tough enough to do what needs to be done as mayor.

Gene Maddeus writes about Wendy Greuel, whom he portrays as a down-to-earth, no-nonsense fix-it woman—with strong union support, namely by the DWP’s powerful workers union, IBEW Local 18—whose backing some voters find worrisome.

UPDATE: Greuel moved to counter that fear on Thursday when she told the Daily News that there would be no DWP raises if LA has a deficit.

Dakota Smith at the Daily News looks at Jan Perry and wonders if she’s too beholden to business groups.

Similarly the LA Times’ Jim Newton wonders if Eric Garcetti is too beholden to the teachers’ union.

In terms of endorsements, the Daily News thinks Wendy Greuel is strong and gutsy enough to take on “stubborn interests”—the unions and others—who “would make L.A. proud as the first woman to lead the nation’s second most populous city.”

The Los Angeles Times goes for Eric Garcetti, whom it says is the candidate with the most potential to “rise to the occasion…” and “the power to inspire.” “He could be just what Los Angeles needs.”

CITY ATTORNEY

While we aren’t endorsing anyone, we do have a strong anti-endorsement. Here it is: ABC—anybody but Carmen. Incumbent Carmen Trutanich has good points, but the negatives greatly outweigh the positives. We went into more detail when Mr. Trutanich ran for District Attorney.

If you’d like a good one-stop-shopping destination that allows you to get a broad strokes idea of the three main candidates—Mike Fuerer, Greg Smith, and Carmen Trutanich—we recommend the on air debate, again, with Warren Olney.

We think it is fascinatingly character revealing for all three of the candidates. For some in a good way. For others, not so much.

CITY CONTROLLER

Once more we refer you to the on-air debate between the candidates with Warren Olney on Which Way LA?

As for sorting out the candidates for voting purposes: LA City Counsel member, Dennis Zine, is the best known and, as such, has a long list of endorsements from unions and elected officials. However persons like former City Controller Laura Chick—and the LA Times, the Daily News, La Opinion, the Daily Breeze and others—are going for Ron Galperin.

Not endorsing, just sayin’…

SCHOOL BOARD

For years, the teachers’ unions have poured gobs of money into the coffers of certain school board candidates whom they could then count on to vote the unions’ direction on any reform issue that the union didn’t like. And true to form, the unions’ presence is being felt in this year’s race too.

But the school board races that are up for a vote in Tuesday’s election have featured a new and muscular funding stream. The money comes from what is collectively known as the school reform movement—a coalition that does not think reform can take place if board members are forever hogtied by unions who put their own interests ahead of those of LA’s kids, with year upon year of demonstrably disastrous results. As a consequence, the the national reform movement has come up with its own big bucks, with some of the money even coming from outside the state. (Not surprisingly, the latter fact has caused controversy.)

Here’s what Education Week has on the matter.

So whom does one vote for in light of all this competing campaign funding?

Well, here’s what the Daily News has to say on the subject.

And here is the LA Times’ list of School Board endorsements.

(You will note both papers’ LAUSD board endorsements are exactly the same.)

The Daily News goes on to explain how it selected its three choices and why it thinks this school board election is of real importance:

What’s at stake is more than just three faces on the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education. The result could either confirm the slow move toward innovation and reform in the nation’s second-largest school district. Or it could reverse the course, destroying the few steps the district has taken in recent years to shake up the old, failing education structure.

For that reason, these races have attracted an astonishing amount of money – $4 million so far – as the unions and reform groups battle it out. How this election goes next week could well decide the fate of education reform in the city, state and nation.

That’s why we are strongly encouraging voters in the three districts - 2, 4, and 6 – to go to the polls and strike a victory for the students by choosing these three people:

Monica Garcia in District 2…Kate Anderson in District 4…Monica Ratcliff in District 6

We agree—most particularly about the choice of Kate Anderson. And, we don’t think the Daily News is overstating its case when it talks about how important this election is to LA’s educational future, and probably to the state’s.

So, yes, that’s an endorsement.

(Oh, and one more thing: Vote NO on Measure A.

NOTE: For more on LA’s schools, and education issues—including Tuesday’s board race—-start reading the lively, smart, and very tuned in LA School report.

BUT WHATEVER YOUR CHOICE….PLEASE VOTE ON TUESDAY, MARCH 5.

