Transcripts For SFGTV Government Access Programming 20240714

Hello now we can begin. This meeting will come to order. Welcome to the june 28th, special meeting of the joint City School District School District and city college select committee. Our clerk today is erica major. I would also like to thank San Francisco government t. V. For staffing this meeting. Madame clark, please call the role. The call of the role. [roll call] mr. Chair, you have a quorum. I would like to acknowledge commissioner lopez who has joined us here as well. Madame clerk, are there any announcements . Please make sure to silence all cell phones and electronic devices. Completed speaker cards and copy of any documents to be included as part of a file should be submitted to the clerk. Thank you. I wanted to also make a quick announcement which is this is intended to be a committee where everyone, commissioners, trustees, supervisors can bring forward agenda items. For anyone who has an agenda item that they would like to have heard, please send those to myself, as well as to one of my staff so that we can track those , and there will be, unless something changes, a meeting in july, which will be on july 12 th. If you have any agenda items, if you want to bring it to that meeting or future meetings, please let me know. We will not have a meeting in august because this entire building shut down and there are no Committee Meetings in august. You can go on vacation or schedule accordingly, and again, thank you, it is great to have this Committee Meeting on a regular basis and it is good to see you all. Madame clerk, are there any agenda changes . There are no agenda changes. All right. Please call the first item. Item number 1 is a hearing to review the memorandum of understanding between the San Francisco unified School District and the Police Department pertaining to arrests on and off campus, specifically portions of the agreement requiring that a parent or guardian be notified if a student is arrested. Thank you. I would like you to thank the sponsors of this item, supervisor walton and supervisor safai. We are now going to hear from the sponsor, supervisor safai. Thank you, chair haney. I just noticed a couple people were sitting not where their name was. I just want to make sure they have the right name in front of them. Thank you for calling this today i really appreciate this. I know theres a lot of people in the audience and others who have been waiting quite a while to have this conversation, so i want to think sfusd commissioners that engaged on this. Thank you to the sfusd leadership for engaging on this and our city college trustees, and the community that was really involved in this conversation. I want to take a step back for a minute and lets just put what happened on the table. There was a young man, there was an incident at a high school. We all live in a new era, that new era these days, unfortunately has been influenced by individuals that have been involved in shootings at schools and its very sad the lack of gun control in our country, the lack of innocent lives and childrens lives that have been taken, and families that have been impacted by this. And so in many ways, it has impacted how we, as a society, now respond to situations, and we need to be on alert. It is true we need to be on alert because if we make a mistake, peoples lives could be either taken completely, and their lives could be turned upside down irrevocably. I dont take this conversation lightly. Nothing today is intended to embarrass anyone. Nothing today is intended to shame anyone, but i think it is important that we have an honest conversation about how this incident impacted peoples lives there was a young man that was paraded in front of t. V. Cameras when i have incidents like that, because im a father of two children, i think, how would i feel if that were my child . How would i have felt if i were in the shoes of that young man when i was in school . The truth of the matter is, at the end of the day, no one was hurt. I want to commend the San Francisco police for that and sfusd for that, and the community for that, and the family for that. The family of that child is here today. A young student. The father was on site when that happened. He was communicating with the principle. This was all happening in realtime and then something went wrong. We have a memorandum of understanding that is between sfusd and the Police Department. I think the community spend a considerable amount of time and energy putting that together, and we want to understand what principles of that m. O. U. Were adhered to, what were not adhered to, and, you know, at the end of the day, i understand that theres a conversation about updating that m. O. U. , so we believe that this hearing today is timely. So what i wanted to do, we have a list of people that we are going to ask to speak and we have kevin truitt from the sfusd , might cosponsor, i will hand over to any minute, supervisor walton. We have commander lazar from the sfpd here, patty lee from the public defenders office, they are always working with students in these incidences. The staff attorney for the department of police accountability, the vice chair of transforming justice committee, from the Youth Commission, i also want to thank the Youth Commission for participating and supporting this hearing today. And then the director of youth organizing from coleman advocates. They have been a strong voice for the community in these instances. I just will end with saying that its important that we get the input in this hearing today to ensure that we get the right m. O. U. That when we are taking a step back and looking at what happened that day, we need to understand that even if, i will just say this, this is my opinion, even if a gun had harmed someone that day, even if diego had had the gun on his possession, we still should never have paraded him in front of t. V. Cameras. And that, i think, was a fundamental mistake that was made, and then ultimately, lets take a step back and say, you know, i have been in some of these meetings and they know if i were