Million. The opposition spent a fraction of that. Just a tenth. And i think that voters heard that. The measure wasnt as well crafted as perhaps it could have been. It was very easy to attack. And you know, this was something that a lot of the cities, the mayor, a lot of the cities sort of political establishment came out against. But we saw other issues that i think we want to talk about where housing played front and center. Wrooel get to that in a second. Lets talk about the mayors race. Mayor ed lee easily won reelection. He picks up 60 of the vote. But 40 of the voters said no to him. To what extent was that percentage a protest vote against ed lee . I would say it absolutely is. Not only that but we had 10,000 people sit out the mayors race. This is an incumbent who is well known in san francisco. Mayor gavin newsom in 2007, the year he had an fair with the wife of one of his employees who worked for him got 74 of the vote. This is not as much of a mandate as the mayor could have hoped for in the race and it can pose challenges for him. And when you break down by neighborhoods, in a third of the neighborhoods, ed lee received less than 50 of the first place votes and a third in the Mission District where there have been a lot of tenants displaced. Can we see a change in focus or leadership style from the mayor . The mayor made it clear if he were to be elected that homelessness, affordability, housing are at the top of his agenda. He came into office at a time when the economy was down in the dumps and he focused on building up particularly the tech sector. Now there is a backlash against it. But whether or not that leads to a change in style we talked about this before on the show, the mayors chief of staff has been in city hall for 20 years he is really seen by a lot of people who calls a lot of shots. I dont know without a big staff shake up if we see a stylistic change. Lets talk about the district 3 board of supervisors race. Was this a referendum on lee . Perhaps. He knows that district. He represented before. But the lack of support for christensen in china town is troubling for the mayor. It speaks to the affordability questions. And i think it does speak to weakening of the mayors power with the core constituency and it will change things at city hall having peskin back in the chambers. Do you expect more building or butting heads . I think the biggest challenge for the mayor is that peskin is a good politician. This will shift the balance of the board in progressives favor but the issue is style. Peskin will be looking toward next year where a big portion of the board is termed out. But i think hes also going to be looking to really push the mayor in a more leftleaning direction around some of these issues the mayor has pledged to deal with like Affordable Housing. The prop f was one of five housing measures on the ballot, the voters approved an Affordable Housing bond and said no to a moratorium on market Rate Housing Development in the mission. What do these results say about where voters stand . I think they show how difficult of an issue it is. This is a very narrow housing bond because the mayor and other city leaders have a policy and didnt want to increase property taxes. Its not going to solve the housing crisis. The voters saw the moratorium as more symbolic which is in some ways what it was. But it speaks to how hard it is in a city surrounded by water on three sides and we havent kept up with building in the last 30 years. We have to leave it there. Much to talk about and to watch in the year ahead. Marisa lagos, thank you. Thank you. This video of a South CarolinaSchool Resource office slamming a student to the floor has reignited a National Debate about policing in schools. Since the video went viral, the officer involved, a sheriffs deputy, was fired and the Justice Department is conducting a civil rights investigation. According to Law Enforcement officials in South Carolina, the student was arrested on a charge of disturbing the school for refusing to leave the classroom when asked. Thousands of standpoints across the country are arrested or referred to court for a wide range of issues. The center for Public Integrity found black, latino and disabled students are disappropriationly represented. Africanamericans made up 7 of the Public School population but represented 14 of students referred to Law Enforcement. To help us understand more about these disparities and the relationship between police and kids on campus are maaika marshall, a graduate of a local high school and the coordinator at ryse center. And chief jeff godown the head of the Oakland Unified SchoolDistrict Police department. Thank you for joining us. I want to ask you for a concise answer to this. Do schools need Police Officers and chief godown eye start with you. I think they need Police Officers in a measured platform. I know that in oakland we receive numerous calls every day for calls for service from the schools from the principals, the administrative staff. Oakland pd is understaffed and overworked. They cannot handle the radio calls. Someone has to respond to the schools. We dont walk up and down the hallways, we are responding to the schools itself. Linnea nelson how do you feel about that . Too