EDITOR’S NOTE: WitnessLA is taking Monday off. We’ll be back to our regular reporting tomorrow.

In the meantime, we want to strongly recommend to you a completely extraordinary 2-part story produced by the public radio show, This American Life.

This 2-part series takes a look at the violence affecting Harper High School in Chicago where, during the last school year, 29 current and recent Harper students were shot. Twenty-one of those kids were wounded. Eight of them eight died.

“Watching this,” said the program’s host, Ira Glass, “it’s hard not to think that if you grafted these facts on to another high school, in a wealthier place, maybe a suburb…In other places that would be national news, right? We would all know the name of that school.”

But most of us have never heard of Harper.. Nor do we hear much about a similar kind of everyday violence that goes on in certain neighborhoods in Los Angeles. When we do hear about a shooting, it’s often labeled “gang-related,” the unstated implication being that the victim must have somehow deserved it, that what goes around comes around—unless, of course, the victim is specifically designated “innocent.”

This story of Harper High School drills down past those careless assumptions.

“For everything we’ve all heard about children and gun violence,” says Glass, “there are basic things we don’t hear so much about. Like what it’s like to live in neighborhoods that have to cope with so much bloodshed. This is a school that knows this problem in a way that most of us around the country don’t.”

The administrators at Harper (who seem, by the way, like unusually caring and level-headed educators) gave TAL’s three reporters remarkable access for a full semester, five months. When violence struck—as it does with some regularity—the reporters recorded the staff as they jumped into action. They recorded private and painfully difficult meetings with families and students.

The result is one of the most affecting and accurate pieces of journalism I’ve run across in a very long time.

I’ll have more to say after Part 2. But for now, just listen.

Back tomorrow with our regularly scheduled programming.

A new poll indicates that California voters strongly believe that more mental health services and better emergency response training for school staff are the best strategies for preventing violence in schools. This is according to a survey of 1,200 voters released Thursday by The California Endowment. When asked whether hiring a school counselor or a police officer would be more effective at preventing violence, voters chose counselors by a margin of more than two to one (67% to 26%).

According to the Endowment:

“California voters understand that counseling and mental health services can help prevent senseless tragedies on campus—and frankly, that focus on prevention has been the missing ingredient from school safety efforts in recent years,” said Barbara Raymond, Director of Schools Policy for The California Endowment.

“Addressing gun policy and smart policing strategies are important pieces of the puzzle, but we can’t make schools safe without also improving mental health services. Counselors, nurses, and other support services are part of a range of strategies that will help make Health Happen in Schools, because we know the physical and emotional well-being of students is essential to their academic success,” Raymond said.

Among the findings are the following:

· 96% of California voters support training school staff in emergency response (including 78% “strongly support”);
· 96% support requiring every school to have a comprehensive safety plan (79% strongly—California law currently requires schools to maintain safety plans and update them annually by March 1);
· 91% support training teachers in conflict resolution techniques (64% strongly);
· 91% support expanding mental health services in communities (69% strongly);
· 91% support providing mental “first aid” training to school staff, so they can recognize the signs of mental illness in young people (64% strongly);
· 84% support increasing the number of trained counselors in schools (55% strongly);
· 50% support putting armed police officers in every school (23% strongly); and
· Only 31% support allowing teachers trained in firearms to carry guns on school grounds (16% strongly).

When asked to compare policy options directly, voters surveyed backed improving mental health services over installing more security cameras and metal detectors by a margin of 66% to 27%. By a similar margin, they preferred counselors over police (67% to 26%).

According to the Endowment:

Nearly two-thirds of survey respondents (65%) agreed that too many guards and gates on campus risks creating a tense, fortress-like environment that can be detrimental to a school’s educational mission. Regardless of their position on placing police in schools, 88% of voters agreed that officers assigned to schools should get special training in youth development, so they better understand teens and can work more effectively with students and teachers

The opinions of California gun owners are similar to those expressed by all voters. By a margin of 58% to 36%, gun owners agreed that placing school counselors in every school was a more effective strategy than placing armed police officers in every school. Gun owners also backed increasing mental health service in communities (93%) and providing mental health “first aid” training to school staff (87%). California gun owners were evenly split on allowing teachers to carry firearms on school grounds (49% support; 48% oppose).

For the rest of the survey graphics go here.