Parents confront George McKenna, left, as he leaves the meeting on random searches.

In its quest to decide what to do about daily weapons searches, LA Unified is preparing an expansive survey for the entire school community for December to explore whether changes are needed to one of the most rigorous search mandates of any school district in the country.

After an information session last week, acting Superintendent Vivian Ekchian said staff will immediately begin working on the survey.

“I want to ask more than who is in this room,” Ekchian said at the overflow meeting that lasted five hours. “We can explore alternatives when we have a survey that goes to all students, all parents, and the community at large.”

Students, parents, teachers, and administrators are divided over the mandatory daily searches. The school board is also divided.

Two of the seven school board members have had students shot right next to them and said they don’t want to roll back the searches. George McKenna had a student die in his arms at Washington Prep in 1980, which was documented in a TV movie. During last week’s meeting, Richard Vladovic discussed a 1986 shooting at Locke High School.

“It was during a random search and the student reached in and pulled out a .45 and we wrestled a few minutes, I’ll never forget that,” Vladovic said. “Parents all want random searches and I represent them. We may find other junk, but it’s a deterrent.”

McKenna warned against scaling back the policy, saying, “Is this a decision between politics or safety? I don’t want alternatives to safety for publicity or political reasons.”

The issue has created unusual alliances. A group of charter schools has allied with the teachers union, United Teachers Los Angeles, to stop the practice. But the union representing principals and administrators, Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, and the union representing school police overwhelmingly support the policy.

“It undermines all we do and creates a hostile environment,” said Marcus Reynolds, assistant principal at Animo Western Charter Middle School.

Independent charter schools were told by district officials that if they don’t comply with daily mandatory searches, they could lose their charter authorization and their co-locations, where charters are located on the same campuses as district schools.

“We don’t want to decrease safety, but we want to do this in a less demeaning situation,” said Angel Maldonado, president of Asociación de Maestros Unidos, a union that represents some charter teachers.

UTLA’s second vice president, Daniel Barnhart, said at the meeting that most schools in the country do not conduct searches. He said the district should instead focus on restorative justice — a method of solving issues at a school level that reduces suspensions — and the Safe Passages program, which helps secure safe routes for students through their neighborhoods.

A district survey of 504 parents showed that 78 percent say random searches make them feel safe and should continue.

But not all parents agree. “I have three children going to schools in the district and I don’t want my children to constantly feel like they are victims,” Angela James said. Vickie Vaughn of Parents United, a parent activist coalition, argued that the policy only adds to “anxiety and persecution among students, especially immigrants.”

Students protesting the wanding at schools.

The LA Unified policy requires every secondary school do random searches of lockers and backpacks every school day at least once by teachers and administrators. School police are not involved in the daily searches.

The largest school district in the nation, New York, and the third-largest school district, Chicago, do not have mandatory searches and allow individual schools to form their own policies. Those districts give more discretion to each school, LA Unified School Police Chief Steve Zipperman said.

Board president Mónica García was criticized for holding last week’s “information session” in a smaller room at district headquarters downtown rather than in the main auditorium. The 1 p.m. meeting wasn’t broadcast or taped, as are regular board meetings.

UTLA Vice President Cecily Myart-Cruz said, “Look at all the people waiting outside to get into this cramped room, it’s not fair. Students and teachers wanted to come, but it’s an inconvenient time.”

Board members Nick Melvoin and Kelly Gonez seemed open to reviewing changes in the policy.

“What I take away is it’s not about safety, it’s about the best ways to safety,” Melvoin said. “What is it that gets us to feeling more safe?”

Gonez said, “We must validate the experiences of students and teachers and have a culture of trust.”

Garfield High School teacher Erica Huerta insisted, “We must end this policy because it causes psychological damage and treats students as criminals.”

But McKenna added bluntly, “We are not here to be buddies and friends to the students. I’d rather protect our children and maybe embarrass them than have them die.”

• Read more on LAUSD’s random searches and school safety:

Exclusive: More kids will be searched for weapons at LAUSD schools this year

Daily weapons searches: LAUSD to reassess its policy

More weapons found on or near LAUSD campuses last year; rifles and shotguns more than doubled

The 10 violent incidents at LAUSD schools that prompted stricter metal detector monitoring

Student voices on random weapons searches at LAUSD schools — feeling safe, or a waste of time

Exclusive: Loaded gun found at school during random wanding search; charters want practice ended

Calls mount to end mandatory random searches at LA schools

Exclusive: How safe are LA’s schools? New interactive map compares what teachers and students are seeing

Here’s how to use the interactive map on school climate in LA schools

East LA shines in new school climate map. Advocates credit intensive community investment but say there’s more to do.

(Photo by Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

*UPDATED

It took a series of violent crimes on and near school campuses to spur LA Unified’s strict policy requiring every secondary school conduct random daily metal detector searches.

Daily searches have been required for more than six years, but the policy is now being reevaluated as the district called this year for principals to step up the searches.

Before the early 1990s, most crimes involving LA Unified students happened just off campus, such as the 1980 shooting just across the street from Washington High School where a student died in the arms of George McKenna, who is now on the school board. The killing was featured in a TV movie about McKenna starring Denzel Washington.

Off-campus violence just outside LA Unified schools killed five students and wounded 11 between 1991 and 1992. They included a cheerleader killed by gang crossfire just off Paramount High’s campus, three teens injured near Venice High when gang fighting erupted, and a student wounded by gunfire while waiting for a bus outside Westchester High.

School officials at the time had been considering metal detectors at school entrances and random searches but had not instituted them, as they debated how to do it equitably and district-wide.

Then came the first on-campus fatality, at Fairfax High.

Here are the 10 violent incidents that led to the current school policy, as cited by the LA Unified School Police Department last week in a presentation to the school board during a meeting to discuss the daily search requirements.

• Jan. 21, 1993. A student died at Fairfax High when a .357 magnum went off in the backpack of a junior high school student attending classes at the school, who said he was handling the gun inside the backpack when it fired. Demetrius Rice, 16, was killed and another student was injured. It was the first time an LA Unified student had been killed inside a classroom.

The incident prompted LA Unified to start using metal detectors at schools, and a State Assembly bill was passed allocating $1.5 million to buy metal wanding devices for all secondary schools in the state.

• Feb. 22, 1993. Less than three weeks after the Fairfax High incident, a Reseda High football player shot a classmate to death in a busy school corridor.

The district stepped up searches on campuses, purchasing 250 more metal detectors at a cost of $30,000.

• May 26, 1998. A student brought a kitchen knife to school and stabbed and seriously injured another boy during an eighth-grade “Fun Day” event at Walter Reed Middle School.

In the fall of 1998, LA Unified passed a written policy requiring searches at all schools and recommending that those searches be conducted daily.

• June 6, 2006. Another student death at Venice High School. A 17-year-old student was shot and killed after a fistfight spread to a campus parking lot.

• March 23, 2007. A 17-year-old student was stabbed to death by another student in the quad area of Washington Prep High School.

• Sept. 19, 2008. A 12-year-old girl and a 19-year-old former student were injured in a gang-related shooting in a parking lot at Washington Prep High after a football game.

• Jan. 18, 2011. Two students were wounded in an accidental shooting at Gardena High when a gun went off in a backpack. A 17-year-old suspect was arrested an hour later. Friends of the suspect said he had brought the gun to school for his own protection.

By April 2011, the district required all middle and high schools to conduct daily searches. This was the last time changes were made to the district’s policy by a vote of the school board.

• Sept. 30, 2011. A female dean who was also a teacher, along with two students, were stabbed at South East High after an argument broke out between a boy and a girl during lunch.

• Jan. 23, 2015. A 14-year-old was stabbed to death by a 13-year-old while leaving Griffith Middle School.

In October 2015, the policy was revised by the superintendent, allowing small high schools with satellite campuses to be exempt from checking students daily.  

• March 17, 2016. A student was injured at Bridge Street Elementary School when an 11-year-old stabbed him with a pocket knife.

LA Unified is in the process of reviewing the policy on random searches, prompted by a mandate to principals to increase the searches based on an internal report last spring, continued violent incidents at schools locally and nationally, and calls from civil rights organizations to end the policy.

*This article has been updated to correct why the junior high school student was at Fairfax High, and correct the school named in the incident on Sept. 30, 2011.

• Read more on LAUSD’s random searches and school safety:

Exclusive: More kids will be searched for weapons at LAUSD schools this year

Daily weapons searches: LAUSD to reassess its policy

More weapons found on or near LAUSD campuses last year; rifles and shotguns more than doubled

Student voices on random weapons searches at LAUSD schools — feeling safe, or a waste of time

Exclusive: Loaded gun found at school during random wanding search; charters want practice ended

Calls mount to end mandatory random searches at LA schools

Exclusive: How safe are LA’s schools? New interactive map compares what teachers and students are seeing

Here’s how to use the interactive map on school climate in LA schools

East LA shines in new school climate map. Advocates credit intensive community investment but say there’s more to do.

Washington Prep’s Annette Harrison-Owens wands Miracle in a demonstration.

LA Unified’s daily random weapons searches get mixed reviews from the students themselves.

Saisha Smith from Dorsey High says it’s a violation of her civil rights that “wastes valuable teaching time when all they’re doing is taking away my hand sanitizer and cough drops.”

But student school board member Benjamin Holtzman from Hamilton High says, “If a student next to me has a weapon, I want to know. I don’t care if random searches only find less than 2 percent of the weapons on campus — that’s 2 percent that is not there anymore.”

The debate among students about whether to continue random metal detector searches at LA Unified is as diverse as it is among the adults who are considering amending or changing the mandatory policy. Fueled by civil rights groups such as Black Lives Matters, Youth Justice Coalition, and the ACLU, student rights groups under the umbrella of #StudentsNotSuspects have protested the policy as demeaning and frightening for students, while some students consider it important to feel safe at school.

Amir Whitaker and Saisha Smith explain why they disagree with wanding.

Last year, the Division of District Operations surveyed 6,083 students and didn’t find an overwhelming endorsement of the searches. About 47 percent of students agreed that the searches “make me feel safe” while 15 percent disagreed, and the rest were neutral. About 46 percent said they thought random searches should be conducted at their school, while 16 percent disagreed, and 37 percent remained neutral.

The school district held a public information session last week that encouraged all sides to present their arguments about the policy, and with the school board’s emphasis on a “Kids First” agenda, the voice of the students was front and center.

Keanna Byrd, a student from Westchester Enriched Sciences Magnet, told the school board that it’s dangerous to walk to school, so she hides her pepper spray off campus — because she knows it would be confiscated — and then retrieves it to walk home.

“Wanding is necessary to feel safe at school,” said Byrd, who noted that her school gives flash drives as a reward to students who get searched. “I understand it, and I think the process is equitable and random. You have to consider what’s at stake, the lives of kids like me.”

Students protest random searches outside the meeting.

Grace Hamilton from Marshall High was one of the 20 students speaking at the five-hour information session. As a member of Students Deserve, she said she has handed out 4,000 buttons to students against the policy at 27 schools. “The searches are racially charged and fear-based, and there is no evidence that it keeps violence out of our schools, but there is evidence it creates mistrust between students and administrators,” she said.

School board member Kelly Gonez, who discovered in the report that her district had the third-highest number of weapons found on campuses last year, said, “It’s clear that these students aren’t raising the issue because they are inconvenienced by wanding, or they prefer not to go through it, but that it’s impacting learning. It is important that we validate those voices.”

A team demonstrated the search procedure from Washington Prep High, a school so noted for gang violence that a TV movie was made about it starring Denzel Washington as George McKenna, the school’s then-principal who is now on the school board.

Assistant Principal Annette Harrison-Owens, a senior student named Miracle, and the school’s dean, H.E. Causey, showed how they would come into a classroom and pull out every third or every fifth student to search them in an empty room or in the hallway.

Miracle’s purse was opened and searched and then she spread her arms out and was wanded.

Teachers and students gather to debate the wanding issue.

“I value my safety and I don’t think it’s a violation, but I was nervous doing it in front of everyone,” Miracle said. “I think most of my friends think wanding is very beneficial and know you’re not in trouble if you have to be searched. They are very respectful and not rude.”

Causey said the process takes no more than eight minutes and administrators search students of their same gender.

“Students don’t think of it as punitive” and are rewarded with something from the student store, Harrison-Owens said.

At Verdugo Hills High in the east San Fernando Valley, the principal has conducted daily searches for the past 16 years. Verdugo had two incidents of threats of violence in the past — one through social media and one through social circles — and although the threats weren’t stopped by the random searches, the staff said the daily searches allowed students to feel safe in reporting the incidents.

Amir Whitaker, a researcher from the UCLA Civil Rights Project, said that the estimated 30,000 mandatory random searches that he studied at LA Unified between 2013 and 2015 cost 7,000 hours of class time and $710,000 of salaries by administrators and teachers. His study showed that students complained of their lockers being damaged and their personal items thrown on the ground.

“This is just wasted instructional time with no real results,” Whitaker said.

• Read more on LAUSD’s random searches and school safety:

Exclusive: More kids will be searched for weapons at LAUSD schools this year

Daily weapons searches: LAUSD to reassess its policy

More weapons found on or near LAUSD campuses last year; rifles and shotguns more than doubled

The 10 violent incidents at LAUSD schools that prompted stricter metal detector monitoring

Exclusive: Loaded gun found at school during random wanding search; charters want practice ended

Calls mount to end mandatory random searches at LA schools

Exclusive: How safe are LA’s schools? New interactive map compares what teachers and students are seeing

Here’s how to use the interactive map on school climate in LA schools

East LA shines in new school climate map. Advocates credit intensive community investment but say there’s more to do.

Weapons found on or near LA Unified school campuses increased by 2.7 percent last year, to 568. The number of rifles and shotguns more than doubled.

