FIRST OF ALL: CONGRATULATIONS TO ERIC, MIKE AND RON!!!

(AND TO WENDY, WE SEND OUR WARMTH AND RESPECT FOR A BATTLE HARD FOUGHT.)

NOW…..SOME SNAPSHOTS OF ELECTION NIGHT FEVER

While waiting for elections results on Tuesday night that seemed to take forever, LA journalists found lots of ways to amuse themselves:

For instance, the folks over at Zócalo posted two Q&A sessions with Garcetti and Greuel that asked all the right questions. We highly recommend reading them both in their entirety, but here are a few notable exchanges—first from the Garcetti interview:

Q: Obama said he has only two colors of suits, gray and blue, in order to eliminate choices. What suit colors do you have?
A:Oh my gosh. I’ve got blue suits, I have gray suits, I have black suits. And I believe I have, like, a brown suit. Twice as many choices but half as many suits.

Q: What animal fills you with terror?
A:I think it’s the chupacabra. I don’t know if it’s out there, but if it is, that frightens the heck out of me.

…and then, from the Greuel interview:

Q: What weapon would you choose if a zombie apocalypse came to L.A.?
A:I have no idea! [An aide says she doesn’t have to answer the question.] I think if a zombie apocalypse came to L.A., I’d probably run. That’d be my weapon. I’m not sure there’d be anything I could do to defend myself.

Q: When did you last laugh?
A: Just now. When you asked about the apocalypse.

Among the most entertaining election commentaries of the evening, not surprisingly, were from Twitter. Here are some of our favorites:

‏Gene Maddaus (LA Weekly) @GeneMaddaus
Well I’d say this mayor’s race is about complete. IBEW boss Brian D’Arcy just gave me the middle finger from his 2nd floor office window.

‏Gene Maddaus (LA Weekly) @GeneMaddaus
D’Arcy’s staff said they were calling the cops 20 minutes ago. Where are they?

Gene Maddaus (LA Weekly) @GeneMaddaus
Well I did my best. Here’s video of me shouting a question at Brian D’Arcy’s rolled-up car window as he drives away.

Frank Stoltze (KPPC) ‏@StoltzeFrankly
@ericgarcetti supporters gather outside the Hollywood Palladium for his election night party. #lamayor pic.twitter.com/MdcpLC1DDO

Frank Stoltze (KPPC) ‏@StoltzeFrankly
@ericgarcetti father Gil feeling optimistic at the Hollywood Palladium. #LAMayor. pic.twitter.com/Fy23jp7d4d

Steve Lopez (LA Times) @LATstevelopez
Vote-counting systems that are more efficient: pigeons fly votes downtown, Mr. Ed scratches hoof once for Greuel, twice for Garcetti

Steve Lopez (LA Times) @LATstevelopez
can anyone take a picture of the vote-counting abacus city clerk uses?

Steve Lopez (LA Times) ‏@LATstevelopez
i’m watching kcal 9. the bear stealing garbage is very efficient. can we get him to count votes in the l.a. city election?

Alice Walton (KPPC) ‏@TheCityMaven
The @Wendy_Greuel DJ is now playing the Jackson 5′s “I Want You Back” … which I think means @Villaraigosa has taken over the playlist.

David Zahniser (LA Times) ‏@DavidZahniser
MT @TheCityMaven reports that the @Wendy_Greuel party just put on Journey

AND IN OTHER NEWS…THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT SEIZES FOX NEWS REPORTER’S PHONE RECORDS

While LA was in the throes of election obsession, there was a new development in the matter of the DOJ spying on journalists. It is a still unfolding tale that WLA finds chilling.

