“Fake” Classes Lawsuit Settled, Training Campus Cops to Work With Kids, & LASD Excessive Force Allegations

SETTLING MAJOR LAWSUIT, CALIFORNIA WILL HAVE TO PROTECT STUDENTS FROM FAKE AND FILLER CLASSES

On Thursday, the state of California settled a landmark lawsuit on behalf of California high school students who wasted valuable education time because they were assigned fake, empty classes.

Under the Cruz v. State of California settlement, the California Department of Education, the Board of Education, and State Superintendent Tom Torlakson will start work immediately to make sure that students at low-income schools, such as the six schools named, “are provided the same equal access to educational opportunities regardless of zip code or income,” according to a statement from Public Counsel, one of the law firms that filed the suit along with the ACLU of Southern California, with pro bono support from Carlton Fields Jorden Burt and Arnold & Porter LLP.

The settlement is an add-on to AB 1012, a bill signed last month by CA Gov. Jerry brown that bans school districts from placing kids in pretend classes without any educational instruction for more than a week per semester with some exceptions, (which has been a problem for students in the LA Unified, Compton, and Oakland School Districts, among others).

Thursday’s settlement “ends the practices in certain California underperforming high schools of assigning students to sham classes, garbage detail, mindless errands, and even dismissing students early, instead of enrollment in rigorous classes needed for graduation,” and to “compete successfully for higher education and productive jobs,” said Mark Rosenbaum, director of Public Counsel Opportunity Under Law.

Specifically the settlement will require the development of systems to monitor when kids are assigned these non-instructional classes. For the next two years, the state also must provide tech support and other assistance to the six schools in LA, Compton, and Oakland if they experience scheduling problems or if there are too many kids assigned to fake classes.

Public Counsel and ACLU SoCal filed the lawsuit last year, with pro bono support from Carlton Fields Jorden Burt and Arnold & Porter LLP.

In response to the settlement, David Sapp, director of education advocacy at ACLU SoCal, said, “We commend the state education agencies for working with us to develop a process for providing support and assistance to schools that clearly were struggling with one of the most important functions of a school: to educate students for the full school day.”

We at WLA have been closely following this issue. Last October, an Alameda County Superior Court judge issued a Temporary Restraining Order demanding the California Department of Education help the LAUSD fix scheduling issues at LA’s Thomas Jefferson High School that gave kids filler classes and sent them home early, throwing many off the track to graduation. (Read that story: here.)

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http://youtu.be/tRuliA6a8NY

SCHOOL RESOURCE OFFICERS OFTEN NOT SPECIFICALLY TRAINED TO WORK WITH CHILDREN

Twelve states, including California, require specific training for officers to complete before they can work in schools. But the training varies across the states and does not always include material on how to work with students and how to address trauma and de-escalate confrontations with kids in crisis and kids with disabilities.

The Atlantic’s Mark Keierleber takes a look at the issue, and why schools rely so heavily on police officers to discipline kids. Here are some clips:

There are about 19,000 sworn police officers stationed in schools nationwide, according to U.S. Department of Justice estimates, and stories about their school-discipline disasters cross Mo Canady’s desk all the time.

“The first thing I do is search our database to see ‘Did this person come through our training?’” said Canady, the executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers, which offers specialized training to SROs—primarily on a voluntary basis. “And the answer is consistently ‘no.’”

Confrontations between armed police officers and students in schools are becoming more frequent—arrests are up according to an August report for the National Association of State Boards of Education—and more high-profile because of both cell phones and social media. They are also being increasingly scrutinized for bias and alleged brutality in the same way as encounters on the street have become between cops and adult civilians.

These incidents, youth-rights activists and federal officials argue, show that the school resource officers lack the proper training needed to interact effectively with children, especially when they are black, Hispanic, or disabled. The very students, advocates say, are being funneled from the classroom to the courtroom.

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Little data has been collected on the level of training officers receive. Only 12 states have laws that specify training requirements for officers deployed to classrooms, and those laws are inconsistent: Some states mandate training on how to respond to an active shooter. Fewer focus on dealing with children differently than adults.

“All officers are getting a certain level of training that they’re required to get as police officers,” said Nina Salomon, a senior policy analyst at the Council of State Governments Justice Center. “The additional training that we’re talking about—on youth development, on working with youth, on prevention and de-escalation—hasn’t typically been received by the majority of law enforcement that work with youth inside a school building, or that are called to campus.”

In districts like Richmond, CA, and Los Angeles, SROs take comprehensive trauma-informed course from a nonprofit called Strategies for Youth that includes information on how kids brains develop, and training for recognizing and addressing implicit bias as well as mental illness and substance abuse, without using force unnecessarily.

A Los Angeles Police Department detective, Richard Askew, said his time as an educator and as an SRO influenced his understanding of the way children behave and interact with authority.

Before joining the LAPD, Askew worked for two years at a charter school serving at-risk students aged 16-24 who were unable to stay engaged with traditional or alternative methods. Joining LAPD’s juvenile narcotics division, Askew was planted in L.A. schools as an undercover investigator.

In 2009, he joined LAPD’s mental-evaluation unit, a partnership with the department of mental health to interact with people who struggle from mental-health issues. He also became a Strategies for Youth trainer.

“SROs generally have a pretty big impact on campuses for students because of their authority positions and how they’re perceived,” Askew said.

Once an officer is selected as an SRO, they receive in-house training on school-district policies and procedures and 40 hours of SRO training from the state police academy, he said. Just a few months ago, all of the department’s officers were taught how to avoid implicit bias.

California does have a law setting training requirements for SROs. But until standardized training is required, most of the officers who do seek additional coursework are acting out of common sense, Canady said. Police departments would ensure officers in investigations units are properly trained.

So why not those who work in schools?

“Officers working in schools, just out of the nature of the assignment, are going to become the most well-known police officers or sheriff’s deputies in your community, and you’d better have some additional training for them, and you’d better make sure it’s the right person,” Canady said, “or you’re going to wind up potentially giving your department a black eye.”

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LYNWOOD FAMILY SAYS NEW VIDEO SHOWS LASD USED EXCESSIVE FORCE, CONTRADICTS DEPUTIES’ VERSION OF THE STORY

The family of a Lynwood father and son who were bystanders arrested by Los Angeles County deputies in March says that newly surfaced footage shows deputies using excessive force on the two men. In the video taken by neighbors, officers appear to use pepper spray, a baton, and a taser while arresting Marco Arevalo and his father, who were charged with rioting and resisting arrest. The family’s lawyer says the video tells a much different story than the deputies’ account, and calls for a federal investigation into the incident.

ABC7’s Carlos Granda has the story. Here’s a clip:

The video shows deputies arresting one person on the sidewalk outside a home as two other men, Marco Arevalo and his father, stand nearby.

Arevalo and his father are then told to go inside their home by deputies.

A few seconds later, video allegedly shows deputies tossing the father over a bush, then hitting his son with a baton.

Deputies then appear to use pepper spray, and a taser the son.

The family claims deputies lied about what happened.

“Deputy Shaffer, who arrives last, says that my client was trying to run inside the house, that the baton strikes did nothing to stop him and that he was in fear that my client would go in the house and get a weapon,” the family’s attorney Michael Carrillo said. “As you can see the baton strikes did have an effect, they dropped him.”

Carrillo said the deputies even testified at a court hearing that Arevalo and his father were threatening them.

The father and son faced charges of rioting and resisting an officer, but Carrillo said the video changed everything.