Those numbers for the 2016-17 school year were revealed last Tuesday at a special meeting of the school board to review the district’s policy of mandatory daily random searches with metal detectors at all secondary school campuses.

Principals have been instructed to increase the searches this year, after an internal report showed continuing failures in executing the searches and that schools still lack the proper equipment.

Meanwhile, civil rights groups and a coalition of groups that include the ACLU, charter schools and UTLA, the teachers union, have protested the practice, saying that it hampers education more than keeping students safe.

The data presented by School Police Chief Steve Zipperman showed that the number of rifles and shotguns found increased from three to eight last year, and the number of knives and daggers also increased, from 393 to 403. The number of handguns found decreased from 26 to 23.

Knives and daggers remain popular items found on students, according to Zipperman, who said, “In the past seven years, knives and daggers have averaged around 375 a year.”

Hardly any of the weapons were found through the mandatory searches — only a little more than 1 percent of the total — but Zipperman insisted to the board that the policy remains a deterrent for students.

“It is the same if you have a DUI checkpoint in the area, DUIs will go way down overall,” Zipperman said.

But the number of weapons found in LA Unified has not gone down. Instead, it has risen steadily in the three years of data that were presented, from 546 weapons found in 2014-15, to 553 in 2015-16, to 568 in 2016-17.

• Read more: How safe are LA’s schools? New interactive map compares what teachers and students are seeing

The school board is reviewing the policy on the random searches, which are carried out by teachers and administrators, not school police, but if weapons or drugs are found, then school police, or if necessary local police, may get involved.

“Every school board district has weapons being confiscated,” Zipperman said. “It’s happening all over.”

Board member Nick Melvoin’s District 4 on the west side, the most affluent of the local school districts, had the fewest number of weapons found last year (68), with Scott Schmerelson’s District 3 in the San Fernando Valley as the next fewest (132).

The most weapons found on and near campuses last year were in District 7, which stretches from South Los Angeles to San Pedro and is represented by Richard Vladovic (at 230 weapons), then District 2 in the Downtown and Boyle Heights area represented by Mónica García (172), followed closely by District 6 in the East San Fernando Valley represented by Kelly Gonez (171). George McKenna’s District 1, which is predominantly downtown, had 143 weapons found, and Ref Rodriguez’s District 5 in East Los Angeles had 142 weapons found last school year.

“We do not believe that the 30,000 random searches justify the small percent of weapons actually found during these searches, and we are calling for a stop to them,” Amir Whitaker, a researcher at the UCLA Civil Rights Project, told the board members at the meeting. He conducted his team’s own report about the searches.

The school board is considering possible changes in the search policies, but until then, the daily searches remain in effect.

Rains from a previous storm at an LAUSD school. (Courtesy: LAUSD)

Despite record-breaking rainfall over the past week in Los Angeles, the number of leaks and flooding issues at LA Unified schools is minimal and administrators credit the preparations they did for last year’s rather wimpy El Niño.

 As of Monday morning, there were 2,000 open service calls for issues throughout the district, but only 20 of the district’s 30,000 classrooms had to be relocated because of leaks, said Roger Finstad, director of maintenance and operations. He said that the schools are well prepared for the rains.

 “We can credit our success in handling these issues to the strong prep work we did last year, the roof replacements we were working on last year and awareness to the schools and the site plant managers across the district,” Finstad said Monday.

 So far, the biggest issue occurred Sunday afternoon after a downpour flooded the administration building at Nobel Charter Middle School in Northridge, Finstad said. The quarter-inch of water that flooded the building was being cleaned up Monday.

 A tree branch fell and blocked the school parking lot over the weekend at Widney High School, but the school crews cleared debris by Monday morning, Finstad said.

 “The hard work of the maintenance team and all the preparation is why things are running smoothly through this storm,” said facilities communications spokesperson Elvia Perez Cano.

 The schools also have received emergency supplies including extra flashlights, sandbags and first-aid kits that were distributed last year from the district supply warehouse. The district also last year purchased National Weather Service alert radios for every school, at a cost of $56,000. “I have one sitting right here on my desk,” Finstad said. The district also has roofing projects that were repairing outdated roofs on schools at 23 of their 13,500 structures.

On Monday, the number of service calls hit 160, which was rather light compared to nearly 1,000 that serious storms usually generate, Finstad said.

 “This has been a great drill for us, and with a district this big we always say you can never be too prepared,” Finstad said. “This is a real situation where it shows that the preparation has paid off well for us.”

The report released late Friday afternoon by LA Unified shows how agencies coordinated well during the safety threat, but also revealed a need for updated computer systems and some additional training and protocols.

The report was released one year and a day after an unspecific terrorist threat was made to the district. Some parts of the report were redacted before being released to LA School Report through a public records request.

This was the largest-ever activation of the LAUSD Emergency Operations Center and a significant chance to see how it worked, according to officials.

The After Action Report was written by Los Angeles School Police Chief Steven Zipperman to address administrative and operational strengths and weaknesses, lessons learned and recommendations for best practices for future incidents. The report came from Zipperman and Associate Superintendent Earl Perkins and went to Superintendent Michelle King, who released the document late Friday.

• Read more: Revisit LA School Report’s extensive coverage of the shutdown

Zipperman said in an interview in October just after completing the report that communications was the biggest need for improvement.

“December 15 was a test to show how we can respond and quickly respond to an emergency and get out a message of something to that magnitude,” Zipperman said.

It’s not only how quickly to communicate to city, county, state and federal officials, but to parents as to what is happening and why, Zipperman said. “We learned a lot about that day. There are always ways that we can improve.”

Chief Steven Zipperman and Superintendent Michelle King.

School board member Richard Vladovic said he spoke to Zipperman recently about the report and complimented him about how well-coordinated the day of the school closure turned out. But Vladovic is concerned about next time.

“I’m really worried about communication,” Vladovic said. “I read the report and gave the chief some feedback, and my issue is communication. It’s one thing if school is in session and you have power, you can communicate through cell phones, but what about a major disaster at night? What if the power is out?”

Vladovic said he used pagers when he was a superintendent in West Covina. Although they used them rarely, it was a way to reach people he needed to reach in a reliable way.

Vladovic also said he is concerned that storage containers at schools be checked for proper water and perhaps military MRE (Meals Ready to Eat) in case students need to be on campus for long periods of time.

“The biggest sinners are the parents who will climb fences to get their children out of school, and we need to have an accounting for the kids,” Vladovic said. “We have to account for every youngster, because every one of them is important.”

The report noted that the Mobilization Plan for the district didn’t have contingencies for an entire district shutdown. The communications center became immediately inundated with calls and got overwhelmed.

The initial robo-calls through the Blackboard Connect message to parents and personnel “was not timely, as many recipients reported first hearing of the shutdown from local news sources,” the report said.

Of the calls, there was an 80 percent success rate for contacting the 802,000 parent phones and 83 percent success for the 81,000 employee phones notified. Everyone was asked to update their phone lists soon after the shutdown.

The district has an aging Computer Aided Dispatching and Mobile Data Computer system that was relied on heavily during the shutdown, and it needs to be improved, the report notes.

Despite some great teamwork between the police and local districts, some challenges existed. “Roles appeared unclear to some Local District Superintendents and Administrators of Operations,” the report says. And there was inconsistent email messages, and computers were slow and not able to connect to the Internet.

Among the other “lessons learned,” the report suggested that other regional public safety and emergency management executives be notified “prior to initiating the large-scale school closure. This would allow for the immediate coordinating and sharing real-time information at an executive level so that inter-agency planning, messaging and response would be consistent with operational goals.”

The district didn’t take advantage of the sheriff department’s emergency communications center, and the timeliness of some messages was slow in getting a multilingual message out. For example, some cafeteria workers were already on the job before hearing about the shutdown.

Chief Zipperman and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.

Calls were dropped, networks were slow and computers were stalled using web-based tracking applications. That kept the district from verifying the actual locations of all 1,300 school buses. Desktop computers are 8 years old and outdated, the two-way radios aren’t all strong enough, and some computers crashed.

Already some changes have been made, including trainings and revising some protocols, according to the report. And, in the future, school closure decisions need to be made by 5 a.m., according to the report.

In a joint statement from King and LA Unified School Board President Steve Zimmer released on the anniversary of the shutdown, they praised the efforts of the police department.

“As we think about a difficult day one year ago — when we closed all LA Unified schools for the first time ever due to a threat — we are reminded of the extraordinary effort by the Los Angeles Unified School Police and other law enforcement partners. As they do every day, these dedicated men and women made it their top priority to ensure our students, employees, families and schools were safe.”

The report detailed the incident of the threat of the “violence to unnamed campuses” on Dec. 15, 2015, “by use of explosives and firearms while schools were in session.”

The timeline in the report shows:

10:01 p.m. Dec. 14, 2015. Zimmer received the email threat.

10:17 p.m. Zimmer called Chief Zipperman.

10:28 p.m. Zipperman called LAPD.

10:41 p.m. LAPD called the FBI.

The report noted that the threat as a whole “appeared unlikely,” but portions concerned them that a “lone wolf perpetrator” could be targeting a random school site “particularly 13 days after the terrorist incident in San Bernardino.”

12:05 a.m. Dec. 15. LAPD Major Crimes began a “workup” and threat analysis of the email, contacted the FBI and they met at LAUSD Headquarters two blocks away from the LA Unified Beaudry Avenue headquarters.

2:30 a.m.. The investigator identified an Internet protocol (IP) address overseas. The FBI’s Cyber Threat Unit’s review of the threat “lacked credibility and needed further vetting” and they worked with international counterparts to find out where it came from exactly.

3 a.m. Each LA Unified board member was emailed by Zipperman and told of the threat and what they had learned so far.

4:41 a.m. Zipperman, Zimmer and then-Chief Deputy Superintendent King got on a conference call and it was determined that all the school sites should be searched and a shutdown was the only option.

4:55 a.m. Just-retired Superintendent Ramon Cortines was contacted and briefed and he made the final decision to begin the school closure.

5:09 a.m. The LAUSD Emergency Operations Center was activated, notifying LAPD Police Chief Charlie Beck and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.

6:03 a.m. LA City Emergency Management Department duty officer was notified.

6:05 a.m. LA County Office of Emergency Management duty officer was notified.

6:31 a.m. Local District Superintendents and principals were notified.

6:52 a.m. Blackboard Connect, a system used at the district since 2007 that had successfully sent out more than 400 million calls, was activated to call families and staff. An estimated 1.1 million phone numbers were dialed in both Spanish and English.

9:30 a.m. A joint news conference was held with city officials.

School administrators and plant managers conducted walk-throughs with law enforcement for the entire day and students were sent home.

4:30 p.m. All school sites had been completed with the help of 2,700 city, county and state law enforcement officers from 15 different agencies. Schools were declared safe.

5:30 p.m. A final news conference was held to announce that schools would reopen the next day.

6:10 p.m. The Emergency Operations Center was officially deactivated.

6:30 p.m. The calling system sent messages to parents and employees that schools would reopen.

In their joint statements released by the district’s communications office Thursday, the superintendent and Zimmer also thanked the employees for “sacrifices they made as we worked through a very intense day.”

They said that they are continuing to use the lessons learned to introduce best practices.

“Together, we emerged from the shadows of uncertainty and fear and pushed to become stronger and more aware,” Zimmer and King noted in their joint statement.

LA Unified board President Steve Zimmer at the afternoon news conference on Dec. 15, 2015.

One year ago today, the second-largest school district in the country made a decision to shut down all its schools. At 6:25 a.m. the call went out after LA Unified school board President Steve Zimmer received an email that threatened students and staff with weapons and bombs.

The district was between superintendents. Ramon Cortines had actually left three days earlier, and the school board was in the middle of a nationwide search for his replacement.

Cortines was called back in, and acting Superintendent Michelle King, who a month later would be named to the post, joined him as they stood as calming voices during a chaotic day of news conferences that included city, county and state officials.

The district is expected to release its report today that assesses how the various departments responded to the December event and what can be improved in district rapid response. School Police Chief Steven Zipperman wrote the report, which was compiled for Earl Perkins and his district operations office. It has been turned in to King, who must approve it before it is released. Check back for LA School Report’s analysis of what the district has learned — and has yet to learn.

Here are links to highlights of last year’s coverage.

• JUST IN: LA Unified closed due to ‘serious’ threat to schools. The first reports were of an unspecified “serious threat.”
• Live updates of the LA Unified terror threat school closures. Live Tweets from throughout the day.
• LAUSD acted on threats of violence with explosive devices, rifles, pistols. The mid-morning news conference included school officials, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck.
• A long day across LAUSD as tension and investigators visit schools. Reports from the schools as the day played out.
• High school student killed by truck as LAUSD closed due to threat. A Los Angeles International Charter High School student was struck by a truck in Highland Park after the schools closed.
• LAUSD declares schools safe for opening, but investigation continues. By afternoon, the district declared the schools safe.
• LA officials defend closing of schools even if threat is a hoax. Even before the day was over, officials were being criticized for overreacting to the threat.
• Here’s the entire email that closed down all LAUSD schools. The actual email that Zimmer received wasn’t released until two days later.
• LAUSD returns to as close to normal as possible after one-day scare. The district tried to return to normal as much as possible the next day.
• Point/Counterpoint: Did LAUSD make the right call on closure? There was disagreement among our own staff about whether the district went too far that day.

Tauheedah Shakur said her brother at Crenshaw High has been called Osama bin Laden’s son. “My brother is just a black Muslim who wants to go to school in peace.”

While students in Los Angeles face growing anxiety over the Donald Trump presidency, there’s increasing pressure to end the school district’s random searches that go on every day at middle and high schools.

