2007 Year in Review--10 Biggest Vanguard Stories of 2007

As the first full year of the People's Vanguard of Davis comes to completion, we will countdown the top 10 stories from year. This is the second year we have done this.

Last year we counted down the 10 Biggest Stories in Davis.

This year we countdown the 10 biggest stories that we followed on the People's Vanguard of Davis.

We continue with the 7th biggest story: Racial and Other Strife on the High School Campus.

Last year there were a series of incidents and stories involving the Davis High School Campus. One of the strangest incidents was an honors student who ended up getting suspended for giving a speech about Malcolm X that may or may not have challenged the authority of a teacher.

The incident started with the student asking if they could bring a poster of Malcolm X to to math class. The teacher had posted a number of political posters in the classroom and they had agreed.

As we wrote at the time:

"On the poster appeared the phrase very prominently, "by any means necessary" along with other phrases from one of Malcom X's most famous speeches.

This is a phrase comes from this context:

"We declare our right on this earth...to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary."

The next day, the student came back and found that the poster had been taken down and in front of the class and was told that it was a "terrorist" message.

A few weeks later, this same student was asked to give a speech in front of the school during Human Relations Week about a civil rights incident that he had experienced. He was given a choice and decided to do it on this specific incident. He then gave them an advanced copy of the speech which they approved. He was told that he could not specifically mention the teacher and he agreed to this.

He then delivered the speech, he did not mention the teacher's name. Apparently the teacher however walked out during the speech, he and his parents were called in by the Vice-Principal."

The text of the speech was approved apparently by the powers that be. However, according to some, the student changed parts of the speech and made critical remarks to the teacher.

Because of the criticism of the teacher in the speech, the student was suspended for three days.

According to the student, this is a copy of the text of the speech that was actually read during the assembly.

Versions of the incident vary depending on who you ask. From my perspective, a three day suspension for an offense that does not include physical danger or illegal activity is inappropriate. A further problem is a school policy that is in the process of being changed, whereby students are punished academically for being suspended. This is problematic since most students suspended are academically at risk to begin with.

This leads us to another concern from the high school campus and really beyond--the achievement gap.

The basics of the achievement gap are well-known by now. Each candidate for school board expressed great concern for it. At a fundamental level, white and Asian students perform consistently and statistically significantly higher than do African-American and Hispanic students.

In fact it is worse than that. The most chilling statistic is that when you control for education level of the parents, and you look only at children of college educated parents, the achievement gap still remains. This means it is something beyond merely economic or educational differences between black and Hispanic families and white and Asian families.

Last spring, Davis High School Catalysts for Social Justice presented research on a number of tough topic including achievement gap, suspension rate differentials, and lack of minority hires.

That presentation is summarized here.

Early in May, Tansey Thomas, a community leader stood up before the school board and spoke at length about a "Racial Climate Assessment Report" that was done in the early 90s. This report laid out a series of concerns and problems that existed at the time. It made a series of recommendations.

Here are some of the specific recommendations made:

"The District should establish... no later than the 1990-91 school year, a district-wide multicultural curriculum committee... [that] should oversee and assist in implementation of the plan within the District. The responsibilities of the committee should include developing staff training programs, curriculum materials, and other similar matters."

"The district needs to employ a specialist in multicultural education who can provide assistance to the administrative staff in the areas of staff development and development of multicultural curriculum materials."

"To promote teacher input, a committee of teachers should be established at each site."

"Job responsibilities of all school personnel should include being knowledgeable of, and attentive to, the educational needs of students from diverse cultural backgrounds... Training should be broad, covering all aspects of human relations and multicultural education."

"The district should promote follow-through, such as peer coaching, where teachers can have other experienced staff observe, evaluate, and provide feedback concerning the implmenetation of teaching principles and methodologies covered in the training."

"A strong consideration in the selection of Mentor Teachers in the District for the next several years should be their skill in multicultural education."

"As part of its affirmative action program, the District should focus on strategies to attract and hire qualified applicants with diverse cultural backgrounds who are trained in multicultural education."

"The district should offer more kinds of programs such as Global Education in which teachers learn about different cultures within the United States and in other countries."

"The District needs to develop ways to help students realize their academic potential... a State task force recommended that local school districts review their policies to deliberately expose minority students to a strong academic background and prepare them for higher education."