The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza has the story. Here are some clips:

Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that, as part of the investigation of [an alleged leak by a former State Department contractor named Stephen Jin-Woo Kim], Obama’s Department of Justice seized e-mails from [Fox News' reporter James Rosen's] personal Gmail account. In the search warrant for that request, the government described Rosen as “an aider, and abettor, and / or co-conspirator” in violating the Espionage Act, noting that the crime can be punished by ten years in prison. Rosen was not indicted in the case, but the suggestion in a government document that a reporter could be guilty of espionage for engaging in routine reporting is unprecedented and has alarmed many journalists and civil libertarians.

The document uncovered today suggests the government seized “call detail” records from Rosen’s work and cell phones, which would show whom he called, who called him, how long they spoke, and the times of the calls. The document suggests that the government was seeking only the subscriber records for the two White House numbers targeted, information that a government source said would include the name of the official who used the specific line.

[BIG SNIP]

Rosen declined to comment on the case. Asked if the phone numbers of any reporters had been targeted in the Kim investigation, a spokesperson for Fox News said they were not familiar with the new information regarding Fox’s phone records and directed The New Yorker to a statement released yesterday by Michael Clemente, the executive vice-president for News at the cable channel: “We are outraged to learn today that James Rosen was named a criminal co-conspirator for simply doing his job as a reporter. In fact, it is downright chilling. We will unequivocally defend his right to operate as a member of what up until now has always been a free press.”

A SACRAMENTO GROUP FINDS A NEW WAY TO CONFRONT “ZERO TOLERANCE”

In her excellent blog, ACEs Too High, journalist/child advocate, Jane Stevens brings to our attention an innovative community play titled ZERO that dramatizes the affects of zero tolerance policies in schools. Stevens takes in-depth look at the process of creating ZERO (which was put on by the Black Parallel School Board and funded by the California Endowment), and the surprising effect it has had on viewers—many of them state lawmakers and their staffs.

Here’s a clip (but go read the whole thing):

The first time they performed the play, it was for legislators and their staff members in the State Capitol. “I thought only 20 people would show up,” said Pinkston. “The room was packed — 70 people watched.” And the buzz began.

“I know that a lot of the people were taken aback,” said Bradley. “People don’t realize how bad it can get. It was touching to me because people seemed to really care about the situation, because that gave us hope for change.”

In August 2012, by the time they presented the play at the Guild Theater, so many people had heard about the play that tickets were sold out.

“The play shows how the teachers and administrators are under constant pressure to perform,” said Pinkston. “They’re under siege. They’re forced to get rid of the kids they don’t want to teach. Parents don’t have a lot of time and attention to work with kids, because they’re working two or three jobs. So, the community has to take some ownership about what’s going on.”

At the end, the students, teachers, parents and community members in the audience were gripped with sadness and frustration at the heavy odds against James, the main character. “This whole experience has been humanizing,” said White. “The play’s a microcosm that what actually happens in schools.”

Half of the 200 people in the audience filled out comment cards. More than half felt the play had challenged or changed their opinion. Some of the comments:

*We must come up with a different way to deal with discipline in school. Suspension is the not the answer.”

*I plan to push harder to start this conversation within my school community and advocate for a shift toward supporting each other and developing strengths-based schools.”

*I am willing to challenge the rate of suspensions at my school.”

*I will support legislation to fund schools & change school discipline to provide restorative practices & social-emotional learning for school community.”

*I am a middle school teacher (34 years)…. I have “James” in my classes. James deserves every bit of help; however, standing in front of the class looking out, I see 34 other students waiting for me to do something with disruptive students. The school do not have the personnel to work “deeply” with James. I talk to parents after school for hours, but during class, I have to educate the non-James.”

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.

FAMILIES AND ADVOCATES GATHER TO CELEBRATE FOSTER MOTHERS

This past Sunday, the non-profit organization Foster Care Counts hosted the Fifth Annual Foster Mother’s Day event in LA, home to the nation’s largest foster care system. Fifteen-hundred foster moms and their families gathered to celebrate Mother’s Day and National Foster Month with food, family activities, and entertainment.