Momentum is greater than ever to end the mandatory practice at LA Unified after the election of an administration that threatens to deport undocumented students, punish sanctuary communities and continue stop-and-frisk practices.

“Our students are more scared than ever, so now is the time to end these random searches that make them feel more like criminals in this increased climate of fear,” said Vitaly, the only instructor at Central High School Mar Vista Gardens, a continuation school, and who goes by one name. “The district is doing their own form of bullying, even while they are saying that schools are sanctuaries,” he said in an interview Friday.

Vitaly has tried for more than two years to get the district to end the requirement that teachers and other staff members take students out of classrooms at random, “wanding” them with metal detectors to search for weapons or other illegal substances. The ACLU joined his battle in 2014, and the teachers union and LA charter schools called for an end to the searches half a year ago, but now fear of federal policies has heightened among students because of Trump’s rhetoric.

School board President Steve Zimmer, who recently estimated that as many as one-fourth of the 660,000 students at LA Unified are undocumented, said he remains open to a dialogue about changing the practice, but he still wants to keep students safe as the No. 1 priority. Zimmer previously told LA School Report that he conducted random searches as a teacher, and “I’m very open to the conversation about how to do things better.” Board member Monica Ratliff said parents in her district told her that they feel safer because the searches are being conducted regularly.

The momentum to change the practice is heating up. At the last school board meeting, an actor and a politician spoke against the searches, and at a committee meeting last week a dozen students and activists condemned the policy. Meanwhile, a petition started at the beginning of the school year has gathered more than 1,600 signatures, and students started a Twitter campaign: #StudentsNotSuspects.

“The district is seeing how frightened the students are right now, they need to stop contributing to that fear,”  Vitaly said.

The practice of randomly selecting students every day and “wanding” them with metal detectors has been a mandatory requirement at every school with sixth- to 12th-graders since the school board passed the idea in 2005. It is also done at younger grade levels as needed. The policy requires that the schools perform the searches every day but doesn’t specify who should do it. Some schools have administrators, deans, safety personnel, school police or teachers do it regularly or on a rotating basis.

The practice originally started after gunfire killed a student by accident in 1993, six years before the Columbine school massacre.

In the district’s most recent survey, more than 800 weapons were found on campuses in the 2014-15 school year. But weapons are mostly found through more traditional means such as students turning in other students, rather than through the random searches, Vitaly noted.

“Also, the searches are ineffective according to multiple studies and a lot of recent federal data,” Vitaly said. “LAUSD is only among 4 percent of the districts in the country that still do this.”

Charter schools in LA flat-out refuse to do it. Also, the teachers union, UTLA, asked that the practice be stopped because in many cases teachers are involved in the searches and it creates friction in the educational environment.

“I do not feel comfortable going to school because while in class, school police and school staff security can randomly search us,” said Daniel Garcia, a junior at Woodrow Wilson High School also involved with the student activist group Brothers, Sons, Selves. “It shows how I’m being perceived by teachers, staff and school police. They see me as a suspect.”

Actor Lucas Neff speaks out against random searches.

Garcia was one of the speakers who gave emotional public comments at the  Successful School Climate: Progressive Discipline and Safety Committee meeting last Tuesday. The students, teachers and activists spoke about how they feel threatened by the upcoming Trump administration and how the school district’s wanding policy makes things worse.

“We have a racist, Islamophobic, homophobic president-elect and as a schoolwide issue, that is very detrimental,” said Tauheedah Shakur, of the Youth Justice Coalition, said Tuesday to applause in the board room. Her younger brother currently attends Crenshaw High School, where she graduated. “Since the election, my little brother is called a terrorist and is told he’s Osama bin Laden’s son and told to go back to his country. My brother is just a black Muslim who wants to go to school in peace.”

At the last school board meeting in November, actor Lucas Neff spoke out against the random school searches after hearing about the policy from Vitaly.

“This policy agitates tensions in the school environment and when administrators are not available, teachers themselves are asked to perform these ridiculous searches in the classroom,” Neff said. “Is there anything more damaging to a teacher-student relationship? It’s disruptive. This is scary.”

While fielding autographs in the lobby of the school board auditorium from students who recognized him from the Fox sitcom “Raising Hope,” Neff explained how shocked he was to find out about the mandatory practice at LA Unified schools. He said he is an activist who has participated in civil rights marches and felt like he needed to speak up because it is time to nurture minority students, not alienate them more.

“It is frightening because those being searched are 12 times more likely to be minorities, and there are many studies that show the random searches are totally ineffective,” Neff said. “They can just decide to stop it.”

Neff was inspired by Vitaly, who teaches about 20 students with a part-time teaching assistant at a small school in Culver City. Ranging from 15 to 20 years old, his students are often there for credit recovery courses after they have been kicked out of other schools. Some are on probation, others have ankle bracelets so police can monitor where they are.

Vitaly was pushed by the district in 2012 to do the random searches, but he protested and began fighting the practice that the school board approved.

“It is ironic that in this climate of fear when the district is trying to emphasize how safe the schools are, they continue a policy of bullying by doing these degrading and dehumanizing random searches,” said Vitaly, who has taught at the district for more than 20 years. Vitaly said it takes a lot to gain the trust of his students and to get them to graduate and go on to college. “These random searches make matters worse. We are creating the violence with this policy.”

Vitaly is known in the district for building trust with students and repairing conflicts as students struggle with dropping out of school and credit recovery.

Jessica Salans, running for LA City Council, spoke at the school board meeting against the searches.

Jessica Salans was another speaker at the last board meeting and is running for the Los Angeles City Council District 13 that covers Silver Lake, Los Feliz and parts of Hollywood. She called for an immediate end to the wanding.

“There are racists coming into the administration, and we need to protect our students who are the most vulnerable,” Salans said. “I’m not sure why there is this policy that is criminalizing students and making them feel subjected to these searches. I am shocked and disturbed about the situation.”

LA Unified Police Chief Steven Zipperman sits on the Successful School Climate Safety committee, and last Tuesday at the meeting he gave his first public statement since the presidential election. He said, “Right now when there’s a lot of angst and anxiety, it’s important to let you know that the school police department will be there as we’ve always been there to help our students be safe, relieve that anxiety, and you need to have a clear understanding that we’re not changing the way we’ve done business as it pertains to issues that may involve some thought process and procedural things that may happen nationally. We will continue to support all our students. We do not get involved in anything that involves the arm of the federal government as it pertains to INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) and we do not get involved with INS roundups or INS enforcement and we will remain that way.”

In a previous interview, Zipperman clarified that the searches were mandated by the school board, not the police department, and are generally not conducted by police. The chief said he has not seen an abundance of incidents at the school district yet, but he quelled the fears of the students at the committee meeting, adding, “It is our obligation, no matter what a person’s race, religion, national origins, ethnicity, sexual orientation or immigration status, we will ensure that every one of you are equally treated and we will ensure that you will remain safe and you will not be involved in anything that is hate-related or hate-motivated.”

Attorney Ruth Cusick with Public Counsel, a pro bono law firm, who also sits on the safety committee said she was concerned about the students. “Hearing from young people today, I see we need to do a full analysis on how to decriminalize students,” Cusick said. “So much of this starts with parent leadership.”

Safety committee chairperson and board member Mónica García said the school board will continue to look at data and react accordingly. She encouraged the students to continue to speak out and applauded their activism.

“The entire country shook when Trump was elected,” said Dana, a sophomore from Roosevelt High School who didn’t give her last name and is involved with the activist group Fight for the Soul of the Cities. “Some students are getting randomly searched, interrogated, humiliated and demeaned. There is already existing trauma with police and students of Boyle Heights.”

She added. “A Trump presidency is a scary proposition, and so is a school district that wants police over educational needs.”

More: This ACLU video is included in the petition to stop random searches in LA Unified.

(Courtesy YouthTruth)

By Hannah Bartlebaugh

In the days following the election of Donald Trump, there have been incidents across the country of increased harassment and bullying that have made students feel unsafe and unwanted in their public schools. As we move into the era of a Trump presidency, it’s more important now than ever to address bullying.

President-elect Trump and his staff need to respond and tell the country that all students should feel safe and respected. If Trump truly believes that it is time to “come together as one united people,” it is imperative that he take the lead with a comprehensive initiative to acknowledge and address the wave of bullying and intolerance that ripples across the country.

In the final weeks of her campaign, Hillary Clinton articulated an imperfect, but solid, framework to address bullying through her “Better Than Bullying” initiative. Trump should take this plan and improve on it to temper the harsh rhetoric that has seeped into our collective culture over the past election cycle. What the Better Than Bullying initiative lacked, and what should be a focus in future plans, is something fundamentally important: the voices of students.

Too many school leaders and education officials are flying blind when it comes to bullying. Because bullied students are often scared to come forward, bullying is undetected or under-reported. Students come to school in fear, or skip school out of fear, and teachers and school leaders don’t even know why. While there has been a rush of stories across media outlets about students’ response to Trump’s election, it’s important to think about methods to understand the experiences of all students, not just those who feel comfortable coming forward. It’s only through candid, school-wide and confidential reporting mechanisms — ones that students trust to keep their identities hidden — that we can get the real data to school leaders. And it’s only with that data that educators can understand the nature of the issue and take the necessary action to address it.

YouthTruth, the nonprofit where I work, partners with schools across the country to give students a voice, and we recently released findings about kids’ experiences of bullying. Our data found that one in four students in K-12 education is bullied, and that most bullying still happens in person, rather than online. School leaders need reliable data to target resources and gauge progress, and that has to come from student surveys that are truly confidential. That’s the only way to get the real scoop on what’s going on in schools.

Clinton’s Better Than Bullying plan laid the groundwork for giving states flexibility to focus resources according to need, and that’s a positive start that should be incorporated into future policy initiatives. Understanding student experiences on a local level is key to the success of any large-scale anti-bullying initiatives. Students across different demographics and campuses can have widely varying experiences — our data found that school-based bullying rates can range from a low of 12 percent to a high of nearly 60 percent — which will require good data and flexibility to meet local needs.

We also found that students’ appearance is most likely to be cited as the reason for being bullied. Forty-four percent of students reported this, followed by 16 percent citing race or skin color, and 14 percent citing that others thought they were gay. Education officials need good data from the students themselves about where bullying is most pervasive and why it’s happening. In the words of one middle school student, “I would love it if this school could just stop the bullying. The teachers don’t see it, but us kids do.”

Without being informed by the lived reality of those experiencing bullying in schools, how can policymakers and school leaders most effectively create and allocate resources?

Now, more than ever, we must ensure that students feel safe and respected in their schools and communities. To do so, we need a deliberate effort toward anti-bullying initiatives from the top that incorporate the voices and perspectives of those who are most affected — the students themselves. ­­

Hannah Bartlebaugh is the marketing and external relations coordinator for YouthTruth Student Survey. Follow her on Twitter @Youth_Truth.

Students gather in East LA’s Mariachi Plaza on Monday morning before heading to City Hall. (Photo courtesy @CentroCSO on Twitter)

*UPDATED

Students in East Los Angeles on Monday morning walked out of classes from at least five high schools to protest in the wake of Donald Trump‘s election as president.

Walkouts at school campuses began last week following Trump’s victory on Tuesday.

Students at Garfield, Mendez, Roosevelt, Wilson and Lincoln high school walked out of class Monday. Hundreds converged in East LA’s Mariachi Plaza and then marched over the First Street bridge to the steps of City Hall, about a mile and a half away.

Photos were posted to social media accounts using the hashtag #eastsiderising. A poster that appeared to organize the walkouts posted on Twitter by a Latino/Chicano student organization at Roosevelt High School called the protest a “Unitywalk” and stated, “This is not a protest against Trump!” However, students participating in the protest were Tweeting using the hashtag #notmypresident.

In a televised statement, LA Unified officials encouraged students to stay in class and cooperate with school officials to plan protests on campus. At a news conference last Thursday officials warned that students would face discipline if they left school during classes.

Los Angeles police estimated that the crowd was “a few hundred” total, although organizers estimated as many as 3,000 students and parents participated.

An LA Unified district spokeswoman said there was no indication of a significant drop in attendance Monday throughout the district. A robocall recorded by Superintendent Michelle King called for calm and promised “safety for all children.”

“This election is providing a lesson in democracy,” said King at the news conference. “These and other lessons take place every day in our classrooms, which is why it is essential for our students to return to school.”

Los Angeles school Police Chief Steve Zipperman said, “We are working hand in hand with our law enforcement partners with these post-election activities. We want students to remain within the law and stay on campus with the resources and supports.”

Two board members joined King and Zipperman at the news conference. LA Police Chief Charlie Beck also attended.

“We have a commitment with all our students to achieve their dreams through their education,” said LA Unified school board President Steve Zimmer.

“Our students are our leaders and they deserve their voices to be heard,” said board member Mónica García in Spanish. “They need to be listened to.”

United Teachers Los Angeles issued a statement that included, “In this uncertain time, in which youth and communities across Los Angeles and the country are fighting back against the politics of fear, racism and misogyny, UTLA re-affirms its commitment to building the movement for educational and racial justice both in our classrooms and in our communities.”

The students that made the march were bused back to their respective schools after the rally.

Students have walked out of classes nationwide in the wake of the election.

Trump’s victory has hit Los Angeles students particularly hard because of the president-elect’s statements on illegal immigration. During an interview on 60 Minutes that aired Sunday night, Trump said the deportation of 2 million to 3 million people who are in the country illegally is a top priority of his administration.

He reiterated his campaign pledge to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

About 74 percent of LAUSD students are Latino, and an estimated 10 percent of LA’s population is undocumented.