"Assessments every two years or on an annual basis, as needed, should be made to evaluate the progress the District is making in improving the racial/ethnic climate in Davis schools."

The big concern of course is that this report could have been written today. And in fact, what happened was it gathered dust on a shelf. It was never implemented. The school district has gone to great measures to really just reinvent the wheel.

It does us little good to have studies, to discover that the same problems exist, but not to follow through on those recommendations.

Unfortunately these are just a few of the issues that arose during this year.

We also had a group of parents in frustration threaten to boycott the district's STAR testing.

And the Interim Superintendent Richard Whitmore was concerned enough about this threat to personally respond on the Vanguard.

There was also conflict within some of the parents and students at the high school that led to the shutdown of the Black Student Union. This led to protests and marches.

Finally, just when it appeared things had calmed down after a long summer break, school started again, and the district began a crackdown of truancy at the same time the police began a crackdown on underaged students giving rides to other students (which is against the law). The combination led to mass confusion until everything was sorted out.

The Vanguard would run a four-part series on the truancy issue.

The first installment focused on the meeting itself. Newly promoted Director of Student Services, Pam Mari was put into an awful position at this time. She later told me that she was under the mistaken impression that the school board actually knew what was going on. They did not. Therefore, the lack of material and information fed into the confusion by the school board.

This was coupled with a fundamental misunderstand of what the term "truancy sweep" meant. Most of us took it to mean that the police were going around the community to round up students. What we would later learn is that they were using the term "sweep" as the police would to mean an operation that has a specific focus and goal, in this case to get the 15-20 worst truancy offenders back into class.

However, that is not what it looked like in mid-September when this story broke.

The confusion was perhaps best summed up by Amanda Lopez-Lara, the student representative on the school board.

"It was when the student representative on the board spoke, Amanda López-Lara, that it became more clear that what was being described by Pam Mari looked very different from the student perspective.

"Today was probably the first day most students were actually told these rules. We had never heard of them before, we were not aware of them. I agree it is very good to kid the kids into class again, because I do know there’s a problem at the high school especially with a lot of kids just skipping class and going to parks. But one concern I do have is that a lot of people appreciate Mark Hicks, and I know a lot of kids who are at-risk students who really respect him, but one concern that I had is that I know today during lunch, the whole high school was scared. We were scared because we went to lunch, we weren’t necessarily scared but we were made nervous, because we went out and I don’t think I’ve see that many cop cars at the high school. I saw one across the street, and two and each entrance, and then once I went down the street I’ve had my license for a year, so I wasn’t nervous, but what did make me nervous is that there were cop cars going up or down and I know that there were some students pulled over. I know one student who actually had his license for year and there was a misunderstanding between himself and the police officer. But I do know that a lot of students afterwards were feeling very nervous and had a lot of apprehension towards the police officers."

Furthermore she stated:

"I’m an A student, I have no truancy problems, and I know that made me nervous.""

School Board members Jim Provenza and Tim Taylor expressed concern about this type of seemingly overly broad approach to fighting truancy.

At one point, Board Member Taylor in frustration summed up his concerns:

"Pam with all due respect that is interesting, but Jim’s point is that a student with all the reason in the world to be going to the bank, shouldn’t be stopped… It doesn’t matter that once their stopped and police run a check on them that fifteen minutes later they are let out of police control, the problem is the being stopped in the first place. I have a huge concern about it… [He stated he is supportive of the mission to reduce truancy] but there are limits, and I think the limits that Jim is identifying in his question are the ones that I am concerned about.”

Here's the full article on the first meeting itself.

It was not until later the next week after a conversation with Davis Police Lt. Darren Pytel that it became clearer that what was conveyed at the school board meeting was not the entire story (fortunately).

Meanwhile the Vanguard met with a number of students who demonstrated the confusion and concerns that students had with the confluence of two policy decisions that appeared to the students to be one and the same.

By November 2, a new meeting laid out to the board what was really going on--telling the board in a way that should have been done in the first place. This time, in addition to Pam Mari, the Davis Police, the District Attorney's Office, and other agencies involved were there to provide additional information.

"To her credit, Pam Mari, Davis Joint Unified School District Director of Student Services admitted that the previous conversation did not go as well as was hoped. However, she suggested that communications have drastically improved.