a parent, i would just want to hear, im sorry, im sorry we made a mistake, orme sorry we are not going to do this, and we are going to ensure that this doesnt happen again. That is how i feel as a parent. That is not pointing fingers at anybody, that is not saying in these situations, as i said that when you are faced with life and death and because of the current climate that we live in you dont hesitate. People have made mistakes, but at the end of the day, it is okay to say im sorry. I think that helps in the healing process. I know im proud to say that young man stayed in his school. He graduated. I watched him cross the stage couple of weeks ago with his family at balboa high school. It was a wonderful ceremony and, you know, he stuck it out and the family stuck it out and they engaged, and i think the school and the communities better for it. I want to thank everyone today. I hope we can have a real, honest conversation about this. I also want to say to chair haney and others on our board of supervisors, thank you for pushing for this joint committee to reconvene and form again. I think it is an important aspect of what we can do as leaders in the city. Supervisor walton . Thank you. I do want to reiterate my thanks to my colleagues on the board of education and City College Board of trustees, and the parents, and the families, and of course, School Personnel who came out today. I will not go into context i. I think supervisor safai did a good job of talking about and framing the conversation of why we are here today, but i do just want to thank supervisor safai because at the time of the incident, my youngest son is at balboa and i also have a connection with the family, so supervisor safai jumped right in as a member of the board of supervisors because balboa is in his district, and i had the opportunity to jump in and engage as a member of the board of education. One of the most pertinent things that we wanted to make sure happened is that we push forward and put the right policies in place so that we can avoid incidents like this from ever happening again. As a parent, as a former member of the board of education, and someone who has worked with young people most of my life, we have to make sure that one, we never put young people in a position where they can be paraded around in front of the media, particularly at a school site which is supposed to be the safest place for our young people, and a place and a space where they should never have to feel like they are put on glass, so to speak. We want to make sure that never happens again, and also, make sure the golden rule of a parent always being involved in any type of connection and interaction between Law Enforcement and young people. Especially at this time of year, i dont know if anybody had the opportunity to see one of the most the hardest things for me to watch in my life, and it took me a while to get through it, but the documentary when they see us and the possible negative and tragic effects of what could happen if young people dont have an opportunity to have a parent or council present when interacting with Law Enforcement, and it is that crucial that we make sure that that happens every time, not once in a while, not in certain cases, but every time because that is very devastating with the consequences and what they could be. I also want to make sure that as we look at this incident, that we remember it is also important to have the right Restorative Practices involved when people come back to a school, come back to a community, and so this hearing, the strengthening of the m. O. U. , and i want to thank kevin truitt from sfusd, i want to thank, of course, members who worked to strengthen the m. O. U. I want to thank the s. R. O. And everyone who has been involved in this because the policy piece is important as we move forward. I may have to leave this hearing early because i do have Public Safety and Neighborhood Services , supervisor safai will be subbing for me on the committee if i have to leave early. I do have some recommendations that i will respectfully like to submit to the district about what we can do to tighten up the m. O. U. And talk about next steps that we can take one Something Like this may occur, and some of the protocols that sfpd could maybe put in place as well because they have protocols for when shootings happen, et cetera , so we could have some type of protocol and a conversation with the Law Enforcement as well after this. Lastly, i want to say that i did have an opportunity to personally apologize to the family as a member of the board of education. We didnt make it happen as a district, but i do want to say that any time we put young people in a position where they can be paraded by the media is disgusting to me, and so again, i just want to say that i am sorry that that happened, and this is why were here today to make sure nothing like that ever happens again. I want to reiterate thanks to everybody for being here. This is about moving forward, this is about making sure that things like this do not happen again. It is not about placing blame, but it is about Holding People accountable. With that said, i want to thank supervisor safai and pass it back to you. Thank you, supervisor walton. I want to reiterate what the focus of the hearing today is other than some of the things that i already said. We really want to see what changes have been made to the m. O. U. I know sfusd has been working hard on that so that we can talk about, as a result of that incident, and what Community Input has come as a result of the incident. There has been a lot of work that has happened. We really want to focus on the m. O. U. , the changes that have been made and hear from the community to see exactly what direction we are moving in, and a supervisor walton said, how we can move forward. The first person we will call up is kevin truitt. I think he has a short presentation. While that is being set up, we will have short presentations. S. F. Government t. V. , on the laptop, please. Then we will open it up to Public Comment after that. We want to go through some of