Thousands of students gathered to protest #Trump and for their parents #EastSideRisingpic.twitter.com/pjeUdVn24P

— Sol Márquez (@elmaryelsol) November 14, 2016

DON’T FORGET! WALKOUT TOMORROW AT 9:50 #eastsiderising pic.twitter.com/UyGvRgTf36

— MEChA de Roosevelt (@MEChARHS) November 14, 2016

Students from #WilsonHS and #Semillas #walkout #StudentProtest #EastSideRising pic.twitter.com/zoWBT184Nu

— Mando V. (@AVJ16) November 14, 2016

#EastSideRising the students are amazing #Aztlán #BoyleHeights pic.twitter.com/OfaheFQQt1

— Centro CSO (@CentroCSO) November 14, 2016

L.A. Unified is taking all steps to ensure student & staff safety during post-election activities. Visit https://t.co/AZDfmuaMmu for info.

— LAUSD (@LASchools) November 14, 2016

They’re crossing the street to continue the Walk #EastSideRising pic.twitter.com/e0EL1LpeCx

— Catherine Clark (@catmclark) November 14, 2016

LA School Report reporters Mike Szymanski and Esmeralda Fabián Romero contributed to this report.

* Updated police estimates on the crowd and other email Tweets.

Coco Morimoto using Second Step, an SEL program, at Beachy Elementary. (Courtesy: LAUSD)

A yearlong revival of social-emotional learning at 109 LA Unified schools is in danger of being shut down because the district doesn’t have money earmarked to continue the programs, district officials confirmed.

Concerns about losing this fundamental tool in learning led LA Unified’s Commission on Human Relations, Diversity and Educational Equity to vote Thursday evening to support social-emotional learning and expand it to every school in the district. They expect to send their recommendation to the school board at the December meeting.

“I strongly endorse social-emotional learning as an essential foundation for nurturing safe and affirming schools, and for student success and academic achievement,” said Allan Kakassy, a commission member who introduced the resolution. “Furthermore, there’s evidence indicating SEL can impact disproportionality in special education, and, also, reduction of the achievement gap.”

Lori Vollandt, coordinator of the Health Education programs.

The schools most affected are on the CORE Waiver (California Office of Reform Education) list, which was established by the state to allow LA Unified to take a “more holistic approach to school improvement” at underperforming schools. And there’s a list of 60 more schools that are requesting similar social-emotional services next year, said Lori Vollandt, coordinator of the district’s Health Education Programs Unit in charge of the district’s SEL programs.

“There is a lack of funding identified for these programs to continue next year,” Vollandt said. “There is no district-wide plan at this time. The funding could go away. It’s gone away before.”

For the past year, the district used $3.5 million in funding for CORE schools to hire half a dozen staff members to train teachers in SEL programs at the 109 schools. At schools that use SEL programs, staff report improvements in attendance and a downturn in suspensions. Higher test scores are expected to follow.

But LA Unified continues to face a looming financial crisis due in part to declining enrollment and pension and benefits commitments that could lead to an estimated $573 million deficit by 2018-19. While some departments are being asked to show what their budgets would look like with a 30 percent reduction, some school advocates say spending on SEL is worth the expense.

Using SEL to enhance classroom instruction is part of a growing national trend. The superintendent and school board members have talked about the benefits in public meetings, and the district provided this statement: “SEL is supported across the LAUSD through a broad effort that encompasses multiple district divisions. The Division of Instruction is in the process of identifying available funds to support all district schools with this work in the future.”

Last week’s passage of Prop. 55 could help boost SEL funding, but nothing will be finalized until the budget is put together in May. That is why it’s important to let the school board members know how important it is for the classroom and prioritize it early, Kakassy said.

For two years, two pilot schools using a program called Second Step Social Emotional Learning have developed a track record of  fewer campus conflicts and a decrease in suspension rates. Florence Griffith Joyner Elementary School Principal Akida Kissane-Long said after a year of using the program, school suspensions dropped from 267 to 14, which she attributed directly to the program.

“I know that the district has a lot of things that are required of the school and of teachers and this is just one more thing,” said Kissane-Long in a video about their SEL successes. “But please know that you’re investing in something that has got a very far-reaching impact by creating an atmosphere where children can be safe, where children can self-regulate, where teachers can feel like they can provide children with tools that they need to be productive and healthy, and have children focus on the right thing which is learning.”

At the other pilot school, Beachy Elementary School in Arleta, second-grade teacher Coco Morimoto put off using the SEL program but was finally convinced by her principal to try it. “As soon as I started doing the lessons, I saw a huge change in my students,” Morimoto said.

The SEL programs help model good citizenship and train students to make choices that would avoid risky behaviors such as angry outbursts, drug use, violence, bullying and dropping out of school, Vollandt said. The training includes teaching instructors how to deal with emotional situations and involves class instruction, student engagement and parent involvement. It is particularly timely with the volatility of the results of the presidential election and student fears, Vollandt noted.

“These are precautionary programs that address the whole child and how they should deal with what is going on in the world around them,” Vollandt said. “It helps teach the children how to get along with people and control their emotions and thoughts.”

The programs have been voluntary for district schools and are initiated by the principals. The demand is higher, though, as principals share their successes with each other, Vollandt said.

“In some places, this use of social-emotional learning is very strong, and in some places it is nonexistent,” Vollandt said. “Outside of the schools that now have it, it is very spotty in the district.”

Susan Ward Roncalli

For the past 25 years, LA Unified has been at the forefront of introducing social-emotional learning into the classroom, using different names and strategies for the programs. For example, in 2002 one successful program called IMPACT dealt with students who had substance abuse problems. School board President Steve Zimmer first worked with Vollandt in the IMPACT program when he was a district employee at Marshall High School. Zimmer, Superintendent Michelle King and Chief Academic Officer Frances Gipson have all voiced their support for SEL programs at past school board meetings.

The district has focused on implementing restorative justice, which is under the SEL umbrella, but that program “does not train teachers how to  appropriately refer kids,” Vollandt explained.  “Teachers have to be trained to know how to refer and support someone who has been sexually assaulted and is living in an alcoholic family and they need to do no harm,” Vollandt said. “The funding for those programs all went away, and it may go away again unless there is a commitment by the district.”

Most of the funding evaporated six years ago and Vollandt said it would take about $13 million to restore SEL programs at every school in the district.

“This is early learning that we need to teach from pre-K,” Vollandt said. “Restorative justice is intervention. This is prevention, and at the moment there is zero funding to continue the programs in health education.”

Some members of the district’s Human Relations Commission went to see SEL at work in the classroom over the past two weeks before approving their recommendation to the school board. Also, board member Scott Schmerelson went to Limerick Avenue Elementary School in Winnetka and saw teachers in action, while board member Ref Rodriguez passed a resolution emphasizing the SEL lessons of Character Day, which teaches children about people with positive character traits.

“The social-emotional learning that I experienced at Limerick Elementary School was amazing,” Schmerelson said about his school visit. “I was participating in a fifth-grade ‘community building circle’ and witnessing another circle in a kindergarten class where young people had the opportunity to express their feelings and emotions in an open and receptive environment. It was the kind of whole child development and growth that will benefit our students, families and communities.”

Corinne Ho, who represents Schmerelson’s office on the Human Relations Commission, said she witnessed firsthand the program and sees the importance of it for the district.

Character Day, one of the social-emotional learning events this year.

Six years ago, the district had a budget of $16 million for social-emotional learning programs throughout the district, but that was cut. Last June, the state’s CORE waiver dollars allowed Vollandt to expand the programs again, but that was only for one year.

Susan Ward Roncalli, a doctoral candidate and teacher for 30 years at LA Unified, was hired to help with SEL training for teachers. She said that in the past she had witnessed firsthand the benefits for teachers and students at Eagle Rock High School where she taught English.

“Social-emotional learning is a big umbrella and our work is about prevention,” said Roncalli, who noted there were 22 support groups in her school alone during the height of the SEL programs. The programs helped students with substance problems, parent abuse issues, reducing suspensions, children of alcoholics, teen parenting, foster youth, grief counseling, sexual identity issues and more. The programs also helped train teachers how to handle issues. “Our school was not in a rough neighborhood like in some other areas of the district, but we still needed these kinds of support resources. There still has to be an infrastructure set up in the schools, and that will support learning.”

For example, when a district-wide project asked for all 7th-graders to write short biographies of their lives and their neighborhoods, Roncalli knew that some of the teachers were ill-prepared to deal with the serious issues that would crop up in the student papers. Stories of abuse, drugs and emotional issues kept school counselors busy for weeks after the assignment. “Teachers need to be able to understand how to deal with these situations,” Roncalli said.

Vollandt added, “The district always has good intentions, but that was an example where it wasn’t fully thought out, because teachers were unable to know how to handle the issues that came up with their students.”

What is missing to continue the SEL programs is a constant stream of funding, and schools individually cannot do it on their own unless they get grants. It’s also tough for a large school district with more than 1,000 school sites to find funding for such a large district. They were able in the past to get piecemeal funding from the Every School Achieves Act, LCFF funding,  Discipline Foundation Policy, Safe School Plan and the state’s Wellness Policy among others. They are fully aware of the impending budget deficit predicted for next year, but Vollandt said the overall cost is a small price to pay for longterm investments in student learning.

“We are building the bedrock for learning,” Vollandt said. “Empathy is the bedrock of all social-emotional learning. This district was amazingly progressive and at the forefront of introducing programs into the curriculum, and then suddenly the funding went away.”

Once a curriculum, such as Second Step, is in place, it may only cost the salary of one employee dedicated to training others for the program at each school site to maintain it, Vollandt said. The Second Step program is a complete kit set up for each classroom and teaches children how to control their emotions with more complex relationships.

“These are dollars that are very well spent and investments for the future,” Vollandt said. “There wouldn’t be a need for restorative justice if we had SEL programs in every school.”

One of the best partners for SEL is the after-school program Beyond the Bell which uses SEL on the playground and in their homework study time. Beyond the Bell staff are trained to get children to calm down if they are anxious or ready to angrily confront someone. Vollandt said, “The young teachers suck this up and they have the scope and infrastructure to push this out.”

If a charter school wants advice and help with certain programs, Vollandt said she will advise and offer materials, but depending on the program, her staff cannot go to a charter site with the risk of violating federal funding agreements.

“I would love to send charter teachers over for professional development because kids are kids and they are all our kids,” Vollandt said. “I am hamstrung by Title 1 restrictions, however.”

Vollandt said recent national studies show how important SEL skills are in early education, and how using them can increase test scores by 11 percentage points. A study by the  Economic Policy Institute analyzed more than 200 social-emotional interventions throughout the country that targeted children from kindergarten through high school. It showed increases in cognitive skills, as well as “productivity and collegiality at work, positive health indicators and civic participation.”

In October, the American Institutes for Research found that when districts support SEL even with modest use of the programs, the discipline and grades improved if there is a district-wide implementation. The AIR is in its fifth year of “evaluating a first-ever initiative to promote district-wide integration of SEL into the core activities of large urban districts.” That kind of attitude is ripe for LA Unified, Vollandt said.

The study involved school districts in Anchorage, Austin, Cleveland, Chicago, Nashville, Oakland, Sacramento and Washoe County, Nevada. They showed consistent gains in school climate, and four of six districts showed improvements in third-graders’ social and emotional competence.

At the moment, to get all the schools into the SEL training, it would cost an estimated $13 million, Vollandt said. The principals have to buy in to the program, the teachers must collaborate, it is all in line with Common Core standards, but most importantly, the district has to emphasize SEL as a priority, she added.

“It is well worth the investment, and will be much better for education overall.”

LAUSD school board President Steve Zimmer at a news conference Thursday.

*UPDATED

Following two nights of protests as well as student walkouts in Los Angeles and around California in the wake of Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election, LA Unified school board President Steve Zimmer joined other leaders in calling for unity Thursday and told students their schools were safe.

“We, like the LAPD, are not cooperating and will not cooperate with immigration services who might want to interview or work with students who are at a school site,” he said at a news conference at City Hall. “Your schools are safe. Your schools are secure. We need you to go to school. If you are concerned and you are afraid, please tell someone.”

An LAUSD spokeswoman said overall attendance is not down in the wake of the election, and there had been “no serious incidents of bullying.” Around 2:30 p.m. one parent reported about 50 to 70 students marching out of Hollywood High School, protesting and stopping traffic at Hollywood Avenue and Sunset Boulevard.

Zimmer said he understood that students want to demonstrate their First Amendment rights through protests, but he asked that they cooperate with school leaders to organize demonstrations. He said if students choose to take to the streets, school leaders will work to keep students safe.

“We also say to you that the best way to repudiate the hate that was directed at you during this campaign is to also march towards that graduation stage and to march towards your rightful place in the university system of this state,” he said.

• Today: Social media erupts with disturbing accounts of Trump-inspired bullying

• Read more: Dealing with frightened kids the day after the election: How one school got through the day

Zimmer encouraged parents to talk to their children about their fears. He said he and Superintendent Michelle King spent the day yesterday in schools talking to students.

He also spoke directly to the president-elect.

“Sir, the words that you used and the rhetoric that was employed during this campaign has scared our children, as a father, I want you to know as a father that you have scared children in our community.”

About 74 percent of LAUSD students are Latino, and an estimated 10 percent of LA’s population is undocumented.

Zimmer told Trump one way he could reassure children is to tell those who qualify for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals that they are safe and their status is secure.

Zimmer said that students’ concerns reminded him of 1994 when Californians passed Prop. 187 that initially prohibited undocumented residents from using non-emergency tax-supported services like public education, but the law was found unconstitutional.

Almost 100 Montclair HS walked 4 miles to Chaffey HS in protest. #notmypresident pic.twitter.com/E0vT7SstXC

— Liset Márquez (@JournaLiset) November 10, 2016

In February, the school board declared that LA Unified schools were “safe zones,” meaning  law enforcement agents looking to deport those without documentation are not allowed into any of its 1,274 schools without a review process.