As so often seems to be the case, there was a miscommunication about expectations. She seemed to believe that the board already knew what was going on with regards to truancy, when in fact they clearly did not. It should be noted of course, that this was her first presentation in her present position. Nevertheless, the entire incident underscores the need for communication to occur at a high level.

Unlike the September meeting, Pam Mari was flanked by Lt. Darren Pytel of the Davis Police Department who was able to clarify the role of the police as it relates to issues of truancy. Also present were Trease Peterson, the Youth Intervention Specialist, and representatives from the Yolo County Probations department and the Yolo County DA's office (Patty Fong).

Lt. Darren Pytel made it clear to the public that the use of the term "sweep" meant something different to the police than to the public. To the public the perception was that they would go around town and attempt to round up youths who might not be in school. "We have no intent to do that." Instead, they have found that a lot of high school students, when being truant, end up hanging around in the park next to school. If this is the situation they encounter then they approach the students with a consensual stop and ask them where they should be. According to Lt. Pytel, most students are fairly honest about what they should be doing."

The bottom line here is an illustration as to why communication within the district and between agencies would have spared a lot of people, a lot of grief.

Things would calm down after this, but it was a tumultuous year on the Davis High School Campus.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Commentary: An Inappropriate and Insulting Choice For "Teacher of the Year"

Talk about burying your lead, buried toward the end of the Davis Enterprise article highlighting the Senior Awards Night at Davis High School on Tuesday night, in the last four paragraphs is a seemingly innocuous reporting of the recipient of the Rotary Teacher Service Award, otherwise known as, Teacher of the Year.

This year it was awarded to Math teacher Jana Henry. The Davis Enterprise Reporter Maddy Ryen, likely had no idea what kind of story she was actually reporting. This is because Jana Henry was involved in a story that the Davis Enterprise has not once reported on. In fact, even Davis Vanguard readers likely would not have recognized the name, because the Vanguard has done Ms. Henry the courtesy of not reporting her name.

The passage reads:

Math teacher Jana Henry received the Rotary Teacher Service Award, more commonly known as the Teacher of the Year award. Henry, who came to DHS in 2002, received “glowing nominations” from her students, including one who said, “I go to (her) class in a bad mood and leave in merry spirits.”

Cawley noted Henry's “countless hours offering extra tutoring” and her use of technology in the classroom to assist students. He also praised her personal connection with students.

“I'm just really honored,” Henry said of receiving the award. “I just love my job and teaching the kids.”

However, Davis High School Principal Michael Cawley certainly knew the story, and that makes his words and the award all the more appalling. You see Jana Henry is the teacher who pulled the Malcolm X poster off the wall of her classroom that led to the suspension of the Davis High School student for three days for giving a speech in front of the student body that described what happened and how he felt about the teacher singling him out in front of the class and calling the poster "a terrorist message."

We have always done Ms. Henry the courtesy of not reporting her name. But this is too much. In fact, this lies in the realm of the absurd. Just as last year it was absurd that Officer Pheng Ly, accused of serious violations of the rights of a minor and facing a pending federal law suit, would be awarded with Officer of the Year.

In fact, this is worse than that because unlike the case of Officer Ly where you could make the argument at least that he may have had other achievements that could warrant an award, this incident severely impacted Ms. Henry's service record as a teacher.

The audacity of it all is that Mr. Cawley, who knew full well of Ms. Henry's situation and the way that she handled it, had the temerity to praise "her personal connection with students."

Shall we recount her connection with students. There is the incident itself which was handled quite badly. The student brought in the poster and put it up on the wall. Ms. Henry became uncomfortable with it, and frankly that is her right, however, instead of privately discussing with the student why she deemed it inappropriate, she berated him before the class, humiliating and embarrassing him.

We could chalk up that incident as poor judgment and move on, but it becomes a pattern, when she leaves the auditorium in tears.

She compounds it, when the school district makes the determination that the suspension was inappropriate and reinstates the student. She refuses to teach the student again. When the district deems that she is required to teach the student again, she refuses to teach. And for two months she is out of teaching and it is announced to the student body that she has left the teaching position.

After nearly two months of not teaching, suddenly she is back teaching on June 4 and less than a week later is awarded with the Teacher of the Year award.