the things that will frain the opportunity frame the opportunity for Public Comment. It is up. All right, great. Thank you. Good morning, supervisors, commissioners, and trustees. My name is kevin truitt, i am the chief of student famine Community Support division. I am very pleased to be joined this morning by sfpd partners, commander lazar and captain yolanda williams, who may be joining me in this because we have been partners in this presentation and in this work in the process of revising our m. O. U. This presentation and the status of the m. O. U. Will include the following. I will share with you the opportunities that Community Members had to participate in the process of providing feedback and suggestions to revise the language. I will give you a sense of who attended the Community Meetings, i will share resources that we provided to c. B. O. Partners and Community Members, i will share with you some of the most mentioned topics, feedback, and comments, and i will share with data that was it was requested to shared current arrest dated to give a sense of what is happening in our schools , and lastly, we will show some examples of some of the key areas in which we are proposing a new language. We held four Community Meetings that were facilitated by sfusd leadership, myself, and also the Director Director of School Response Crisis Response and violence prevention. Two were held at Central Office in december and had over 50 participants, and then two additional meetings were requested and held at schools. One focused on focus on the c. B. O. Partners, and then one at wallenberg high school, which was led by the student advisory council. These meetings had 23 and 41 participants. They were over they were over 100 participants are participated in giving us feedback. Additionally, we invited Community Groups to hold their own meetings and to do that, we provided them with the resources to conduct their own meetings. What we did is we created a facilitators guide which was a stepbystep guide on how you can conduct a feedback session, which modelled exactly how we facilitated the district to lead meetings. We provided complete copies of the m. O. U. , we printed large poster sized versions of the sections of the m. O. U. That are most discussed, and during the meetings on we had those, we placed those posters on tables, people went to the tables, they were provided with feedback sheets, post its, and had smallgroup discussions over specific sections of the m. O. U. We provided all those materials to our c. B. O. Partners so that alliance for girls, coleman advocates, Youth Commission, they held their own meetings and then gave us the feedback. Following that, here is a list of some of the representation of our Community Groups that attended and supported giving that feedback. We have s. F. Human rights commission, coleman advocates, Youth Commission, alliance for girls, department of police accountability, larkin street, i wont read them all. We had quite a representation from community partners. I want to say i really appreciate people coming out and providing extensive, extensive feedback. We received numerous suggestions and feedback throughout the process and we transcribed all the feedback that we got, and then anyone who provided their email address, we sent all of the comments and feedback to the public, to anyone who participated. The most common suggestions that we heard, to just name some of them, was that there was a lot of discussion about making sure we clearly define all the terminology for everyone to understand, especially things like the special circumstances. We want to be sure to include all reference policies as part of the m. O. U. , the previous m. O. U. Referenced some Department Led code, et cetera, that were supposed to be in some appendix, i think it was commissioner lopez who pointed out one to me that was not actually as it referred, and that attachment was never part of the original m. O. U. We were able to find some things like that and make sure that anything referenced is also part of the m. O. U. We want to make sure that sfusd and sfpd personnel are adequately trained to handle Police Related incidents at schools with juveniles. It was discussed in great detail also discussed was to make every effort to protect the identity of juveniles with any incidents of Police Involvement and we also discussed that schools, this came up and i want to remind and reemphasize that school should not contact sfpd or the s. R. O. For disciplinary issues at schools. Just to put this in perspective, the last three years, arrest data, this is just going back to the school year 1617 when we had a total of 79 arrests. Last school year, we had a total of 38, and this past school year , we had a total of 28 arrests. It still exists, and i dont want to minimize the fact that our africanamerican students are disproportionately represented by arrests, and people may also, in this room, everyone knows, too, that we have an issue of disproportionality of referrals and suspensions as well that exists within the School District. Just to put this in context, if you go back to the 2011, 2012 school year, we did have 196 arrest that year. It has been going down ever since. One could say we have 195, then 167 then 133, et cetera. Though i cant say there is a definite causal relationship, one could make the assumption that having an m. O. U. And providing clarity and direction to both our schools and sfpd may have this direct impact on reducing the arrests at schools. Here is some actual examples from the m. O. U. In section 11, requesting police assistance, there are three areas where you can request police assistance, and they are listed here, when it is necessary to protect the physical safety of students, required by law, or appropriate to address criminal behavior, persons other than students. The Community Input told us that these need to be further defined in the proposed i dont expect people to actually read this, we are going to provide, and i think we did provide to everyone the revised language, but this gives you a sense of responding to the