We received some excellent photos of the festivities, like this foster mother with her sweet baby…

…and this happy group of kids getting ready to play some carnival games:

As journalists, we so often cover the tragedy and letdowns in foster care, it’s nice to take a moment and recognize the many decent folks who are giving kids homes.

WILL LAUSD VOTE TO BAN SUSPENSIONS FOR “WILLFUL DEFIANCE?”

Tuesday, the LAUSD Board of Education will vote on a resolution authored by LAUSD Board President Monica Garcia to ban suspensions for “willful defiance,” and to provide new guidelines for school discipline. (For more on the resolution, hop over to our April post.)

The LA Times’ Teresa Watanabe has the story. Here’s how it opens:

Damien Valentine knows painfully well about a national phenomenon that is imperiling the academic achievement of minority students, particularly African Americans like himself: the pervasive and disproportionate use of suspensions from school for mouthing off and other acts of defiance.

The Manual Arts Senior High School sophomore has been suspended several times beginning in seventh grade, when he was sent home for a day and a half for refusing to change his seat because he was talking. He said the suspensions never helped him learn to control his behavior but only made him fall further behind.

“Getting suspended doesn’t solve anything,” Valentine said. “It just ruins the rest of the day and keeps you behind.”

But Valentine, who likes chemistry and wants to be a doctor, is determined to change school discipline practices. He has joined a Los Angeles County-wide effort to push a landmark proposal by school board President Monica Garcia that would make L.A. Unified the first school district in California to ban suspensions for willful defiance.

BROOKLYN D.A. REVIEWING FIFTY MURDER CONVICTIONS INVOLVING RENOWNED NYPD DETECTIVE

The Brooklyn D.A.’s office has ordered a review of around fifty closed homicide cases involving retired NYPD Detective Louis Scarcella. The review comes after the release of wrongfully convicted David Ranta, who was locked up for twenty-three years on a false confession obtained by Scarcella. It was also triggered by the findings from an NY Times review of a dozen other cases.

We urge you to read the entirety of this wild and alarming tale.

The New York Times’ Frances Robles and N. R. Kleinfield have the story. Here’s a clip:

The office’s Conviction Integrity Unit will reopen every murder case that resulted in a guilty verdict after being investigated by Detective Louis Scarcella, a flashy officer who handled some of Brooklyn’s most notorious crimes during the crack epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s.

The development comes after The New York Times examined a dozen cases involving Mr. Scarcella and found disturbing patterns, including the detective’s reliance on the same eyewitness, a crack-addicted prostitute, for multiple murder prosecutions and his delivery of confessions from suspects who later said they had told him nothing. At the same time, defense lawyers, inmates and prisoner advocacy organizations have contacted the district attorney’s office to share their own suspicions about Mr. Scarcella.

The review by the office of District Attorney Charles J. Hynes will give special scrutiny to those cases that appear weakest — because they rely on either a single eyewitness or confession, officials said. The staff will re-interview available witnesses, and study any new evidence. If they feel a conviction was unjust, prosecutors could seek for it to be dismissed.

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.

The topic of school discipline, school safety and the so-called school to prison pipeline continues to heat up. We will be reporting more regularly on these issues over the next year, as more and more voices push for change.

In the meantime, here’s an overview of some of the events of the past week and the coming week.

NEW BILLS & WILLFUL DEFIANCE

On Tuesday of this week a cluster of new bills will have their first hearings in the state capital. All are aimed at at reforming some part of what education advocates call a crisis in school discipline. AB 549 would push for more school counselors and better defined roles for school police, and SB 744 would help fix some of the more pressing problems with “community day schools” that, at present, often lead students to drop out, rather than helping students toward graduation.

But perhaps the most important of the new bills is AB420, which would greatly curtail the use of the dangerously vague catch-all category of “willful defiance” as the sole reason for suspending or expelling a student.