The Vanguard has nothing against this teacher and wishes her well and hopes she can resume teaching. It is clear that things were not handled appropriately and that she was harmed by the lack of appropriate guidance by the administration on her own campus. However, to award her with teacher of the year is frankly an insult to the other teachers who did not shirk their responsibilities and leave their students high and dry as they prepared for crucial AP examinations. It is an insult to the parents and students who had to take additional tutoring to take the AP exams. For those who had to spend extra time because Ms. Henry did not follow on her commitments. And those students who suffered academically due to the disruption that this caused.

Frankly this is close to the most appalling thing that I have seen in this community, and that is saying something. The school board needs to investigate how this was allowed to happen. And frankly I have real questions about the Principal of the High School anyway, but this just adds fuel to the fire.

The school district and Principal Michael Cawley owe this community an explanation.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Friday Afternoon Briefs: Vanguard to Have Farmer's Market Booth and Much More

Vanguard to Host Farmer's Market Booth

The People's Vanguard of Davis will host a booth at the Davis Farmer's Market tomorrow. We will have literature and discussions about local issues.

In addition, a key attraction will be two petitions calling for the end of the Iraq War. One of which will demand a cut-off of funding immediately except that which is necessary bring home the troops and support the veterans after the get back home. The other will have a time-table for a withdrawal and no funding without a deadline by which troops must be home. Both of these petitions are supported by veterans' groups. People will be free to sign the one that they are most comfortable with signing or have a discussion about the issue.

Here's the language:

"We the undersigned do not support funding the Iraq war. We ask that Congress cut off all funding to the war for any purpose other than for bringing the troops home, veteran's needs, and rebuilding Iraq."

"We the undersigned do not support funding the Iraq war without setting definitive deadlines for troop withdrawal and supporting veteran's needs and rebuilding Iraq."

Student Activists Organize Around Malcolm X and Sodexho

Last night at the Silo on the UC Davis campus, more than 50 students and activists met for a panel discussion on a list of topics that ranged from Malcolm X to Civil Rights to modern activism. The group organized by UC Davis student Devon Lee, brought people of various groups and activism together in hopes of networking and branching out to create a new progressive movement in Davis. Devon Lee was one of the chief organizers last year of student march from the MU to the Davis Police Station in protest of racial profiling practices.

One of the panelists a long time civil rights leader helped to organize people against racial profiling in the West Sacramento area and spoke of the success in fighting the gang injunction. Moreover he cautioned people that West Sacramento Police continue to target minorities and that that struggle is still ongoing.

One of the panelists included Javier Ortiz, a Chicano Studies lecturer, remarked that this was the first time he had seen a large black contingent of students on the UC Davis campus.

Activism was a large topic of conversation, with students expressing difficulty in organizing given a heavy class load and many students needing to work multiple jobs in order to pay for the ever rising cost of tuition.

There were several representatives from Students Organizing For Change, the group leading the protests to make food service workers university employees instead of Sodexho employees. They talked about ways in which people can be active and organize in a short period of time using modern resources such as Facebook and the Internet.

My wife, Cecilia Escamilla Greenwald spoke both as a former member of the HRC and current Union organizer with SEIU. She talked about the need to take direct action and spoke of her experience of helping the Janitor's in Houston to organize and obtain union status and get a new contract that substantially raised the level of pay and benefits for over 5,200 workers.

Shh... Don't Tell Officer Ly

In the Halema Buzayan case last year, Officer Ly determined that Ms. Buzayan was lying about her claim that she was not driving that evening, based on a head scarf. Her mother was wearing a head scarf that evening and she was not. Officer Ly reasoned in a recording, that he felt that the witnesses would have mentioned a head scarf. Attorneys for the family have seized upon this as evidence of Officer Ly prosecuting on the basis of a misunderstanding about their religious attire and a contention that Ms. Buzayan since she was not wearing the head scarf that evening, never wore a head scarf. In fact, she does and she did last night.

Here is a picture with my wife Cecilia and Halema's brother, Mahamed, showing Halema in a headscarf. All three of these individuals have been involved in controversial events in the last year.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Malcolm X and Modern Community Civil Rights Leaders Honored in Davis

In 2005, the Davis City Council acting on a recommendation from the Davis Human Relations commission passed a proclamation to recognize and celebrate the birthday of Malcolm X on May 19. This proclamation was approved and signed by Mayor Ruth Asmundson.