often the childish misbehavior is treated as a crime. The vast majority of police in schools is for minor misconduct for disrupting school or public misconduct rather than a serious threat to personal safety. We believe the much better approach to School Safety is more counsellors and mental hith professionals in the schools. Do you believe that Police Officers are necessary on campus . I dont. I dont think students need to be policed while they are trying to receive an education. Its important to recognize the impact of having another system on the campus a system of safety and a system of education. Speaking of safety, though, let me follow up with that with you maaika. How can School Districts keep students safe without having Police Officers or security guards on campus . I dont think that i said i dont think i meant to say that there is no need for any type of security or safety protocol in the educational system. I also think theres a measure of where Police Officers need to be involved and theres a sense of having a Police Officer on campus that gives an unwelcoming approach to young people coming into the space. They feel like theres a sense that they need to protect themselves because in the school is a safe place there is no need for a Police Officer. If there is a Police Officer on campus that is giving the con notation this might not be a safe space. So it can give the impression to young people that their school is not safe. The presence is one thing but perhaps there is another issue that has to do with training. The student in that video from South Carolina allegedly refused to leave the classroom. How would you have instructed your officers to handle a situation like that . For me, most Police Chiefs are going to take the party line that we dont know what the child did before it happened. We dont know the circumstances behind the video but my statement to you there is nothing good about that video whatsoever. It is just wrong, wrong, wrong. What i would have done at the least we could have had all the kids go outside in the hallway with the teacher and sat down to talk to the student and try to figure out what the problem is. Obviously the student is having issues. Then we could work it out. Disescalate it. Give it five or ten minutes to talk it out. There is no hurry. This is not a life and death situation. And i agree with the ladies to a certain extent. The police should not be walking up and down the school. I worked with the aclu and the Oakland Unified School district. They worked to put in standards and policies that says the School Administrative staff is responsible to discipline the kids. Its not the Police Departments job. I do agree with that. There is other ways they could have handled the student in the chair. We should not be going to the schools and handling administrative issues with these kids. That is not our job. I do agree with both ladies here. Im very glad to hear chief godown say that. Certainly because of the data we analyzed from 2010 to 2012 showed that 72 of the requests for Law Enforcement of Oakland School police were for minor misconduct that didnt rise to a criminal offense. I would agree. I have seen the stats before i got there, they are a lot higher. And we are called by the school for an issue with the child that is 6 or 7 years old and i will refuse to do that. But can you speak to her point, though. You are saying that a lot of the calls you respond to are calls for things that dont rise to the occasion of needing an officer. Is that correct . Thats correct. There are instances where a Mental Health counsellor would be more effective. We do get calls in 2015 that we will push back and have the administrative staff handle that problem. Well respond to an issue which has come to us being something thats greater than it is and when we get there we find out its an administrative disciplinary issue. When we respond its for severe crimes, possession of handguns, fights, assaults, Something Like that. But we have no business handling an disciplinary issue. Let me ask you about a video that surfaced in the oakland School District in january of 2014. Two Security Officers at Fremont High School were caught putting a student in a choke hold. It happened before your time. You came on board later last year and discovered that video. What have you done to prevent another incident like that from happening and what was your reaction to that video . The reaction i had to the video, i was completely shocked it had sat for almost a year and no one had seen it or the school had not been alerted to the problem from the video. It was an out of body experience for me to see that. The two Security Officers. The issue is that the kid was called to the office. He wasnt standing in the doorway because he wanted to be there. He was told by an administrative folk to go and wait in the office for them. I dont know why they didnt get the administrator who wanted to talk to him and defuse the situation. What have you done now to make sure that Something Like that does not happen again . We have 90 school Security Officers that are stationed throughout the school system. Fremont had five or six at the time. They have gone through department of Justice Training and restorive