We’ll have more on the willful defiance issue as time goes along. But for now what you need to know is that it is defined as, “disrupting school activities or otherwise willfully defying the valid authority of school staff,” and that, according to a new report by the California Department of Education, 53 percent of all school suspensions this past year had this kitchen sink category as the primary cause.

A NEW NATIONAL REPORT AND A “SELECT” COMMITTEE MEETS

Last week, UCLA’s Civil Rights Project released a first-of-its-kind new report analyzing the data from more than 26,000 American middle schools, and found that one out of every nine secondary school students was suspended at least once during the year—and that the majority of suspensions were for minor infractions of school rules—things like disrupting class, tardiness, and dress code violations. The suspensions were rarely for serious, violent or criminal behavior.

The report also found that racial disparities in the use of school discipline are so great, and have grown so dramatically since the 1970s, that the matter has become a civil rights issue—especially for African American students who now face an astonishing 24.3% risk of being suspended—that’s a one in four likelihood.

When gender and disability are thrown into the mix, things get worse: According to the report, 36% of all Black male students with disabilities in middle and high schools, were suspended at least once in 2009-2010—more than one in three.

The UCLA study warned that the findings should be of “serious concern” given that new research shows being suspended even once in ninth grade means “a 32% risk for dropping out” before graduation.

“There is something terribly wrong,” wrote Daniel Losen, report author and director of The Center for Civil Rights Remedies, “when, despite very effective alternatives, so many middle and high schools quickly punish and exclude students of color, students with disabilities and English Learners. We know these schools can change because, in many large districts, we found many low-suspending schools where suspension is still a measure of last resort.”

All these points and more were discussed in Sacramento this past Friday morning as testimony was presented at the Select Committee on Delinquency Prevention and Youth Development, chaired by Assemblymember Roger Dickinson (D).

The special hearing, called: Beyond Newtown – Promoting Safe, Supportive, and Healthy Schools, heard some affecting testimony from all over California.

Yet, not surprisingly, our own LAUSD was front and center more than any other district.

SCHOOL DISCIPLINE AT LA UNIFIED

The UCLA report found that LAUSD had 54 schools out of its 215 secondary schools that suspended at least one segment of its student body (African American males, let’s say) more than 25%, and 13 schools that suspended one group or segment more than 50%. The report designated these high suspension campuses as “hot spots.”

Nationally, LA Unified ranked as 4th in the nation, when it came to these “hot spot” schools.

That’s the bad news. However, like many districts, LAUSD is a very mixed bag when it comes to school suspensions. This means there is also good news—namely the fact that the district ranked first in the nation when it came to low suspending schools (81 schools) that “suspended no group over 10%.”

Here’s a break out of the LAUSD part of the UCLA Civil Rights Project report

THE MIRACLE OF GARFIELD HIGH

Of all the low-suspending LAUSD schools, the one with the most dramatic story of change is James A. Garfield High School, which is located in an unincorporated area of East Los Angeles. Garfield draws from some of LA’s most impoverished communities, as a consequence, it has traditionally dealt with a host of social problems that often lead to discipline issues, including gangs, drugs, and the family dysfunction that often accompanies poverty.

Thus it was nothing out of the ordinary that, in the 2008/2009 school year, Garfield instituted 683 suspensions and one expulsion.

But in January 2009 Garfield got a brand new principal named Jose Huerta, who was part of a new reorganization plan for the desperately troubled school. Among other changes he and his team instituted, Huerta decided that he was going to take suspensions and expulsions entirely “off the table.”

It was a radical promise but, amazingly, Huerta made good on it. At the end of the 2010/2011 school year, Garfield had suspended one kid, and expelled zero kids. The next year, it was the same, suspended 1, expelled none.

Thus far for the 2012/2013 school year there have been no suspensions.

You’ll be hearing a lot more about Garfield in the coming weeks—as we think you’ll find its transformation to be an important and instructive story.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

That’s all for now. Tomorrow some interesting LA Sheriff’s department news, plus news about a proposed LA Unified Board resolution—-and more soon on LA County Probation.