Zimmer was joined by LA County Supervisor Hilda Solis, LA City Councilman Gil Cedillo, members of CHIRLA, LAPD officials and others at the morning news conference.

Zimmer also attended an afternoon news conference with LA Mayor Eric Garcetti.

Garcetti praised young people for demonstrating their First Amendment rights. He called the protests “overwhelmingly lawful,” saying “99 percent” were peaceful.

The LA Times reported 28 people were arrested overnight when hundreds of protestors entered the 101 Freeway on foot in downtown Los Angeles. Photos appeared on social media of buildings and vehicles tagged with anti-Trump sentiments.

Zimmer said the students who walked out of classes will face some disciplinary action because there are consequences whenever a student has an unexcused absence.

“They will not be devastating or monumental to anyone’s graduation trajectory, but certainly we expect that’s what will happen in schools,” he said.

He said he and King are less worried about disciplining students for walking out and more concerned about keeping students safe. He said he encourages students to own up to the consequences if they feel strongly about taking action.

This article has been updated to add the mayor’s news conference and Hollywood High protest.

Sylmar High students Dior Parks, left, Paola Vazquez and Kimberly Peralta talk about their fears during their 12th-grade government class.

When Principal James Lee arrived at school Wednesday morning to find a sea of anxious faces, he knew he had to do something.

Donald Trump was now the president-elect, and Lee recalled how his students had reacted with fear to some of the rhetoric during the presidential campaign about immigration, deportation and “the Wall.”

Sylmar Charter High School in the north San Fernando Valley has a student body that is 94 percent Latino, 81 percent socio-economically disadvantaged and 25 percent English learners. So Lee quickly sent out a memo to all the teachers. At 9 a.m., he announced over the intercom that teachers should read it and pay attention.

In the memo, titled “Election Results,” Lee wrote, “We may have many students who show signs of anxiety particularly around the issue of immigration. If you see that students are seriously distressed, to the point that they are impaired, please refer to them to the counselors.”

Lee suggested the teachers hold a check-in circle but not start a debate. He suggested history teachers begin conversations on how government works, the next steps and the Supreme Court and show students how “their voices should continue to shape the decisions that our government makes.”

Ana Gascon, who voted in her first election, said she is worried about her family.

In one 12th-grade government class, students ranked their own anxiety levels. The average was 8 on a scale of 1 to 10. Across campus at an English-language learners class, the anxiety levels were off the charts, with some students calling out numbers like 11 or 12.

A special education student who was headed to class ran up to the principal and high-fived him saying, “I’m not worried, I am for Trump. I am an American.” Another student in the front office wondered aloud if President Obama would have to leave the White House that day.

“This week we are looking for students who may have certain levels of anxiety,” Lee said. They may be crying, alienated or acting out. Lee had five counselors on alert all day to deal with his 1,700 students.

Even at his own home, Lee’s 10-year-old son, Nathan, watched some of the election returns along with his 13-year-old and 9-year-old siblings. Nathan expressed some concern about a war starting. “He was concerned about Trump starting a war with Syria, and he couldn’t sleep,” Lee said. “I was surprised he was paying that much attention.”

Francisco Navarro supports Trump.

LA Unified School Board President Steve Zimmer knew about the potential anxiety across the school district and said in a statement, “We know there may be feelings of fear and anxiety, especially within our most vulnerable communities. With emotions running high, our schools will continue to be the anchors of our neighborhoods. We ask our teachers and school leaders to continue their amazing work of listening to our students and striving together to assure that public education is the great civil rights engine of democracy.”

Zimmer noted that there are support teams to help every school, and added, “The work with our families to fulfill the American Dream continues today.”

In Laura Tracy’s 12th-grade government class at Sylmar High, she put the students in a circle to pass around a talking stick and check in on their concerns. She wrote a quote from President Harry Truman on the board and played some of the news reports of the election coverage.

“Overnight the students texted me,” Tracy said. She showed one message on her phone reading, “Ms. Tracy, are we going to talk about this tomorrow in class? Everyone is pissed.”

Government teacher Laura Tracy, center, listens to her students’ concerns.

One student talked about how he helped at a polling booth. Another student, Ana Gascon, got to vote for the first time, but she was worried after hearing the results.

“I voted for Hillary Clinton, but I continue to be worried for my family,” said Gascon, 18, whose father is in the hospital and whose mother is in Mexico. “I talked to my mother on the phone this morning and she knows that I get a little nervous about things and she told me to calm down, don’t get so excited and to think positive. I am worried for my dad though.”

Francisco Navarro, 17, said he doesn’t agree with some of Trump’s statements, but he is a Trump supporter. “I’m pretty happy that he won, I don’t think it will be as bad as everyone thinks,” he said.

“Look, when Obama became president, everybody was so afraid of what he was going to do and it turned out alright,” Francisco said. “I don’t agree with what he said about all the people coming over are rapists and murderers because we know that’s not true. But when I looked at all the things that were being said, I felt like I came down on the side of the Republicans.”

African-American student Dior Parks said from across the room, “Look, Cisco, we are friends, and I don’t understand how you can support a man like that with all the disrespectful things he has said about us,” she said, pointing to Trump’s picture on an overhead screen. “I’m not able to handle that yet as our president.”

Next to her, her friend Paola Vazquez buried her head on her desk and said, “He has been very mean, and it makes me very worried.”

English Learner teacher Maritza Hernandez with Monica Lemus, front, Mario Guzman and Jose Lopez, right.

Next to her, Kimberly Peralta added, “It is going to be hard for the next four years, maybe even more.”

Stephanie Tovar said that the results of the election and the ensuing anxiety all make her want to get involved in politics. “I want to be able to vote, and I want to help make these decisions. I know that all the people who supported Trump are not all racists, but this election makes me excited about voting.”

Lourdes Sanchez added, “Young people should be more involved in the process and they should appeal to youth more. This is our future. But I do have some concerns about the future now.”

Across campus in Maritza Hernandez’s English Learner Development class, the 14- to 18-year-olds in the class all said they had talked to their families about the election the night before and in the morning before they came to school. They all also were aware of being able to go to counselors to discuss their anxieties, but most of them said they would rather talk to their teacher first.

“I am worried, but we need to see what he really does,” said Monica Lemus, wearing a UCLA shirt, as Wednesdays are “College Awareness Day” at the school. Lemus hopes to attend UCLA someday, but she isn’t sure Trump will help her toward her goal. “I don’t know if I trust what he will do.”

Lourdes Sanchez said she is worried.

Sitting behind her in class, Mario Guzman said, “It is not good that he will be president, and it will not be good for all of us. He wants to separate our families.”

The whole campaign and election have motivated Jose Lopez not only to vote but to become a politician. “I would like to help out and run for office someday,” he declared. His classmates cheered.

Hilda Lopez said, “It is not fair, he is making everyone worried that he will send everyone back. He is always talking about the wall and how Mexico will pay for it, but they won’t do it.”

Randolfo Rosales chimed in, “Don’t worry about the wall, we will get around it, we will jump over it. Don’t worry about that.”

And Gerardo Piedra said he was concerned about how Trump will handle immigration. “What will happen if he finds parents have come over illegally, and what if there are children who are legal?” he asked. “What is going to happen? That’s my worry.”

Mya Lopez and Emily Martinez at GALS, the first all-girls charter school at LAUSD.

October was National Bullying Prevention Month, and it couldn’t have come at a better time for LA Unified.

Anecdotal evidence and interviews with dozens of teachers, administrators, parents and students over the past three months point to an increase in school bullying, inappropriate language and public humiliation that many believe can be specifically attributed to the presidential campaign rhetoric. The district also reported higher incidents of bullying in months that coincided with media reports of inflammatory speech.

Recent examples exist from virtually every corner of the second-largest school district in the country:

• Girls in a lunch line in a South Central elementary school were teased with “Miss Piggy” and other weight-shaming phrases;

• High school students in Sylmar fear their parents will be taken away from them if Donald Trump is elected president;

• Students flapping their arms wildly mocked special education students when they lined up for P.E. at a San Fernando Valley middle school;

• A teacher at a charter school who wears a hajib, or headscarf, was taunted with “you’re a terrorist” and “she’s got a bomb,” and a student pretended to point a gun at her;

• Students at an all-girls charter school heard others say that their families will be sent “over the wall” and they will be placed in foster care;

• And just last week, a fight that was supposed to take place at a park near a high school in the Hollywood area was billed as a “Joe Biden vs. Donald Trump” brawl because one student had enough of being persistently picked on by a school bully. Parents heard about the fight and stopped it before it happened.

LA Unified officials said they did not have specific data showing an increase in bullying, but after a public information request, they responded with language from an annual iSTAR incident report released last week: “Incidents were high for the months of October 2016 and February, April, and May 2016. Middle schools reported the majority of incidents.” There were 965 reported incidents of bullying last school year, according to the report.

February, one of the highest-incident months, began with Trump saying to his supporters: “If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously. OK? Just knock the hell. I promise you: I will pay for the legal fees.”

May was another spike in incidents at schools. Toward the end of that month, Trump attempted to discredit a Latino judge and claimed he should recuse himself from a case involving Trump University because of the judge’s “Mexican heritage.”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wmstyw_JNMg]
Impact on children

Most of the seven members of the LA School Board have spoken at public meetings about the angry discourse of the presidential campaign, while they said they do not personally receive reports of specific incidents.

In an interview, school board President Steve Zimmer said he was concerned with how such talk affects children. “We have to figure out how this narrative of fear and exploitation affects families and schools,” Zimmer said. “We have to have supportive care for conflicts and hate through wraparound services and restorative justice, and we have to worry about the spillover effect.”

Zimmer said that while walking through a public park recently, he saw a pushy boy dressed in a suit declare “I’m Donald Trump.” Zimmer is concerned about how some of the public discourse trickles down to the children. At October’s board meeting, Zimmer won approval for a resolution “Celebrating California Sikh American Awareness and Appreciation Month” that noted, “Sikh boys suffer bullying at twice the national rate as other boys.” Just in the past year, the school board passed four resolutions involving bullying.

“It is unfortunate that the national debate of America does not resonate with some of the key values of this district,” said board member Mónica García. “What is tough is to see the increase in stress in children when the target is against ethnic communities or immigrants or women, and that continues to discourage them.”

Girl shaming

The 11-year-olds starting off at the district’s first all-girls charter school, GALS (Girls Athletic Leadership School of Los Angeles), have been hearing dirty words directed at them, and that infuriates teacher Kelly Snyder.

“Dismissing this kind of talk as locker room talk makes it permissible for boys to talk like this, and the girls hear these vulgar, harsh words,” Snyder said.

Their school is co-located at Vista Middle School in Panorama City where they are in the middle of school-wide anti-bullying lessons, with signs throughout the campus to be aware of bullying. Because of all that, Carrie Wagner, the executive director of GALS, decided it was a good time to train her teachers on how to deal with the issues. But the girls still face bullying.

“We are at an all-girls school, it’s not what we stand for, so you’d think we wouldn’t have to deal with this, but boys think it’s OK to make fun of girls because Donald Trump does it,” said Hattie Weinroth, 11, who faced some recent bullying. “They want to bring our self-esteem down.”

Her friend Tanya Juarez, who was also bullied, said, “This is a school with all different kinds of cultures, and we are learning to not be racist. But the girl who won the beauty contest is pretty and she won it for a reason and it’s not fair for him to criticize her.” (She referred to Trump calling former Miss Universe Alicia Machado “Miss Piggy” for gaining weight.)

Arely Peralta said some of the shaming she faced turned her into a bully too, until teachers intervened and she realized her reactions were wrong. “I felt sad when I was bullied, and I bullied them too,” she said. “A lot more racism is coming out because of the presidential campaign and a lot of rumors and things that are causing bullies.”

Arely said she faced bullying because she was different and said, “Now I feel like Donald Trump is changing America and I am feeling more scared and more insecure if he is going to be president.”

Mya Lopez declared, “Donald Trump isn’t for Mexicans and he wants to build a wall. You can’t make a wall high enough. You can go around it or climb over it. My parents are Mexican and they don’t bring crime. We have been given a new opportunity of life.”

LA Unified doesn’t ask for or require any proof of immigration status by any student or their family. Trump’s immigration plan includes blocking funding to sanctuary cities like Los Angeles. In 1994, Californians passed Prop 187 that initially prohibited undocumented residents from using non-emergency tax-supported services like public education, but the law was found unconstitutional. Yet fears from that time have cropped up again.

Almost in tears, Emily Martinez said, “Other kids are telling me that he will separate me from my parents and we will be foster kids or something. I don’t like the idea of Christmas without them or a year without them.”

Emily said she watched the TV commercials of children reacting to Trump’s speeches. “Donald Trump is criticizing girls and making us feel bad.”

Her fellow classmate Wendy Paz reflected what they were recently taught by their teachers. “Don’t be afraid, let it go, none of it is true,” Wendy advised. “Be yourself, be who you are. Some people have more racism in them than others.”

Abigail Gonzalez, who watched the debates with her parents, said, “I feel bad about it because my parents are Mexican too, and I don’t want anything going on with them. But if we call him racist, then we may be called racists too.”

Muslim teacher is bullied

Nanetta Okonkwo, a substitute teacher facing bullying from students.

For 10 years Nanetta Okonkwo taught in LA Unified schools, the past five years mostly in charter schools. She has always worn her traditional headscarf, the hajib, as part of her Muslim religion.

Never — even during the height of the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks — has she ever heard name-calling to the extent she has faced in the past two weeks, since the end of the debates. And it has all come from students.

“Four boys called me a terrorist,” Okonkwo said. “They said, ‘You have a bomb’ and ‘You’re a member of ISIS’ and ‘She’s from Iraq.’ I was shocked.”