Justice Training but they are held accountable. I have two full time supervisors that oversee the officers on a daytoday basis. They are talking to the School Administrators and there is an accountability now much higher than it was back in 2014 when that occurred. Maaika you talk to young people all the time, what can be done to build better trust between students and Police Officers . At ryse we run a program called justice rising which is a know your Rights Program for young folks to get information and have conversations about different interactions and experiences with Police Officers and recognizing reallife experiences and recognizing reallife experiences and making sure that young people have the opportunity to build relationships with plifs is one of the things that hands down our young people have said they want to understand that the School Resource offices care ant them and understand they are human beings and recognizing that both of these people are humans and treating each other as such. One of the young people said they would want the Police Officer to treat them as if they were their son or daughter. And i will treat you as a respected adult. Recognizing there is a need for young people and Police Officers that they spend eight hours around to have a relationship and build some type of trust and commonality. If they recognize commonalities between each other its easier to respect each other and easier to show compassion for each other. And just to build on this point a little bit more. The School Districts spend millions of dollars a year on school Police Departments. Oakland unified in 2015 spend 7. 2 million on School Police and that includes 115 School Officers and school Security Officers and 20 counsellors in the district. That is one counsellor for every 1850 students. Statics show there is one counsellor for every 945 students in the state. California is last in the nation when it comes to that. How does the lack of counsellors affect the way schools approach discipline . Well, you know, most often police are trained to approach conflict by arresting people and by shutting it down and really escalating that situation. Counsellors and Mental Health professionals are trained to come to it with a supportive approach that lets students know they are welcome in the school and there are adults that want to keep them in the school so they can get the Educational Opportunity they deserve. Chief godown i wanted to ask you about disparities. Students of color are disprofession natalie referred to Law Enforcement. Why do the disparities exist and how do they impact them later in life . Im a believer you cant outarrest yourself out of the problem. Once the kids are introduced to the criminal Justice System its difficult to get out once you go into the system. Its very difficult. Oakland, students of color is the biggest population in the oakland School District. We deal with africanamerican students, hispanic students, asian students. We deal with all kinds of students in that environment. I dont have an answer as to what were going to be able to do to fix the problem. What i ask is that most of the general public do not want the Police Department to paint the students of color with a broad brush and all i ask is that they dont paint the Police Department with that same broad brush. We have good cops but we have problem officers which are committing the conduct we saw earlier. What disparities exist and what impact does that have long term . I agree that discriminatory arrests is a problem in School Districts across california including in oakland. The center for civil rights at ucla has shown that the disparities are real. Students with disabilities are two times more likely to be suspended than their nondisabled peers. Why do they exist . There has been an interesting study from dr. Jason oconofua with his colleagues in stanford did a study of disparities with teachers and what they found was that when teachers are told a scenario of a student who is misbehaving when the student has a stereo typically white name, jake they are less likely to recommend suspension if the student had a stereo typically black name of darnell. And it shows it raises their risks of dropping out and being lost in the cracks. And we have to leave it there. Now in its fourth year, californias drought has killed millions of trees in the serr are nevada mountains. The giant sequoias are starting to show signs of stress. Biologists climbed 50 of these trees to see how they are doing. Gabriela quiros shows us what they found. Its 3 30 in the morning in the parking lot in californias Sequoia National park. Two university of california berkeley researchers walk a half hour into the forest. Hi, tree. Theyll each climb three giant sequoias by sunrise. Anthony ambros is climbing this giant sequoia to find out how it is faring after four years of drought. We are about 240 feet at the top of a giant sequoia tree. These leaves will tell him how stressed out the story is by the lack of water. You have to measure them at the most relaxed time of the day before they lose water to the atmosphere. So we kind of get their baseline, most relaxed state and their most active state in the middle of the day. At noon, his colleague wendy