Among the provisions in that proclamation was a recognition of the role of Islam and an awareness of the importance of Malcolm X to the broader population of America:

"Whereas, Malcolm X has become a legend and a hero for Black and White youth alike. No one Black man has so captured the imagination and allegiance of BLack young people as has Malcolm X."

When the Human Relations Commission drew up a similar proposal for 2006, however, Don Saylor objected and was joined by Ruth Asmundson and Ted Puntillo in voting against such a recognition. Sue Greenwald and Stephen Souza abstained but did not object.

Bill Calhoun, a long time African American resident and among the first African American teachers in Davis, sat on the HRC. He was outraged by both the decision to oppose a Malcolm X Proclamation and by the way way the Council treated the issue during the meeting.

As a result, last year, Bill Calhoun out of his own pocket, rented the council chambers and presented a movie on the life of Malcolm X that over fifty members of the community attended.

It is unfortunate the Davis City Council has not seen fit to both honor a civil rights leader but also to educate the community about who Malcolm X was and what he stood for. What a lot of people forget is that Malcolm X himself had come to see the errors of some of his ways and embraced a much more peaceful and inclusive message prior to his death, and it were those views that in many ways led to his untimely death.

We have had in this community an incident where the misconceptions about Malcolm X led to very serious consequence. The student who was suspended for that incident was awarded on Saturday evening and he said as the result of the incident and his speech, many students have come up to him and said that this caused them to learn much more about who Malcolm X was and many in fact, had not heard of Malcolm X prior to the incident. This was a seminal figure in American history and we are not educating out children about his role--the good and the bad. The City of Davis has not helped in that educational capacity and the manner in which they pulled this man's celebration from their long list of recognitions.



This year, Mr. Calhoun was able to secure the Library Blanchard Hall for the event. In addition to the movie, Mr. Calhoun award a number of individuals and groups for civil rights achievements.

This included:

Human Rights Award: Sue Chan
Civil Rights Award: Dean Johansson
Outstanding Student Leader Award: Hui-Ling Malone
Outstanding Courage Award: Jamal Buzayan and Mohamed Buzayan
Lifetime Achievement Award: Richard and Elaine Patterson
Outstanding Student Organization Award: DHS Black Student Union

Upcoming Event:

A reminder that tonight at the DHS Multippurpose Room at 7 PM will be a presentation by Catalysts for Social Justice (formerly Youth in Focus) who will discuss "Growing Up Bricial in Davis.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

History Repeats: "Racial Climate Assessment Report" Reads as Though it Was Written Today

As we discussed last week, the school board listened to District Climate Coordinator Mel Lewis discuss the climate action report that he was implementing. Not surprisingly it called for a number of new programs, courses, surveys, and a number of other recommendations to deal with some of the issues of racism, discrimination, bullying, and harassment that the district has now faced for a long period of time.

As many in the room remarked, the programs suggested and the goals themselves are laudable. It was an impressive presentation. We already spoke at length about a pilot program called the safe schools ambassador's program. This was just the beginning of a long series of recommendations for improvement in the school climate.

We had expressed concerns about the Yale Survey that was mailed to the houses of parents and also sent home with students. As we discussed at the time, the survey really did not appear to address the key issues that were facing the school district. Our inquiry into the rationale by the district produced an explanation for this, but did not alleviate our concerns. The survey has been implemented as a generic survey that will yield the district some information that can be compared at the national level. The district personnel did not feel they had the resources or the expertise to design their own and more comprehensive survey. Still, as suggested at the time, this does not address the key issues of racism, discrimination, bullying and harassment and instead asks a series of generic questions that aim to ascertain the condition of the schools and rapport that the principals have with the teachers.

Nevertheless, those reservations aside, there was little in the school action climate plan that one can criticize. That is until Tansey Thomas stood up and spoke about the "Racial Climate Assessment Report" that was prepared for the Davis Joint Unified School District in 1990.