It happened at a charter school on the Westside, and the next day three girls picked up on the verbal assaults and were also sent to the office. Okonkwo doesn’t want to name the school for fear of being ostracized further. Instead, she transferred as a substitute teacher to another middle school near downtown Los Angeles. Similar things happened.

“A boy passed me in the hallway and said, ‘You’re a Muslim, you’re a terrorist’ right to my face,” she said. “Then I took him to the dean’s office and he said the same thing.” He had heard Trump say it.

Even more chilling, a student pretended to cock, aim and fire a shotgun at her.

“It makes me really angry, the divisiveness that these children have learned,” the teacher said. “It’s frustrating to see that they are learning to oppress someone else.”

Okonkwo was born in Wichita, Kansas. Her father is Nigerian and her mother is a Kansan native with half-German, half-French heritage. They are both Christian. In her late 20s, Okonkwo chose to become a Muslim.

Now, at 46, she said she is disheartened to see the African-American and Latino children feel free to launch insults merely because of how she is dressed.

“Some of their parents were contacted and some didn’t respond or didn’t care,” Okonkwo said. “I was a little disappointed in how the charter school handled the situation, to be frank, and felt that this could have been a teaching moment. I felt like there was no accountability.”

She said she believes it’s directly attributable to the presidential campaign. “Donald Trump is a grown man on TV making fun of people with special needs, saying boys will be boys and making all these excuses,” Okonkwo said. “The kids think it’s cool because he’s on TV. This started happening just after Donald Trump went on again about Syrian refugees not being vetted, and people don’t know anything about any woman wearing a hijab.”

She worries about the occasional student she sees in school also wearing a hijab and possible teasing. “These children can be horrible to someone who is different, and they can be brutal,” she said.

“We really need to step it up on anti-bullying campaigns,” Okonkwo said. “Otherwise we are perpetuating the racism, bigotry and sexism being spouted in the media. We have to break the cycle. Certainly before there’s violence.”

The wall

Francisco Navarro says he is definitely a minority at Sylmar Charter High School. He is from a Mexican family, and he supports Trump.

The 17-year-old cannot yet vote like some of his friends, but if he were able to, he’d vote for the man who is advocating building a wall between Mexico and the United States.

Principal James Lee at Sylmar Charter High.

“I support Trump,” Francisco said. “I think some of the comments he makes are really unnecessary, but he has some good points. Yeah, we have families on the other side of the border, but we also have laws that we have to follow.”

His family members followed the laws. “We all have families there,” Francisco said. “But if we don’t go by the laws then there’s consequences. It’s what the people want.”

He added, “I am for the wall, I do not have a problem with it. And I don’t feel like all the people coming over are rapists and murderers because they really are not.”

Francisco is part of a senior government class at the district’s newest affiliated charter school. It’s a high school in a predominantly Latino area that also has a significant African-American population.

At a recent chat, along with the school principal, James Lee, the students opened up about their thoughts. Most of them were afraid of Trump becoming president, most of them considered him a racist and most of them didn’t trust the media.

“I’m concerned about the wall,” said Ana Gascon, who is 18 and plans to vote for Hillary Clinton on behalf of her family. “A lot of my family is from Mexico and it bugs me how he speaks about the immigrants.”

An African-American student, Dior Parks, also 18, said she is reluctantly voting for Clinton. “I don’t particularly care that she is a woman, I wouldn’t vote for her just because of that, but she’s better than Trump,” Dior said. “But if Michelle Obama were running I would be very excited about that.”

Dior said she gets most of her news on Twitter, and the high school senior rattled off a list of things she had read about Trump. The last straw for Dior was when she watched TV footage of black people asking for hugs from Trump supporters. “They were really rude to the ones asking for hugs, and that made me feel uncomfortable,” she said. “Seeing that makes me want to get more involved in politics.”

Lee said he was pleased with how candid his 12th-grade students were in the discussion. He said he had not specifically heard about bullying incidents that could be connected to the presidential campaign, but saw how some of the rhetoric seeped into how the students think about and treat each other.

Across town in South Los Angeles, at Dr. Owen Lloyd Knox Elementary School, fifth-grade teacher Danielle Howard has seen a big increase in graffiti and name-calling. Howard has taught for more than 15 years in Los Angeles and noticed obscenities scrawled about Trump in the desks and on the walls. Kids are calling themselves “bad hombres” or “nasty girls,” which was used by Trump in the last debate.

“One girl’s aunt told her that if Donald Trump becomes president, then black people were going to be turned back into slaves,” Howard said. “They know that he’s saying things that aren’t true, because they know that their friend’s mom who is helping volunteer at the school is not a rapist or a murderer.”

But Howard said the children’s worry is palpable, even at the elementary school of 870, which is mostly black and Hispanic. They talk about the news every day and study the election.

“One girl said she had a dream that the police was knocking on the door and taking away parents and leaving kids behind,” Howard said. “Their imaginations are reacting to this fear that is being drummed up. It’s ridiculous, but the fear is real to these kids. These kids are so smart.”

Howard tries to remain objective and non-political, but she said the students are fairly one-sided against Trump, especially while the school was holding the anti-bullying campaign in October.

“They are able to recognize a bully now when they see one, and they have labeled Donald Trump,” Howard said.

Dirty words

When David Graham began as a student teacher at North Hollywood High, it was in 1998 in the middle of the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal with President Bill Clinton. It was a time when sex talk was prominent in the media like it had never been before.

Until now, of course, when history has repeated itself and then some. Graham now teaches history in the Independent Honors Program at Walter Reed Middle School in Studio City, and he has noted an increase in dirty words being used around campus that could be blamed on the presidential campaign.

“Yucky” is the new word he uses for when an inappropriate word must come up in discussions, especially when a candidate talks about grabbing certain body parts.

“The students don’t know where I stand politically, and I try to keep it that way,” Graham said. “The students are bright, but this is low-end reality TV that meets middle school, and you know there will be unfortunate comments.”

He noted that students today are “more sexualized” than they were when he began teaching, and therefore more sensitive to body image insults and shaming.

Graham, 56, tries to turn it all into a learning tool, using the debates as a reason to go over the Constitution and bring up past presidential speeches.

Graham started teaching as a second career 18 years ago, leaving behind a career as a lawyer. He noted that when bullying issues come up, the administration is fast to react with a school assembly or training session. For example, when there were recent incidents of cyber-bullying and students drawing fascist symbols, the administration held an assembly with an expert to explain why it wasn’t OK.

“We have to be careful to see if children are taking cues from the behaviors they see and if they’re given a license to have bigotry and prejudices and express them like this,” Graham said. “Some of the girls are offended about what they see or hear, but it hasn’t been an open season of middle school boys on the girls. Not yet.”

Graham also notes that this may not be the most vitriolic of campaigns in American history either.

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had a very heated campaign that involved allegations of interracial affairs, rape and murder. But eventually, they became friends again.

“What we didn’t have is social media,” Graham sighed. “And that is something you can’t keep away from the kids.”

The Wallet Hub list of states with the most school bullying (shown in darker blue for the worst on the left) as compared to states supporting Trump shown on the right in the latest CNN map.

Fear and loathing

Even before the presidential season began, YouthTruth, a national nonprofit group, started a survey asking nearly 80,000 students in 21 states about bullying.

“What we found is surprising and shows a need to talk openly about this,” said Hannah Bartlebaugh of YouthTruth.

The survey shows that one in four students is bullied and that more are physically bullied than cyber-bullied. The biggest reason, 44 percent, a child is being bullied is because of how they look; 16 percent say it’s because of their race, and 14 percent say it’s because they were perceived to be gay or lesbian.

At WalletHub, the personal finance website, a recently released study showed that California ranked 38th in the percentage of bullying that goes on in school. That’s better than the average, and significant since the state also ranks low (38th) in number of psychologists per student in the country.

WalletHub’s map of the most-bullied states closely matches the states that are solidly in favor of Donald Trump, when compared to CNN’s or 270ToWin.com‘s latest predictions.

Another survey by the Southern Poverty Law Center showed how Trump’s campaign has had “a profoundly negative impact” in the classrooms and has created anxiety and fear among students. Although the survey didn’t specifically ask about the rhetoric of specific candidates, nearly half of the teachers mentioned Trump while about 10 percent mentioned Clinton, who last week launched a “Better Than Bullying” plan calling for $500 million in new federal funding that would go to states that agree to develop anti-bullying plans.

A CNN report noted a different kind of bullying at a diverse middle school in Washington. A Muslim 8th-grader was called a terrorist and a Latino student was told to “go back to the border,” mirroring some of the incidents at LA Unified.

“These are things that we hadn’t been hearing before,” said Debbie Aldous, a teacher at the school. “So what seems to have changed, to me, is the political rhetoric.”

Solutions and hope

Lori Vollandt and Susan Ward Roncalli teach Social Emotional Learning at LAUSD.

LA Unified has been at the forefront of social-emotional learning for the past 25 years, and when a need exists, district representatives can respond with programs, seminars and education, said Lori Vollandt, of the district’s Social Emotional Learning programs.

“What we are trying to do is create a preventative environment of social awareness. Empathy is the bedrock of all social-emotional learning,” said Vollandt, noting that anti-bullying is an important part of their work. “I think there are many people who don’t know we have these resources available in the district.”

Although Judy Chiasson said she has not heard anything specific about bullying being connected to the presidential campaign, as head of the Human Relations, Diversity and Equity division of the district, she said her team is ready to handle concerns and complaints at any of the district schools and has brochures in Spanish, Chinese, Armenian and Korean.

Susan Ward Roncalli, who helps Vollandt with the programs and taught in the classroom for 30 years, said she recalled last year when a Latino student whose father was an immigrant said in class, “Illegals are criminals and should be deported” and that he was looking forward to the wall keeping them out.

“This sentiment caused quite an uproar in class and caused a few of my students who are undocumented to cry,” said Roncalli, who taught in a suburban elementary school.

Another child recently was sent to a principal’s office for drawing a picture of people and writing the words, “No more Mexicans.” When the parent and principal asked where the child got such an idea, Roncalli said, “He said he saw Trump say it on TV so he thought it was OK.”

Board member Mónica Ratliff said she is concerned about how the district responds to bullying. Her staff has collected the procedures and forms that the district uses. The district has anti-bullying information and contracts in both English and Spanish, as well as anti-bullying reports that parents can fill out in both English and Spanish. Through resolutions and additional public statements, the school board doubled-down on anti-bullying programs in the district.

Principal Lupe Carrandi, left, at Fourth Street Elementary with Michelle King and Mónica García.

“It is important that we continue to provide a safe learning environment for every child no matter who is our president,” Ratliff said.

Some schools have specific programs targeting bullying. El Camino Real Charter High School in Woodland Hills created a chapter of Cool2bkind, a group that focuses on bullying prevention and awareness, started by two students, Zachary Leo and Emily Park.

Near downtown, at Bret Harte Preparatory Middle School, a P.S. ARTS teacher saw the transformation of students’ attitudes who participated in the arts program. Coincidentally, fistfights broke out during a half-hour lunch break when P.S. ARTS was hosting a table in the quad to tell students about their program.

“Each time, dozens of students raced to the fray, cheering the fighters on,” art leader Jennifer Browne said about the school fights. “It was clear to us that the culture at this school was in crisis. A small group of students hung out around our table. They wanted to know what we had to offer and clearly wanted to be part of something different.”

The program presented a performance to the rest of the school educating others about bullying. Browne said, “Given the amount of stress and chaos in their day-to-day environment, we knew that our programming could present an excellent chance for our students to express themselves and build community in a safe, structured, creative environment.” She added, “We must look for the small changes – a student who finally projects their voice on stage, a student who fully participates for one day, a child showing empathy towards another individual.”

At Fourth Fourth Street Elementary School in East Los Angeles, Principal Lupe Carrandi said she has implemented a schoolwide Positive Behavior plan to keep out the campaign negativity.

“We know that the rhetoric has gotten nasty out there, but that atmosphere stops at the doors of the school,” Carrandi said after a recent school board meeting where her school was credited by King. “We emphasize our rules: Be safe, be respectful, be responsible and most importantly be kind.”

The classes showing the best behaviors are rewarded with Bear Buck coupons they can use to purchase items from the school store. The principal grew up in the neighborhood, with immigrant parents, and she said it is imperative that her students and their families be shielded from the negativity.

That kind of negative rhetoric caused some students to transfer from other nearby school districts to LA Unified, which they perceived as more tolerant toward Latinos. The district is 74 percent Latino.

A Latino family came to school board member Ref Rodriguez’s office from a neighboring school district after hearing “derogatory comments similar to what’s been shared in the campaigns.” They told the board member’s office that the students were sharing a YouTube video that repeated the campaign negativity.

“This kind of effect on our children based on the rhetoric from the presidential campaign is distressing, but it’s not surprising,” said Allan Kakassy, a retired teacher on the district’s Human Relations Commission. “We don’t know how deeply this affects the students, and that is why it is so important for the district to keep investing in the social-emotional learning programs.”

Board member George McKenna, who has spoken publicly about the campaign rhetoric since the presidential election began, said, “My schools are not as diverse as others in the district might be, so it’s not like someone is going to come in to one of my schools and say, ‘You all need to go back over the wall.’ That would be a little dumb. But it has worked nicely through the sports teams, for example. I think it’s important that they know that if they come together and play together, they can know they’ve got each other’s backs and they can succeed no matter where they come from or what race they are.”

There is cause for hope, school board member García said, despite the negative rhetoric.

“This district is building an understanding for tolerance and appreciation for multi-culturalism,” García said. “That is a pillar for this district.”

She said she recently met a fifth-grader at Second Street Elementary School who told her that Trump’s negative talk is inspiring the student to go to Washington, D.C., to become a civil rights attorney.