So stay tuned.

A WAR ON COPS?

When police officers are murdered, in addition to the unbearable hole it leaves in the lives of family, fellow officers and friends, it is a blow to all the rest of us, a deeply painful wound to the community at large. Police officers and firefighters are the one’s taking risks to keep the rest of us safe. When they are killed, we should take it personally. We should grieve for those fallen officers as our own.

That’s why so many people tuned in to watch such funerals as those of Riverside officer, Michael Crain, and San Bernardino Sheriff’s Deputy, Jeremiah MacKay, both killed in February of this year, and for LAPD SWAT officer Randal Simmons killed in February 2008, for Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department Deputy Juan Abel Escalante, killed in August 2008, and for Santa Cruz Police Department detectives, Detective Sgt. Loran “Butch” Baker and Detective Elizabeth Butler, both fatally shot in late February when we were still reeling from the trauma of Christopher Dorner and all the havoc he wreaked.

All that said, let us allow these most recent 2013 deaths to be the tragedies they are, and not make them into something they are not—namely a so-called war on cops.

In 2011, when after a mostly steady decrease in officer deaths at the hands of another, there was a perplexing spike, causing journalists and public figures to warn that a war had been declared against law enforcement, despite facts to the contrary. In addition to not being—you know—true, such rhetoric was hardly helpful to the state of mind of officers facing genuine dangers on patrol.

Huffington Post criminal justice reporter Radley Balko wrote about the issue in 2011. And he has written a new essay on the matter in Tuesday’s Huff Post.

Here are some clips:

The recent killings of two prosecutors in Texas, a Colorado Department of Corrections official and a sheriff in West Virginia have law enforcement groups and the media once again buzzing about an alleged “war on cops” or, in some instances, a broader trend toward violent anti-government sentiment. Over at The Atlantic, Philip Bump does a good job debunking that idea. (He also quotes me.)

Unfortunately, thorough and skeptical analyses of police fatality statistics like Bump’s are rare. The “war on cops” talk heats up every time that one or more high-profile police killings hit the news. But there’s just no evidence that it’s true.

I’ve pointed out a number of times that the job of police officer has been getting progressively safer for a generation. Last year was the safest year for cops since the early 1960s. And it isn’t just because the police are carrying bigger guns or have better armor. Assaults on police officers have been dropping over the same period. Which means that not only are fewer cops getting killed on the job, people in general are less inclined to try to hurt them. Yes, working as a police officer is still more dangerous than, say, working as a journalist. (Or at least a journalist here in the U.S.) But a cop today is about as likely to be murdered on the job as someone who merely resides in about half of the country’s 75 largest cities.

You can read the linked pieces above for more evidence that police officers today are as safe as they’ve been in decades. But I want to discuss why it’s important to push back against this “war on cops” narrative.

It should go without saying, though I will: This has nothing to do with trying to diminish the tough job that police officers do or to cast aspersions on those who have been killed. But there are other reasons why journalists need to do a better job of reporting this story accurately. (Beyond the hopefully obvious value of reporting things accurately for the sake of reporting them accurately.)

[SNIP]

But there’s a more pernicious effect of exaggerating the threat to police officers. In researching my forthcoming book, I interviewed lots of police officers, police administrators, criminologists and others connected to the field of law enforcement. There was a consensus among these people that constantly telling cops how dangerous their jobs are is affecting their mindset. It reinforces the soldier mentality already relentlessly drummed into cops’ heads by politicians’ habit of declaring “war” on things. Browse the online bulletin boards at sites like PoliceOne (where users must be credentialed law enforcement to comment), and you’ll see a lot of hostility toward everyone who isn’t in law enforcement, as well as various versions of the sentiment “I’ll do whatever I need to get home safe at night.” That’s a mantra that speaks more to self-preservation than public service.