baxter makes her way up another giant sequoia. Giant sequoias trees are special. They have lived in this place for thousands of years. Over the course of their long lives they can grow as tall as a 30story building. There is a beautiful view up here. Even at these great heights they can get water to leaves at their tree tops. There is higher concentrations of water in the soil than in the air. So that gradient is actually pulling the water up through the tree. Inside each of the trees cells water gets pulled up to the top of the tree as if it were being sucked up through a straw. Researchers can determine how much tension the water is under as it travels upward and into each leaf. When we clip it, the water retracts back into the stem kind of like a rubber band. Then researcher ken schwab puts the leaves in a pressure chamber. When we put our stem into the pressure chamber, the amount of pressure it takes to force the water back out is an indication of how much tension it was under. Beginning to see darkening and water. The higher the pressure required to push the water out, the more stressed the tree is. The trees are definitely as stressed as weve ever measured giant sequoia. We have been measured the water status over the last few decades under nondrought conditions and most of the trees seem to be at that level or exceeding it. They require an enormous amount of water more than any other tree that has been documented. But biologist Nathan Stevenson says that little water has been available to the trees. Thats because giant sequoias get most of their water from snow. The last two winters have been the warmest on record. There has been almost no snow on the ground. All this yellow here wasnt there when we rigged it a few weeks ago. In the summer of 2014 stevenson noticed something new. I looked up and saw a mature giant sequoia and its foliage was turning brown, at least half of the foliage had gone brown. No one has ever reported that before. Only a handful of the parks sequoias have perished during the drought. But according to the u. S. Forest service, more than 6 Million Trees of other species in the Sierra NevadaMountain Range have died. Firs, pines, incense cedars and oaks are all dying at a rate weve never seen before even during the 1977 drought in california we didnt see this many trees dying. Trees move water from the soil to the atmosphere which helps create rain and snow. When little water is available, the pull of the dry atmosphere creates so much tension that it breaks the water column. Gas that was present in the water forms bubbles which prevent water from moving up to the tree tops. If bubbles stop water flow in cell after cell, the tree dies. Over time, tree deaths can reduce precipitation and cause the land to dry even more. Giant sequoias are resilient trees and for mow most of them are weathering the drought. A lot of the sequoias are appearing healthy and doing well in the drought but some are showing symptoms and we want to be able to learn more about that and track that stress. Researchers can only climb a fraction of the areas estimated 160,000 giant sequoias so the park has enlisted scientists who can survey more giant sequoias at the same time. The carnegie airborne observatory measures the trees water content. The blue trees are getting the most water. The yellow, orange, and red trees are getting the least. The park has a plan to help the most vulnerable giant sequoias. One strategy which might seem counter intuitive is to burn part of the forest. Because giant sequoias are resistant to fire they stand to gain. There is less competition for the larger trees that remain behind. So the larger trees have more access to water and nutrients and help them get through the drought. And if the symptoms got more severe, the park might consider watering its most famous giant sequoias including the general sherman, billed as the largest tree in the world. The National Park service doesnt currently water any plants, choosing instead to led nature take its course but that could change. Looking to the future if humans continue to warm the climate by adding Greenhouse Gases to it, we might have to consider some unnatural actions. With snow packs disappearing the park may be forced into a more active role, one that could include drip irrigation for the general sherman and other famous trees. And once again that was Gabriela Quiros reporting. The el nino can provide some relief. That is it for now. Thanks for watching. Im thuy vu. For all of kqeds News Coverage go to kqednews. Org. Support for science programming is provided by these captioning sponsored by wnet sreenivasan on this edition for sunday, november 8 the United States plans to escalate airstrikes against isis, in syria, and possibly send more ground troops. Tens of millions of voters turn out for a historic free election in the Southeast Asian nation of myanmar. And in our signature segment, unaccompanied immigrant children from Central America hoping to stay in the u. S. Legally. translated if i were deported, id be terrified to go back. All of my dreams, my plans, would crumble. Sreenivasan next on pbs newshour weekend. Pbs newshour weekend is made possible by lewis b. And Louise Hirschfeld cullman. Bernard and irene schwartz