Ms. Thomas, a long time community activist, pointed out that this report made a number of great recommendations, but it was never implemented by the school district. In fact, the school district for the most part flat out refused to implement it or even adhere to its voted on policies. The result of this failure of follow-through and implementation is that the only thing that has changed since the report was written was the statewide passage of a law that prohibits affirmative action in public schools-—the finding and recommendations are all there and just needs to be updated to include Prop. 209 (end of Affirmative Action).

As Ms. Thomas said, “I don’t know why we want to start over again, everything that was a problem then, is a problem now. It’s like we’ve gone nowhere… That we form another study group, start another cycle, and it goes nowhere.”

Reading through the report, it is very easy to see where Tansey Thomas' skepticism came from.

Here are some of the specific recommendations that the 1990 made...

"The District should establish... no later than the 1990-91 school year, a district-wide multicultural curriculum committee... [that] should oversee and assist in implementation of the plan within the District. The responsibilities of the committee should include developing staff training programs, curriculum materials, and other similar matters."

"The district needs to employ a specialist in multicultural education who can provide assistance to the administrative staff in the areas of staff development and development of multicultural curriculum materials."

"To promote teacher input, a committee of teachers should be established at each site."

"Job responsibilities of all school personnel should include being knowledgeable of, and attentive to, the educational needs of students from diverse cultural backgrounds... Training should be broad, covering all aspects of human relations and multicultural education."

"The district should promote follow-through, such as peer coaching, where teachers can have other experienced staff observe, evaluate, and provide feedback concerning the implmenetation of teaching principles and methodologies covered in the training."

"A strong consideration in the selection of Mentor Teachers in the District for the next several years should be their skill in multicultural education."

"As part of its affirmative action program, the District should focus on strategies to attract and hire qualified applicants with diverse cultural backgrounds who are trained in multicultural education."

"The district should offer more kinds of programs such as Global Education in which teachers learn about different cultures within the United States and in other countries."

"The District needs to develop ways to help students realize their academic potential... a State task force recommended that local school districts review their policies to deliberately expose minority students to a strong academic background and prepare them for higher education."

"Assessments every two years or on an annual basis, as needed, should be made to evaluate the progress the District is making in improving the racial/ethnic climate in Davis schools."

This report also activated numerous committees and bodies with oversight power over the implementation most specifically the Davis Joint Unified School District's Human Relations Committee (NOT to be confused with the Davis Human Relations Commission chartered by the city). The DJUSD HRC was given the authority to oversee and implement these programs and changes and to monitor progress. None of these recommendations were ultimately followed and many of the recommendations on this list have been launched anew this year in the latest report.

There has not been sufficient follow-through on the racial/ethnic climate issues facing the district. By 2003, the district was forced to confront this issue once again in the face of an angry mob, the result of a long meeting between the Davis Human Relations Commission and the school district, where hundreds of students and parents came forward to press then Superintendent Murphy to deal with issues of racism and bullying at the high school. It was only then that the district would become serious again about these issues and it formed its Climate Coordinator position--a half time position--in response.

As we see currently, the district is doing the exact same thing in essence it did in the late 1980s and early 1990s--developing multicultural curriculum. Mel Lewis discussed last week the development of curriculum, programs, and in fact there is a new course that addresses this topic, “Race Relations and Social Justice in U.S. History,” that has been approved for next year. They are still trying to increase the diversity of the certificated staff--the number of minority teachers remains alarming low despite the acknowledgment of this problem 17 years ago. They are trying to implement and improve mentoring programs.

The achievement gap which will be discussed at length next week as the task force gives their report continues to be a huge problem despite the realization of the problem 17 years ago.

One of the major problems facing the 1990 report was the lack of historical continuity and institutional coherence. There is constant turnover in district personnel, elected officials, and even activists. At the meeting last week, very few seemed to be aware of the existence of this report, in fact, only five years after the report was written, the same could be said. The DJUSD Human Relations Committee was charged with overseeing and monitoring school progress on this report, but that fell by the way-side because by 1994, none of the members on that commission even knew of its existence.

In short, had the district simply implemented the policies from 1990, they would have been in much better shape much faster than they are now.

There is nothing wrong with the recommendations made last week, many of them were made in one form or another in 1990. The question remains will the school district have follow-through on these through changes in the elected board members and through times when this is not a hot-burning issue on the forefront of the public's consciousness. That remains to be seen, unfortunately, history has a tendency to repeat and in Davis, the history of race relations has indeed proved that aphorism to be true.