When cops are told that every day on the job could be their last, that every morning they say goodbye to their families could be the last time they see their kids, that everyone they encounter is someone who could possibly kill them, it isn’t difficult to see how they might start to see the people they serve as an enemy….

Read the rest here.

WHEN ANTI-BULLYING POLICIES HURT MORE THAN THEY HELP

On Tuesday’s Air Talk, Larry Mantle talks to Susan Porter, Ph.D, author of “Bully Nation: Why America’s Approach to Childhood Aggression is Bad for Everyone.“

Here’s a clip from the blog post about the segment on KPCC. When the audio goes up, I’ll link to that too.

Educator Susan Eva Porter said that the nation considered the shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold as victims of bullying, and the nation quickly and fearfully adopted zero-tolerance policies to prevent future victims of bullying.

In “Bully Nation…” Porter argues that labeling children as bullies is equivalent to calling them “stupid” because it gives them a “fixed mind-set” about how they perceive themselves.

Do anti-bullying programs cause more harm than help? Is bullying in schools a problem? What’s the best way to help victims of bullying? Are children more aggressive today than in the past?

SHOULD JOURNALISTS EVER BE FORCED TO REVEAL THEIR SOURCES?

Mantle also has an intriguing and smart segment on Tuesday’s show about when—if ever—journalists should reveal their sources.

This relates to a story that broke Tuesday morning about an instantly controversial recording that Mother Jones obtained, an audio that was made of a conversation between Republican leader Mitch McConnell and his staff talking about actres Ashley Judd and what kind of op research might be used against her, should she run for office.

(For the record, everyone we know or respect in the field would go to jail before revealing a source.)

REFORMING LAUSD’S POLICY OF “TEACHER JAIL” GAINS SUPPORT

It has been widely reported over the last couple of years, how public school teachers accused of serious of wrongdoing can be held in what is known colloquially as “teacher jail” for a startling amount of time without any appropriate action—which, among other things, costs the distract a lot of money. A new proposal put forth by school board member Tamar Galatzan wants to streamline this ridiculously broken process.

Hillal Aron at the LA School Report has the story.

Here’s a clip:

Normally, when a teacher is accused of physically and seriously harming a child (i.e., hitting them or touching them inappropriately), law enforcement officials investigate.

During the investigation, the teacher is removed from a classroom and placed in a so-called “teacher jail” or “rubber room” pending investigation of alleged misdeeds .

The time teachers spend there can be lengthy — most of it due the time it takes for law enforcement to do its investigation, according to Galatzan.

According to a November 2012 audit, LAUSD has been required to pay $3 million in salaries to 20 teachers who have been ‘housed’ (removed from site) the longest while being investigated for misconduct – including one who’s been housed for 4.5 years.

In most cases, teachers do not end up returning to the classroom. Last year, only 16 returned, and only 14 have been reassigned as of December this year.

However, sometimes law enforcement, for a variety of reasons, determines that there is no criminal act or decides it can’t make the charges stick.

That’s where Galatzan’s resolution comes in….

Light posting today. Working on a number of interesting thing for next week and the following week.

COPS AND PROSECUTORS HELP MORE IN EXONERATIONS IN 2012

According to a new report released Wednesday, 2012 was a good year for exonerations, with California adding the most exonerations to the list last year.

On notable difference in last year’s innocence cases is that more police and prosecutors assisted in the exonerations.

Maggie Clark has the story for Stateline.

D.C. STUDENTS SHOOTING PICTURES TO PROTEST ADDED SCHOOL SECURITY

Gotta love the proactive attitude of this group of students using their cameras to protest what they view as an overzealous security, post Newtown. Annie Gowen at the Washington Post has the story. Here’s a clip from the opening:

The small band of guerrilla photographers spread out in schools across the District, snapping photos of metal detectors, police pat-downs, and scuffles between security guards and students.

The dozen or so teens, who hail from some of the area’s most troubled neighborhoods, are trying to document the kind of school security issues that have taken center stage in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., shootings.