“It is clear that kids have become more excited about wanting to vote,” García said. “They see the historic nature of a woman in this election. It has stirred the Latino community to show them how important it is to register and vote.”

(From LAUSD’s 2015-2016 iSTAR report)

For the first time since LA Unified has collected such data, the number of incidents involving fights, suicidal behavior, bullying, drugs and other disruptions on campuses was higher at middle schools than at high schools.

The district last week released the 2015-2016 iSTAR Annual Report, which stands for the Incident System Tracking Accountability Report. The report not only shows serious issues such as finding weapons or illegal drugs on students or staff, but also records accidents, medical issues, vandalism and bullying on every LA Unified campus. The reports are computerized and updated every five minutes and available to every administrator.

For the first time since the iSTAR numbers were collected and computerized six years ago, the number of incidents at the district’s 83 middle schools exceeded the number of incidents at the 98 high schools.

The number of middle school incidents hit 9,663 last school year, mostly involving suicidal behavior, injuries, fighting and physical aggression. In high schools last year, 9,597 incidents occurred mostly involving injuries, suicidal behavior and medical concerns, which include asthma, seizures, heat stress and intoxication.

By sheer numbers, the 452 elementary schools continue to have the most incidents. Last year 16,740 issues were reported mostly involving injuries, accidents, fighting and physical aggression.

“I’m concerned about the iSTAR statistics and what they indicate for the current state of our middle-grades students,” said school board member Ref Rodriguez, who has championed middle school education and helped start charter middle schools. “Ever since I founded a middle school in my community, I have always had a passion for serving our adolescent youth because of the stressors they feel socially, emotionally, physically and mentally. The data are unacceptable and reinforce my commitment to ensure that our schools provide the holistic supports and services that are necessary to truly combat these learning barriers.”

Overall, the number of issues reported rose 22 percent to 41,141 from the 2014-2015 school year. The year-over-year increase the year before had been 15 percent, and  7 percent the previous year.

It doesn’t mean that there are more incidents happening on campuses, but that teachers and administrators are better at reporting the issues into the iSTAR system, according to Earl R. Perkins, the associate superintendent of district operations.

“The iSTAR reporting system captures events that affect the district, its students, employees and surrounding communities,” Perkins said in his report. “With collaboration between schools and offices, authorized users and administrators of iSTAR can together achieve a more precise data set and a better analysis for the school community at large. The strategic operating plan is set and the bar has been raised for the new school year for continued improvements upon processing efficiency.”

Earl Perkins, right, at one of the Safe Schools rallies.

Most of the incidents occurred at schools in the West and Central districts while the least amount occurred at schools in the Northwest and Northeast areas (mostly the San Fernando Valley).

One of the biggest concerns is suicidal behavior, which has increased from 4,607 in 2014-2015 to 4,981 last year. Most of the incidents are non-injury, but 1,548 incidents involved cutting and 673 incidents required hospitalization.

According to LA Unified’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 30 percent of high school students reported a prolonged sense of sadness or hopelessness every day for two or more continuous weeks, while 22 percent of middle school and 14 percent of high school students seriously considered attempting suicide.

“School personnel are instrumental in helping students and their families by identifying students at-risk and linking them to school and community mental health resources,” noted Perkins, referring to the district’s “Suicide Prevention, Intervention and Postvention” plan, which offers a new series of brochures for help and guidance in both English and Spanish.

The iSTAR system also records incidents that happen off campus and on school buses. The data showed 241 incidents at adult education centers and 104 issues at charter schools that are co-located on district property. The iSTAR data show that incidents happen mostly between noon and 1 p.m., according to the report.

The report is used to identify where Restorative Justice, anti-bullying, Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children or other preventive programs are most needed in the schools.

Of the 10 most reported issues, injuries, suicidal behavior, fighting and accidents were among the highest. The lowest in the top 10 were sex crimes, illegal substances and weapons. Board districts 2 and 7 (Mónica García’s and Richard Vladovic’s districts) had the most incidents, while board districts 3 and 4 (Scott Schmerelson’s and Steve Zimmer’s) had the least number of reports.

“We continue to focus on our efforts in looking at trends and improving our processes — considering the ever-changing iSTAR issues/features that are added each year to help enhance reporting,” Perkins said in the report. “In addition, we also work hard in raising awareness of incidents that impacts our students, staff and community.“

Chief Zipperman cradles the responsibility of keeping LA Unified’s students safe, as well as its 60,000 employees.

And that’s a tall order in a today’s world, with social media reports of scary clowns frightening kids, rumors of immigration agents raiding schools and seemingly credible terrorist threats.

“The unusual activities that occurred over this past summer were unprecedented,” Zipperman said in an exclusive interview in his office at the Los Angeles School Police Department just a few blocks from the LA Unified Beaudry Avenue headquarters in downtown Los Angeles. “The acts of terrorism worldwide and nationally at the Orlando nightclub and the controversial police shootings and the post-Ferguson reaction and Black Lives Matter demonstrations all rekindled concerns that we need to focus on our relationships with the community and revisit what we are doing.”

• Read more: 9 things you didn’t know about the school police who guard your children

Chief Steven K. Zipperman in his office.

Now in his fifth year on the job, Zipperman acknowledges it is a tougher time than ever to make the children of Los Angeles feel comfortable with uniformed officers. In a rare candid interview, Chief Zipperman detailed some of the things that his office does that few people know about, and some of the behind-the-scenes preparations that make him feel confident that his department can handle any emergency at LA schools.

“The issue of police-community relations is on the top of our list,” Zipperman said. “Our school police is concerned and focused on young people.”

The latest photo of the entire LA Unified police force.

A big force

In the entrance of the school police department at 125 N. Beaudry Ave. there are glass cases containing badges, hats and pictures of old police cars once used by the department. There are also waist-high trophies from various tournaments the police department won with student teams, as well as plaques of honor from around the country. On top of the glass counters are brochures of their youth programs in English and Spanish.

Established in 1948, the Los Angeles School Police Department is the largest independent school police force in the country — perhaps the world — with 410 sworn officers, 101 school safety officers and 34 civilian support staff that work 24/7 to patrol schools that are spread out over 710 square miles and 26 cities, many of which have their own police departments that are much smaller.

In fact, the police force for the nation’s second-largest school district is the fifth-largest police force in Los Angeles County and the 14th largest in California. By comparison, the largest school district in the country, New York, has 200 sworn police officers.

There’s a canine unit, a bike team, an Honor Guard, an investigations unit, a Critical Response Team, an Anger Management Program and Police Academy Magnet Schools. They have their own police cars and motorcycles in seven divisions and have Multi-Assault Counter-Terrorism Attack Capabilities (MACTAC) for terrorist threats.

The LA school police regularly interact with more than 13 city and county law enforcement agencies as well as state and federal police entities and emergency services. Learning how to better communicate with other policing agencies became a major topic of conversation this summer.

Sgt. James Ream, center, on the first day of school at Haddon Avenue STEAM Academy.

“Over the summer we had sessions where we visited early education centers and held regular site visits with elementary schools and Beyond the Bell programs to interact with kids,” Zipperman said. “We wanted them to see us positively and show our faces more often.”

On the first day of school this year, Chief Zipperman attended press conferences with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, members of the school board and Superintendent Michelle King at John C. Fremont High School and later at the new all-girls school Girls Academic Leadership Academy. Meanwhile, his officers made their presence known throughout the district from Day One.

In the northeast San Fernando Valley in Pacoima, Sgt. James Ream kicked off a backpack giveaway and told the Haddon Avenue STEAM Academy elementary students, “Those of us in uniform who you may see at the school have come to protect you. If you see a police officer, we’re your friends.”

Ream is also in charge of scheduling officers to visit elementary schools around Halloween to read spooky stories and encourage people to donate books to the school. “We get the kids to see us as people who want to help,” Ream said.

During the holidays the police department is involved in shoe drives, book drives and helping other nonprofits deliver food to school families or holiday gifts to needy children. They visit the USC Children’s Hospital, hold a Teddy Bear Drive and sponsor leadership activities for youth throughout the year.

“We do a lot of things on a daily basis that people don’t know anything about, and a lot of that is done on the officers’ off time,” Zipperman said. “We try to provide a sense of security to the students so that they know they will come to a safe campus. That leads to a better learning environment, and better attendance and better outcomes for students.”

He added, “The officers are out there connecting with kids in ways other than when we have to take enforcement action.”

But are schools safer?

It seems like an easy question, but for Chief Zipperman there’s no easy answer. Are schools safer than when he took over the police department five years ago? Are teachers less likely to be assaulted?

“The answers are not that easy, it depends on what prism we’re looking through at how to gauge a safe school,” Zipperman said. “Is it a lack of crime? Is it by how many weapons are confiscated? Is it by surveys asking how safe we feel coming to school? Or is it gauged by the amount or lack of suspensions or expulsions?”

The reality is that expulsions and suspensions have gone down, but fighting and physical aggression, according to the district statistics, have increased from 2,425 incidents in the 2013-14 school year to 3,103 in the 2014-15 school year. Last year’s iSTAR summary (Incident System Tracking Accountability Report) is not yet available.

But in the latest statistics, there were 1,163 reports of sex crimes or inappropriate sexual behavior, 746 incidents of finding illegal or controlled substances and 839 weapons confiscated.

• Read more: Here is LAUSD’s Emergency/Disaster Plan.

“I don’t know if you could correlate that with more weapons being recovered. There are weapons being brought to campus probably every day,” Zipperman said. They’re not always firearms but could include knives or sharp objects or something that could cause harm to a student or teacher. “Is the fact that we are finding those objects making the campus safer?”

The school police also patrol neighborhoods around schools where bullying or thefts could occur by gangs threatening schoolchildren. They offer a Safe Passages program, marking walkways for students that are patrolled by safety officers in potentially dangerous neighborhoods.

During the summer the police trained for dealing with an active shooter on campus and for lockdowns and incidents involving narcotics.

After looking at crime statistics at each school, the school police assess what areas need more resources or anger management courses or more patrols. They collaborate with the educators at the school to better understand the climate of the school, Zipperman said. And they coordinate with local police departments.

“What I can say is that over the last five years, there has been more involvement with school police in preparing our schools to respond to issues that could be an act of violence against the school,” Zipperman said. “Our schools are better prepared when it comes to emergencies than ever before.”

Zipperman with Mayor Garcetti on the day the schools were shut down.

An emergency test run

On Dec. 15 last year, just before winter break and just after 14 people died in the San Bernardino terrorist attack, every LA Unified school was ordered closed because of an email threat. The Internet hoax caused enough concern that every campus was shut down and searched for weapons and bombs.

At a press conference broadcast nationwide, Zipperman stood at the podium with the county sheriff, Los Angeles police chief and the mayor to explain how they were coordinating resources and checking every school.

“December 15th was a test on how we can respond to an emergency and get the word out quickly when it involves something of that magnitude,” said Zipperman, who is finalizing a report to the superintendent about the incident and their reaction times. “There are things we learned that we can improve upon, but it showed how quickly we were able to get the word out to the parents and our city, county and state partners about what is happening. We have room for improvement. A lot of it has to do with communications. We can respond next time in a more efficient and effective manner.”

Zipperman keeps tabs on national dialogue and trends in keeping schools safer. Some of them he disagrees with — and isn’t afraid to say so.

“I am not a proponent for teachers carrying weapons, no,” Zipperman laughed. “I have heard all of the crazy proposals nationwide and no, I’m not a proponent for that.”

If a student assaults a teacher, there will most likely be an arrest, the chief said. “We will look at the age and circumstance, but if a student purposely assaults a teacher, that student will get arrested,” he said.

“There is a sense of having us in and around these schools that is priceless, and these kids need to see that safety and protection on a daily basis,” Zipperman said. “And so do the teachers.”

The trophy case at the entrance of the school police office.

Fighting rumors

The anti-immigration rhetoric during the presidential race and incidents last year in other parts of the country with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) caused a sudden drop in attendance at LA Unified and unprecedented fear among students and their families.

“There was some rumor that there was a perceived pending enforcement of ICE with schools, and I think the rumor took on a life of its own,” Zipperman said. “Neither I nor my colleagues were made aware of any ICE enforcement going on at schools. I could see the angst it would cause particularly at LAUSD because we have such a significant population that could be affected. We are inclusive, we don’t care what anyone’s status is, and our goal is for the district to provide a safe and nurturing learning environment, and it is our job as police to do that.”

The school board doubled-down on that by passing a resolution emphasizing that they don’t want federal agencies coming to the schools without the school police involved, and they offered support to children and families concerned about deportation fears.

What about charters?

Although the school police duties don’t specifically include monitoring independent charter schools, they will not turn their back on charters that may need help, Zipperman said.

Four independent charter high schools are located on district school property and many are co-located on district school sites, so those are covered by the school police. Independent charter schools under the LA Unified umbrella that are on private property usually are handled by the local police department in that area.

“These are all our students, so if they need help, of course we will respond and figure out who deals with it later,” Zipperman said. “We have responded to calls from independent charter schools not on district property and we will send a car if it’s an imminent safety issue. They are absolutely part of our schools.”

Some of the charter schools do not like some of the district policies such as required daily random wanding of their middle school and high school students. Charter schools signed a letter saying they will not do it. It’s not a request that came from the police department but from the school board, and the police don’t get involved in conducting the wanding searches unless something illegal is found.

Superintendents and school board members have regularly heaped praise on Zipperman and the school police for work they do. Three officers were recently honored with Medals of Valor at a school board meeting for saving a woman who was going to jump off a bridge not far from a school in East Los Angeles.

“I have every confidence that our school police continues to keep our children and school population as safe at school than they are during most of the rest of their day,” said school board President Steve Zimmer. “And we will not compromise on safety for our children.”