The one burning question we all must ask is how do we ensure that these recommendations--which all seem good and beneficial to the school climate--get implemented, enforced, and that future bodies engage in active fall-through? That seems to be the most daunting task that a collective of well-intentioned people in the school district and in this community must grapple with.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Davis Joint Unified School District Begins to Tackle Diversity Issues

Last night at the school board meeting, there were two presentations, one made by Mel Lewis, the Climate Coordinator on the Climate Action Plan which we reported a bit on yesterday and will talk more about in the coming days. Then Interim Superintendent Richard Whitmore presented a report on addressing the needs of a diverse community.

One of the big issues that has come up time and time again with respect to diversity is the lack of African American and other minority teachers in the school district as a whole. There have been many complaints that there are zero African American teachers at the high school.

Interim Superintendent Richard Whitmore addressed this issue last night.

“First, with respect to hiring… we do understand the desire of the community to have teachers that reflect the diversity of the community, so we’ve really tried to ramp up our efforts on the recruiting front.”

Along those lines, the human resources directors have attended recruiting fairs across California—especially in diverse communities such as Sacramento, Carson, and Fresno. However, as Mr. Whitmore suggested,

“I think it would be fair to say that those recruiting fairs did not turn up a lot, it turns out that when you are competing against LA Unified, and LA Unified will offer you a job without a credential, if you have a BA degree, and their starting salary, and their starting salary is actually fairly attractive it’s really hard for us to compete and hard to draw people in to kind of a smaller community that isn’t as well known outside the immediate area.”

Other approaches have been to retain a search firm with a data base of thousands of candidates and a higher proportion of “teachers of color.” They are looking to fill 3 to 5 openings now at the high school and a smaller number in elementary and junior high school. They are also looking at expediting their hiring process by issue a letter of intent in front of good candidates to move up the process. They have often found themselves behind the curve, rather than ahead of the curve in this process.

Board Member Tim Taylor made an essential point.

“One of the problems that I’m absolutely convinced that this district has is that the inability to attract certain candidates is because they feel that they will be in an isolated environment when they get here. And we present that isolated environment to them, unintentionally, but when we go out to these recruiting fairs. And so we need to figure out a way that we can have some kind of a linkage or at least a connection that they can feel before they make the jump to here, because otherwise they won’t make the jump and that’s proven out from time and time and time again, whether we are going to North Carolina, whether we are going to Los Angeles, whether we are going to the Philippines. It’s not rocket science to figure it out and maybe we need to change our approach when we are going out to meet with folks, and make sure that there is a feeling of comfort which sometimes comes with when you see people like yourself. And Davis already has an aura about it that is somewhat concerning to people on the outside.”

Taylor in my view, nailed it on this statement. Davis does not have a good reputation to people of color who both live in this community and those who have heard about the community. It is unfortunately not a place where a lot of minorities have a desire to win, due in part to its reputation. Due also to some of the things that Nikki Smith said last week at the Human Relations Commission about being an exemplar and a role model and having a tremendous amount of pressure as one of a few minority and African American teachers in the district. I think as Mr. Taylor very aptly suggests is something that is going to take a lot of work to repair. And frankly from my experience in this community, a lot of people do not want to hear that and it was nice that Mr. Taylor was the one to say it last night.

Some of the other things they are looking at are the Unconscious Bias project—looking at what types of unconscious bias might exist and instruments to measure what kinds of unconscious bias you might bring to the classroom. This is a pilot project that has been in the works here in Davis for some time. (Click here for more information).

There are a couple of key theoretical and practical assumptions that underlie this program. First that all of us have basic “cognitive biases that influence how we perceive and make decisions about other people and that we are often guided by racial and other stereotypes of which we are completely unaware.” However, most Americans believes that racism and discrimination are things of the past and that makes it difficult to talk about racism and discrimination. Finally, we need to be able to confront these unconscious racial biases in order to eliminate some of the discriminatory practices—especially those that are unintended.