Since the December tragedy, the question of whether schools are safe has gained new urgency, with the Senate weighing $40 million in funding for school security plans and the National Rifle Association — which has called for armed teachers, administrators or guards in every school — releasing recommendations from its experts Tuesday.

But H.D. Woodson High School senior Mike Ruff and other classmates have armed themselves with cameras to make the opposite point. They say that their learning environment has been scarred by relentless security. They say their high schools, among an estimated 10,000 nationwide with police on campus, feel like prisons….

Read the rest here.

MORE SLOPPY REALIGNMENT REPORTING, THIS TIME HAVING TO DO WITH THE NORTHRIDGE CHILD ABDUCTION

Tobias Dustin Summers is suspected of kidnapping the 10-year old Northridge girl last week, and is now on the run. It seems, however, that when Summers finished his most recent prison term and got out, he was assigned to a probation officer, not a parole officer, under AB 109. His practical requirements were basically the same. And he, reportedly, hit most all his marks. He drug tested when he was required to do so. He didn’t test dirty. He met with his PO on schedule.

Then the day after one such meeting, he went out and allegedly abducted a little girl.

Unfortunately, the horrific abduction is being blamed—with a blithe lack of fact-checking—on realignment. Scads of reporters are advancing this sloppy theory, as is LA County Supervisor Mike Antonovich.

In the midst of all this misinformation, WLA sends a gigantic thank you to Rina Palta at KPPC for reporting on the story like the smart, hard-working, clear-minded professional she is–(AKA someone who thinks that accuracy and logical thought are both good things).

You can read Palta’s story here

THE SECRET TO FIXING SCHOOL DISCIPLINE PROBLEMS: CHANGE THE ADULTS

Journalist Jane Stevens has a remarkable website that only experts seem to know about but that deserves a very wide readership among those who care about…well….kids, and certainly those who care about education. It’s called Aces Too High, and it’s about the affect that adverse childhood experiences-–AKA “ACE” AKA childhood trauma—have on education, and school discipline issues, and, of course, the way and the reasons why kids intersect with the juvenile justice system.

In this article by Stevens, titled “The secret to fixing school discipline problems? Change the behavior of adults,” she explains—probably better than I’ve yet seen it done elsewhere—-the affect of zero tolerance discipline policies, and the profoundly positive changes that occur in schools and school districts, when the adults running things figure out that suspensions and expulsions aren’t good solutions to anything.

Here’s a large explanatory clip:

A sea change is coursing slowly but resolutely through this nation’s K-12 education system. More than 23,000 schools out of 132,000 nationwide have or are discarding a highly punitive approach to school discipline in favor of supportive, compassionate, and solution-oriented methods. Those that take the slow-but-steady road can see a 20% to 40% drop in suspensions in their first year of transformation. A few — where the principal, all teachers and staff embrace an immediate overhaul — experience higher rates, as much as an 85% drop in suspensions and a 40% drop in expulsions. Bullying, truancy, and tardiness are waning. Graduation rates, test scores and grades are trending up.

The formula is simple, really: Instead of waiting for kids to behave badly and then punishing them, schools are creating environments in which kids can succeed. “We have to be much more thoughtful about how we teach our kids to behave, and how our staff behaves in those environments that we create,” says Mike Hanson, superintendent of Fresno (CA) Unified School District, which began a district-wide overhaul of all of its 92 schools in 2008.

This isn’t a single program or a short-term trend or a five-year plan that will disappear as soon as the funding runs out. Where it’s taken hold, it’s a don’t-look-back, got-the-bit-in-the-teeth, I-can’t-belieeeeeve-we-used-to-do-it-the-old-way type of shift.

The secret to success doesn’t involve the kids so much as it does the adults: Focus on altering the behavior of teachers and administrators, and, almost like magic, the kids stop fighting and acting out in class. They’re more interested in school, they’re happier and feel safer.