Community Feedback that there are specific examples of what this means. When we say it is necessary to protect the physical safety of students and staff, that could mean a lot of things to a lot of people. So we offered specific examples that says when there is a dangerous weapon on campus, again, or eight assault rifle, Sexual Assault, terrorist threats, distribution of child per knocker fee, violence causing seriously serious Bodily Injury child per now griffey child pornography, violence causing serious Bodily Injury. Talks about officer entry on school campuses. This starts off with absent exigent circumstances and. What do we mean by this . In the new language, we want to make sure we define exigent circumstances as a defined emergency situation requiring swift action to prevent imminent danger of life or serious damage of property or to forestall the imminent escape of a suspect or the destruction of evidence. That is a definition that we received from sfpd. Arrests on school campus. One is absolutely necessary to make an arrest on campus, the slide illustrates the current language and the proposed new language. Everything highlighted is everything that we added to the m. O. U. In this section, particularly it specifies whether the arrest or summoning is in response to the commission of a School Related offence. If the arrest is for conduct that occurred outside the school , they would make this arrest outside of school. It just specifies again when arrests should have been on school, and when it should not, and most cases, the arrest should not have been on the school property. If the arrest is not reasonable given the considerations listed above, there is no imminent threat, i it is a misdemeanour, federal state and local requirements do not require that. If the officer has the opportunity to make the arrest somewhere else, then we want it to happen somewhere else. We specified those in the new version of the m. O. U. I dont expect you to read this can you go back to the slide on exigent circumstances . I think that was a point of concern for a lot of folks in the community. What is highlighted here, what you just read, exigent circumstances that are defined as an emergency situation requiring swift action to prevent imminent danger of life or serious damage to property to forestall the imminent escape of a suspect or the destruction. Is that new language . That is new language. Can you talk a little bit about the conversation that went into that . That is an important part of this is the basis for some of the decisions that were made that particular day, but in general, before when i read it, when we were meeting with the community, it was pretty vague. I see that you have tried to put a fine point on it. Can you speak a little bit about that . When we said before is in the original language, all it said was absent exigent circumstances and it was not defined. All we did, the community asked, what does that mean . We went and got the definition from sfpd to actually spell out what that actually means. It is just simply providing the definition that we didnt have originally. We just used exigent circumstances. So that then is then conveyed to your principals and school staff . That then becomes important, right, because that is what is defining other than some of the next slides, which is what you talked about in terms of one and arrest would be made, but in terms of a communication between the school and sfpd, this is kind of the crux of part of the decisionmaking. Right. I just want to be clear, we at sfusd, we would not be determining the exigent circumstances. If it becomes a police matter, then the police would determine that this is exigent circumstances. This is a situation that requires the swift, immediate action, so they would be the one making that determination. We are not. It becomes a police matter, then the police to find that. Im a little confused. In other words, someone would not say this is exigent circumstances. We would contact the police, they would say, this is exigent circumstances, this is how we need to respond to the situation we dont tell the police how to respond to a situation. I get that. There has to be some initial decisionmaking on the part of the School Administrators that are on site to reach out to the police. I am assuming that this particular sentence is going to help to guide, right . I mean, walk me through situation where good morning, david lazar. In terms of this particular definition, for example, an active shooter situation. A young person has a gun, or the example im thinking about right now that would clearly qualify for this would be, say a student because the police, a student from a cell phone calls the police and says, you know, on the bottom floor of a particular school in this room, there is a Sexual Assault in progress. We would make sure that right away we responded to that location in order to protect life and safety of the individual calling. Of course, in fairly quick terms , we would be getting a hold of the school officials, but what this does is allows us to go in and take action to protect life, to prevent serious Bodily Injury or death when things are happening in progress that is why we put that in there , as opposed to very tragic situations that restricts us from having to go directly to the scene and having us first go to the principals office, that sort of thing. Okay. I guess it is the previous slide that is talking about requesting police assistance, what kind of gives some definition. That is when youre site administrators would be looking at things like a dangerous weapon or gun possession or unknown persons on site. That is when the initial contact our conversation is between the site and police . I pulled thats light up again. We would not contact the police unless one of these three situations were defined. It is absolutely necessary to protect the physical safety of students, it is required by law, or it is appropriate to address criminal behavior. There are those examples. Then we actually summon the police to campus. I see there are a couple of other commissioner williams . Hit the button. Is that on . Thank you for the presentation. I had a question because i see on the slides on page 7 there isnt any information about the types of arrest citations. Why the students were arrested or detained, and of course, what jumps out is that these are black and brown students for this year and this is the majority of the arrests, or citations or detainment. Is there any breakdown of, you know, arrests, citations, the detained, how many of those were in those categories, and what were those causes . We do have all the incidences i was just providing a summary data. It is not really about the arrests. We have all the reasons. Can you give us some examples i think it is really important. The sale of drugs, there were a few drugrelated incidents. Violence with the intent to harm another individual, robbery violence with a weapon or violence, just physical . With a weapon, yes. Weapons are involved in some of them. I am hearing firearms, possession of firearms, sexual battery. Terrorism threats. What is the majority of the actual detainment that happens . Like a student actually gets get sent to lock up . Misdemeanour battery peak. Also, weapons on campus is a frequent. Last question, if a student is a ward of the court, i know were talking about parent or guardian his getting involved, what happens if a student is in foster care, or there is no parent or guardian that is able to be contacted . Do you want to come up . Thank you. Im sorry. Acting captain williams of the School Office program. The Foster Parent is notified, or if we cannot reach the Foster Parent, then we will do our best to get in touch with someone in probation in order to find out who is the next possible relative that we should be contacting. Of course, the last resort is to contact c. P. S. And see if they can help us to figure out who we need to get in touch with or if they have ever been in the system before. Supervisor walton . Thank you. I just wanted to go back to the point about exigent circumstances and i think it is very important that it is clearly defined and a universal definition that everyone can understand, even though the district is not necessarily responsible for police response, but clarity across the board i think is important. I know we will hear from the department of police accountability, and i think they have made some suggestions on what that language is, but it is important for us all to get to a universal definition just because of mistakes and incidents that have happened in the past that have led to loss of life and other major acts. Thank you, supervisor walton. Commissioner randolph . Trustee randolph . Im trying to remember all the names. I know, it is just a title. Thank you. I share the concern of my colleague around the high arrest of the black and brown students. I do see that there has been a significant decrease in arrests over the last couple of years, so i was wondering, is it just a policy change, or what made the decrease happened . It is a good trend to see, so i was just wondering if there were other deescalation his or policies that were taking place here. It is a good trend to see. Unfortunately, all of our data doesnt reflect that. So our suspensions and referrals at are increased significantly. Though the arrests are down, which is great, we want to see it trending in that. I would be remiss by not saying that all of our data does not reflect that, and for our Office Discipline Referrals and our suspension data, our africanamerican students are significantly disproportionately represented in suspensions and referrals. Are there any goals to change that . All the time, yes. We have a safe and supported schools policy. Some of you here might have heard of it. Supervisor haney, and, you know, it is pretty extensive in the sense that, you know, we want to definitely we are looking at our implementation and Restorative Practices and how we can strengthen those practices. The culture and climate jean at the school is working with. It does stem for the culture and climate of the school and making sure that the school is a place where everyone has access to a full program. And they are valued, has a sense of selfefficacy and selfworth in that school and feels like they belong and they are part of the school. Our efforts are around making sure that that school is a culture and climate where everyone knows they have the opportunities to succeed, they will succeed, they are treated fairly and respected, and they dont have to resort to making some of these other challenges. It is a peaceful, safe, and supportive culture within that school. Thank you. Commissioner collins . Thank you for the presentation. One of the things that we have been talking about when youre talking about safe and Supportive Schools as we see the data around which students are being arrested or detained or suspended or expelled, and one of the highest rates was for students with weapons or in fights. When we are reading information about, you know, considering expelling students, what continually comes up is sometimes students are bringing weapons to school because they dont feel safe. So one of the things that we havent been collecting a lot of data around is who is actually being harassed and bullied . Were looking at perpetrators of violence or violent acts, but we are not looking at the other side, and what i am hearing in the communities that we have conflict that is either happening, sometimes it is happening in schools, but sometimes it is happening on a bus, were happening in the community, and then it is coming onto the campus, and it doesnt feel like we have a lot. This is more of in terms of the police, i guess what im wondering, i want to address how we are informing school sites about incidents that are happening off campus so they can be prepared because i am hearing that if something is happening in the community, and it isnt addressed off campus, then it comes onto campus, then we have staff that are faced with trying to handle it, you know, it would have been optimal for police or other agencies to get involved offsite. [please stand by]