Safety, Accountability, and Following Laws

At first glance, the agenda for the school board meeting on September 25th seemed pretty mundane, but the meeting had some pretty significant outcomes. Mixed in with some of the normal business of the district were three items that stood out: a discussion on school safety, a review of how the elected board members influence district policies, and decision to bid for potential new law firms to represent the district. As part of the public comment process, I presented two recommendations to the board that evening and I was pleased that they appeared to accept them.

School Safety

Assistant Superintendent Brenna Terrones gave an update on the current state of school safety preparedness. During the public comment period, I spoke and gave my recommendations. While Brenna does an amazing job, she is overtasked with many different aspects of the district. I know from my experience in the military that being in charge of an organization’s safety is not something you can do as a “side gig” while working on multiple other things. I recommended that the board consider hiring a full-time director of safety whose sole job would be to oversee all aspects of safety in our district. On a similar note, I commented that while our school resource officers (SROs) also do an amazing job, there are only two of them and they are spread very thin. I recommended that the district consider hiring more.

The discussion followed a similar path. Board member Reid lamented that while it would be nice to devote more resources to safety, she didn’t know what we could cut to make that happen. She and other board members emphasized mental health as means to increase safety. Board member Hamill pushed back on that, saying that the district already spends $6 million on 43 full time employees dedicated to mental health as well as a $750,000 a year contract for seven SAGE therapists. Hamill also brought to light the lack of “chain of command” and reporting for the SROs. She asked Officer Watt, who was there to answer board questions on school safety, who he reported to. The answer was vague and included more than one person in administration, indicating that neither he nor the administrators knew exactly who was in charge. For his part, when asked about his ability to keep all the schools safe with only himself and one other SRO, Officer Watt humbly said “we can’t be everywhere, but we are doing more with less.”

At the end of the meeting, Board member Hamill echoed my recommendation and added a future agenda item to discuss adding a director of safety and additional SROs to the district’s payroll.

Accountability

Under the current paradigm, when a district policy needs to be changed or a potential new district policy is under advisement, this is how the process works: First two board members meet with the policy committee to review it and make changes. It then goes to the board to review it in open session. The policy committee then makes changes that are recommended by the board and the board sees it one more time in open session to approve the changes.

The agenda item for discussion last week was to change this process. Both recommended options, in my opinion, reduced representation from the elected representatives and put more responsibility in the hands of unelected administrators. I called this to the attention of the board during my opportunity for public comments. I was disheartened to hear Board member Kurt say during deliberations that she thought that CSBA (the California School Board Association) was a good baseline and that we should just let the experts do the work of editing policies for our district. As I referenced in a previous article, the CSBA has occasionally incorrectly interpreted the law in the past and has infused those incorrect interpretations into policy change recommendations that they send to districts. This is exactly what I am referring to when I saw that I want to be the “shield” for the district.

Thankfully, during further discussion, a new option was presented: two different tracks for updating policies. The first is for simple clerical updates like when a law is updated that requires updating references or wording in local policies. In this track, it does not really require significant change or input from the elected board members. For this track, district staff could do the administrative work of making the clerical updates and present it to the board for approval. In the second track, policy changes are more significant and require more input and buy-in from the whole board. For this track, the whole board would discuss the potential changes in open session, and then staff would incorporate those changes into the policy. The updated policy would then be presented to the board for approval in open session.

There was no decision to update the process, but an agenda item to officially update it in the future will likely be added soon.

Law and Legal Representation

Assistant Superintendent Terrones gave an update on the district’s current legal representation. During the initial presentation, we all learned that there has not been a new RFQ (Request for Qualification) in EIGHT years. This is an inordinate amount of time for that kind of contract. During my public comment, I pointed out how in past board meetings (and even this current board meeting), the board members has legal questions that could not be answered because there was not an attorney present, which delayed action on time-critical decisions. My recommendation was that if they decide to solicit legal firms with an RFQ, that they consider including the requirement of having an attorney present at board meetings (since they do this for our local city council meetings).

One of the questions that the board asked was: How much would an RFQ cost? The answer was a paltry $1500 to submit the advertisement. During the deliberation, the board seemed almost ready to disapprove staff moving forward with the RFQ. Everyone but board member Hamill seemed satisfied with the current legal representation, who expressed doubts about their ability to provide objective legal advice. In the end, the board agreed to allow staff to proceed with the RFQ and I was pleased that they also agreed to consider adding my recommendation for having an attorney present during board meetings.

Conclusion

Even though the agenda seemed relatively benign, last week’s board meeting contained a few items that could have a significant impact on how the district operates day to day, and how they keep our kids safe at school. I will keep everyone updated as the year unfolds.