The school police budget is about $60 million, and the department is continuing to recruit and hire officers. The average school police officer makes about $87,000 a year, compared to the average teacher making about $70,000 a year. The average sheriff’s deputy makes $52,000, and the average LAPD officer makes about $110,000. Zipperman is among the highest paid administrators at LA Unified, making $170,475.

Restoring justice

Zipperman came to save the school police from a checkered history. One police officer was convicted of sexual harassment of a student, which led to one chief retiring early, and then an investigation by LA Weekly in 2007 led to previous police Chief Lawrence Manion announcing his resignation.

Zipperman came from 32 years at the LAPD where he worked in vice, patrol, narcotics and the Special Response unit. He graduated from Taft High in the San Fernando Valley and holds a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice with a minor in sociology from Cal State Bakersfield and a master’s degree in organizational leadership from Woodbury University.

Zipperman said he is acutely aware of the budgetary constraints that the school board faces and doesn’t have any wish list other than for more people to patrol the schools. He does well with what he has, he said. Cutting the budget of the school police is not something the school board said they want to do.

However, Zimmer was glad to see that automatic weapons and a military-grade mini-tank were given up by Zipperman after student activist groups protested over the federal sharing of military surplus equipment. The police chief explained that the weapons were never intended for use on campus, but merely being used for training purposes. The groups called for an apology and a decrease in force for the police department as well as an accounting for all the weapons. After a few demonstrations and a disruption of a meeting, Zipperman sent out a letter to the group, met with the students and quelled their concerns.

“It is important to figure out how to best facilitate free speech among the students and have conversations when there are demonstrations nationally such as with Black Lives Matter,” Zipperman said. “We know students want to participate in the political part of it.”

Zipperman has seen some progress with the district embracing restorative justice programs, but he remains skeptical about its ability to deter all criminal activities on campus. The program allows students to address their problems and “acting out” among peers in a setting that does not criminalize their actions and keeps them out of court.

“We don’t want some to think that this is just an easy way to stay out of the criminal justice system, and of course we don’t want our students to end up getting arrested,” Zipperman said. “We have to have them learn from their mistakes and mentor and guide them.”

He added, “Restorative justice can’t just be a way out of accountability, or an excuse for avoiding another more appropriate avenue (of justice) for someone who has no intention of changing their behavior.”

Inevitably, the news headlines of the day seem to strike against the police chief’s ideal of trust with schoolchildren, but he keeps working on it in LA.

“Our goal is to always have that relationship with young people, all the children, and their families,” Zipperman said. “We are always looking for ways to build and foster those relationships.”

He added, “These days it becomes even more of a necessity to build those relationships at the school setting so that those attitudes continue when they’re no longer at school.”

A source close to the search said that the student who brought the weapon to the South LA high school was “feeling unsafe” while walking to school.

LA Unified officials didn’t confirm the specific incident, but Superintendent Michelle King issued a statement Monday saying: “Despite our best efforts, our campuses are sometimes faced with instances of violence, including the use of weapons. To help safeguard our students and staff, the district requires random screenings using portable metal detectors at our secondary schools. Administrative leaders and campus aides conduct these non-invasive screenings in a private, respectful manner in order to minimize the impact on the student and the rest of the campus. These screenings serve as a deterrent so that we may continue to focus on educating our students in a productive and safe learning environment.”

The random wanding issue has erupted now that more than three dozen community organizations — including traditional rivals such as UTLA and independent charter school organizations — have called for an end to random wanding and metal detector searches of students and backpacks at all LA Unified schools. It’s been a mandatory rule since 2005 that all secondary schools (6th to 12th grades) have random searches every day, then letters are sent home to the parents to say that their child was randomly selected for a search. The policy includes traditional schools, co-located charter schools and independent charter schools not on district property.

Because a few independent charter schools have recently refused to do the mandatory safety checks required by the school police, a letter has been sent to school board President Steve Zimmer as well as all the other school board members and Superintendent King.

The signatories include City Charter Schools and charter school agencies such as Alliance, Aspire, Green Dot, KIPP, Magnolia, Camino Nuevo, Endeavor, Citizens of the World, Resolute and STEM Prep. Also signed on are the ACLU, the Youth Justice Coalition, Students Matter, Teach for America, Partnership for Los Angeles Schools and the Watts/Century Latino Organization.

“We have a large group of diverse people and organizations signing this letter, so I think we should be heard loud and clear, we want this to stop immediately,” said Pastor Mike Cummings of We Care Outreach Ministries. “I don’t think students should be wanded, it feels like suppression, and we have to stop our kids from being suppressed.”

A former gang member turned Pentecostal pastor, Cummings said, “Students should not have a bad taste in their mouth about law enforcement. We need these youth to want to go into police work or join the fire department, but if they are searched for no reason and are suspected for no reason, then interferes with their self respect and it interferes with their learning.” Cummings who is known for his work with Safe Passages, a district program involving police agencies to provide safe routes to schools in potentially dangerous neighborhoods.

In 2014 to 2015, a total of 840 weapons were collected in the district at schools found by random searches. An audit report of random searches released two years ago showed that 38 percent of a random 29 schools did not have the proper signage notifying students that everyone is subject to a search. Also, 38 percent of the schools didn’t haven enough wands on hand, and 10 percent didn’t do the searches on a daily basis.

The conclusion of the report was that the School Operations Division should more closely monitor schools and “take corrective actions as needed in order to ensure 100% compliance.”

Zimmer told LA School Report, “I am very open to a conversation on how to do things better,” although he added he has not set up a meeting with Cummings or any of the signatories to the letter. Zimmer said he has analyzed the random search situation through the lens of parents, counselors, teachers and administrators and has talked to people at many school sites about the issue.

“What I’ve found is that the vast majority of parents want safety for their children, and that is more important than civil liberties to them at this moment in time,” Zimmer said.

Zimmer’s sentiment is echoed by fellow board member Monica Ratliff, who said she attended a meeting last week with parents at Sylmar High School, the site of a recent schoolyard brawl that made national news.

“After the meeting a parent came up to me saying she supports the wanding and she said students shouldn’t have anything in their backpacks that they shouldn’t have,” Ratliff said. “I thanked her for her comment because it was unsolicited and it was valuable to hear.”

At another meeting with King, Ratliff said she was surprised to hear students also supporting the random wanding at schools. “We asked the students, ‘What would make you feel safer at school’ and one student said, ‘metal detectors,’” Ratliff said. The student was afraid of being stabbed or knifed, and the students were fully supportive of the random searching process, she said.

“I think it’s a smart policy and it keeps kids safer,” Ratliff said.

But 17-year-old Jesus Martinez, who is graduating from Ánimo Watts College Preparatory Academy, said the random searching makes him feel less of a person.

“It takes into question who you are as a person, you question yourself and your personality and it shouldn’t really be done,” said Martinez, who will be the first in his family to go to college, studying global art and sociology at UC Merced. “It is a bad idea because it targets people, enforces stereotypes and isn’t very fair.”

Martinez said he has seen schoolmates carrying things they shouldn’t, like drugs, but has never seen a weapon on campus. “School should be a second home for children, and even if what they have in their backpacks is all legal, there may be things in there that are personal.”

Cristina de Jesus, president and CEO of Green Dot Public Schools California, said school safety is a top priority for her schools, but the random search policy is in direct contrast to their school philosophies and they will not do them. The issue cropped up after a principal at Green Dot’s Ánimo Jackie Robinson High School received a box of metal detector wands with a reminder to conduct the search every day.

“What we’re calling for is some collaborative conversation and revision of the policy,” de Jesus said. “It’s not safety vs. not safety, and there is a way to have safety while still maintaining civil liberties and structure discipline with dignity and inspiration.”

Green Dot’s policy allows for random searches in emergency situations, but they do not want to do them every day.

“For UTLA and charter schools to come together on this shows how this is of widespread concern,” de Jesus said. “It does in fact criminalize students and that’s problematic. It sends a message we think you’re up to no good.”

A parent at Ánimo Phillis Wheatley Charter Middle School near Gardena said she is worried that her son may start acting up because he’s being suspected of something for no cause. Keisha Mitchell, who is also a member of United Parents, a statewide nonprofit group of parents advocating for public schools, said that she doesn’t want her 13-year-old son subjected to the searches.

“It’s a terrible idea, it’s just not fair,” Mitchell said. “In some cases wanding is needed if the school faculty has a reason or suspects a student with probable cause to ensure safety. I don’t think it should apply to schools that don’t have a problem.”

Mitchell enrolled her son in a charter school after attending one in Tucson, Ariz., and he was already taken aback by the security guards and locked gates at the front entrance.

“He is a young 13 and he would feel violated by these random searches,” Mitchell said. “He really is a kid, I don’t want to strip him of that.”

Mitchell said she worries that her good student may be distracted by such searches and “the policing may affect him negatively in what should be a safe haven for learning and building of future citizens of our community.”

Meanwhile, the district has not contacted any of the signatories of the letter about the wanding issue since it was sent May 25. De Jesus said she hopes that some discussion will occur before the school board’s next meeting on June 14.

City Attorney Mike Feuer

Getting safely to and from school can be tricky in a rough neighborhood. To make it easier, City Attorney Mike Feuer launched a pilot program earlier this month at four LA Unified elementary schools, aimed at keeping kids safe.

The Neighborhood School Safety Program targets schools in areas with high “quality of life” crimes, including graffiti, vandalism, prostitution and illegal dumping.

The pilot schools are Vista Middle School in Panorama City; Barack Obama Global Preparation Academy in Chesterfield Square; Le Conte Middle School in Hollywood; and John H. Liechty Middle School in MacArthur Park.

The City Attorney’s office has partnered with LA Unified and the Los Angeles Police Department.

Providing safe passage on the journey to school is one key component of the program that will start later this fall, Sharee Sanders Gordon, Deputy City Attorney told LA School Report. Volunteer parents armed with walkie-talkies and bright colored vests will be stationed throughout neighborhood streets leading to the schools.

“It seems simple — just walking to school — but it’s not. It can be a very scary, and sometimes dangerous thing,” she said.

A multi-agency School Toxics Task Force has been set up to identify potential polluters within one mile of a school. Local police will conduct semi-regular gun sweeps and the City Attorney’s office will coordinate compliance checks on probationers, parolees and registered sex offenders who reside near school campuses to assure that none are in violation of any law.

Ultimately, the program can be expanded to other areas of the district where children are living in similar circumstances, Sanders Gordon said.

“This could really change their lives,” she said.

The six month pilot program, known as the Southern California – Clean, Green and Healthy Schools Partnership, is intended to foster collaboration among local, state and federal regulators — including school districts — on environmental health issues that had been unaddressed because of red tape and jurisdictional conflicts.

John Sterritt, LA Unified’s director of Environmental Health and Safety, told LA School Report that when a health hazard arose in the past, whether at a school or on adjacent property, the district and local officials often didn’t know who was responsible.

“The formation of this functional working group will allow us to solve some of the bureaucratic questions by getting everyone around the same table,” said Sterrit. He added that the idea for the working group stemmed from a 10-year partnership with the Southern California Department of Toxic Substances Control.

Thomas Cota, chief of the department, agreed that the pilot program will expedite the identification process, but added that it should also enhance transparency by engaging the local community in the process.

“We wanted to develop a system for the community to bring us issues they’re concerned about so that we can triage the problem and decide how best to fix it,” Cota told LA School Report. Cota is encouraging anyone with health hazard tips or neighborhood complaints to email the working group at healthyschools@dtsc.ca.gov.

A Level Playing Field for Transgender Students
In February, the California Interscholastic Federation adopted a progressive policy, which takes effect in the fall, under which transgender students must be allowed to participate on sports teams of the gender they identify with rather than the teams of their physical gender — after a panel reviews each situation to determine that the athlete truly is transgender. LA Times Editorial

Why We Need to Reform Education Now
To improve our schools, we have to humanize them and make education personal to every student and teacher in the system. Education is always about relationships. HuffPo Opinion (TED Talks Education)

Bill Aims to Help Expelled and Truant Students Get Back on Track
The purpose of a complicated bill aimed at preventing students from languishing in alternative schools became much clearer after the testimony of a former student who got stuck in one. EdSource

Leveling the Playing Field
Beach City schools stand to lose millions under Governor Jerry Brown’s plan to create a more equitable education system. Easy Reader

California Looks to Ontario Schools’ Reformer for Guidance
Michael Fullan may be coming soon to a school district near you.  The man credited with transforming the Canadian province of Ontario into one of the world’s most effective school systems is ready to help California do the same. EdSource

Lynwood Schools Take Part in State Pilot Testing Program
With California’s transition to the new common core education standards quickly approaching, the Lynwood Unified School District has been gearing up for the changes with specialized training and pilot testing that will prepare local schools for the switch to a new state standardized testing system, which is expected to take place in 2014-15. LA Wave

Special Education: California Parents’ Lawsuit Could Force Expansion of Programs
Initiated by dissatisfied Morgan Hill parents, a lawsuit that could vastly expand services for disabled students in California, and greatly increase the costs of educating them, is inching toward trial. Mercury News

Charter Advocacy Organization Calls for Independent Authorizers
A charter school advocacy organization has laid out its case for state lawmakers to pass policies that support using independent authorizers of those schools, an approach that it says is the best one for bringing both accountability and autonomy to the sector. EdWeek

Suspect Who Allegedly Brought Handgun to Canoga Park High School Arrested
A 19-year-old man was arrested Thursday on suspicion of bringing a handgun onto the Canoga Park High School campus, officials said.  The unidentified suspect was apprehended about 1 p.m. just outside the school’s agricultural area, Los Angeles Unified spokeswoman Monica Carazo said. LA Daily News
See also: LA Times