Then Stevens gets into the really good stuff… about the effect of trauma on kids’ behavior, and…well, just read it.

“You can’t punish a behavior out of a kid,” says Jen Caldwell, a social worker at El Dorado Elementary School in San Francisco, CA. “The old-school model of discipline comes from people who think kids intentionally behave badly.”

Joseph Arruda, learning director at Reedley High School in Reedley, CA, shakes his head: “Suspending, expelling….that’s the old way.”

Exactly.

TAVIS SMILEY’S NEW SPECIAL ON ZERO TOLERANCE IN SCHOOLS & HOW IT SLAMMED HIM EMOTIONALLY

As we’ve mentioned earlier, Radio and PBS host Tavis Smiley has new PBS special that focuses on some of the same school-to-prison-pipeline topics that Stevens talks about above.

WLA’s own Matt Fleischer interviewed Smiley for FishbowlLA about the special titled Education Under Arrest, and Smiley talked about how the filming got to him emotionally:

….We spoke to Smiley last week, and he said this topic had left him emotionally drained in a way he had never experienced before in his more than two decades in the media.

“This is one of the most emotional pieces of work I’ve really done,” he tells FishbowlLA. “This has never happened before, but I had to stop camera at one point because I started crying. We had to take a break. I couldn’t keep it together.”

Smiley says it was the story of Kenyatta and Kennisha–sisters from New Orleans who were expelled from their charter high school for fighting after one was jumped and the other attempted to come to her rescue–that left him particularly raw.

“Both girls end up penalized because there is no gray area for adults to make decisions about these issues. They were both almost perfect 4.0 students. To see these two girls, as bright and full of life as can be, treated in a punitive and pejorative way, I had to stop camera because I started crying.”

“Bad things do happen to good people. I understand that. But I couldn’t wrap my head around why the adults in this situation couldn’t have figured out a better way to handle it.”

The special aired Tuesday night, and it’s terrific. It will re-air on PBS-OC on Sunday. Or you can watch it online here.

Matt talks more extensively to Tavis Smiley here.

AND WHILE WE’RE ON THE TOPIC OF GREAT PBS SPECIALS ON EDUCATION….”180 DAYS”

ED Week’s Ross Brenneman has a rundown on yet one more excellent show dealing with this new wave in education. Here’s a clip:

At Washington Metropolitan High School, in the District of Columbia, many students struggle to keep going. The alternative school for at-risk youth features a litany of the toughest problems schools have to cope with: Chronic absenteeism, dropouts, violence, teenage pregnancy, suspension, tight budgets, and an ongoing challenge to meet adequate yearly progress.

In an ambitious project, a film crew went into D.C. Met for the entirety of the 2011-12 school year to give a broad picture of what a school in dire straits faces. The result, “180 Days: A Year Inside an American High School,” debuts tonight at 9 p.m. ET on PBS, with the other half showing tomorrow night.

“180 Days” gives a sweeping view of the climate inside alternative urban schools, starting with the school’s principal, Tanishia Minor, and moving out from there. The crew went into the high school every single day, and if the four-hour finished product seems expansive, it ultimately focuses on the difficulty of keeping a school together, let alone making it academically proficient.

“In these parts, we know these kids are walking in with these deficits, and every second counts,” Minor says.

The climate almost demands failure. When a student gets a great scholarship to college, they put the good news on the sign in front of the school….

As with Tavis Smiley, the producers of this show also came away changed by the experience of making the documentary:

“It was completely transformative. I think it changed all of our views on education,” said coordinating producer Alexis Aggrey, after the screening. “I think it made us feel, after we shot it and going through all the footage, we just feel like this piece was going to be bigger than what we expected it to be, and I think it lends a voice to this conversation that wouldn’t have normally been captured.”

It aired in LA Tuesday night, check listings here for future airings.

Photo: still shot from broadcast of Tavis Smiley special, “Education Under Arrest”

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”