Another program coming to the high school is a class taught by Dr. Jann Murray-Garcia on “Race Relations and Social Justice in U.S. History” that has been approved for next year. The superintendent reported that the Black Student Union is back on campus and will be choosing new officers in the next few weeks and will be planning for its future. The suspension of the BSU had been a tremendous focal point in recent months, so its reformation is a positive step forward that will hopefully help to deal with some of the concerns that have been expressed in recent weeks.

At the next school board meeting they will be looking at the findings of the Achievement Gap Task Force. One of the things that Mr. Whitmore spoke about last night was student preparedness for post-secondary education. He looked at A-G completion and found that at the district level, the 2004-05 (most recent years available) that DJUSD Latinos/ Hispanics had a 32.8% completion rate which compares of course and as expected favorably with the county which had a 19.1% rate and the state which had a 24% completion rate. Likewise African Americans had a 41.7% completion rate compared with 28.9 percent at the county and 25.2 percent in the state. However as Mr. Whitmore suggested, while the statistics compare well to the county and state, for all students in this district, the completion rate is 67.8%, and so Hispanics and African Americans are dramatically lower than the district average (which itself is also well-above the state average).

There are several things that he is planning to examine in the future. First, they will look at the use of data to ensure equal access to the core curriculum and a successful base of academic skills for every student. Second, they will create professional programs for all staff on disaggregating data.

Third, they will review suspension and expulsion policies. There is a widespread belief among the students, as four years of survey data at the high school attest, that suggest a discrepancy in the punishment for African American and Hispanic students versus those for white and Asian students. So the Superintendent is going to begin to analyze their policies and hopefully this data to enable them to see if this is indeed the case (the data relate to perceptions of policy rather than practices). They also want to look at other ways to punish students other than simply suspension. For example, in the case of the DHS Malcolm X incident, it seems to me, that if this was indeed a punishable offense (which is questionable in itself), that there should have been other remedies aside from a three day suspension available to the administrators at Davis High School.

Finally on a related point, also relating to current issues they are going to review the grading policies that conflate behavior and academic performance. Here the problem is that students who are suspended not only get punished for their behavior but also academically. Many of the students who get punished for behavioral problems already have academic problems and so if they have to take zeroes on their coursework that they miss, they are simply falling further behind their contemporaries. That institutes a duel punishment and one that is not conducive to the overall goal of helping students academically who have behavioral problems. While this was not the case with the student involved in the DHS Malcolm X incident, the student nevertheless suffered greatly academically by missing several key exams. While there is of course a need to punish behavior, it does not make much sense to also punish the students academically.

While many of these changes sound good, the problem has never been coming up with good ideas, it has been following through on them. We shall talk about this again with regards to the climate programs that Mel Lewis talked about. But, Tansey Thomas, a long time community activist pointed out a 1990 report on Intergroup Group Study and a 1992 Task Force as a result of a report from the Department of Education. This report made a number of great recommendations, but it was never implemented. The only thing that has changed since the report—the finding and recommendations are all there and just needs to be updated to include Prop. 209 (end of Affirmative Action).

As Ms. Thomas said, “I don’t know why we want to start over again, everything that was a problem then, is a problem now. It’s like we’ve gone nowhere… That we form another study group, start another cycle, and it goes nowhere.”

This illustrates that while these presentations and reports sound good, if they are not implemented, nothing comes of them obviously.

Clearly the school district needs to follow through on much of these programs, but what was presented last night was tremendous in at least beginning to address many of the longstanding complaints—and these are complaints that were made over 20 years ago and probably long for that. Now the district needs to as they say—make these institutional and ongoing, so that this does not come up every so often in response to crises in the district.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Thursday Briefs: A look at the 5th Senate District Race and More

A look at the 5th Senate District Race

From yesterday’s column, Davis Enterprise Columnist Bob Dunning appears to be calling the race for current Assemblywoman Lois Wolk.

Writes Dunning:

“SACRIFICIAL LAMB … wow, was that a scary headline or what? … you know, the front-page, above-the-fold, double-bold beauty that said "Republican gears up for Senate run," and featured mug shots of the Republican, Greg Aghazarian, and a Democrat by the name of Lois Wolk … is this guy off his rocker or did he lose a bet and this is the way he has to pay it off? … if Lois wants this job, she's a lock …”

Perhaps the “Wary One” has simply confused this with the 8th Assembly District that Assemblywoman Wolk currently holds which is indeed a safe Democratic seat. The 5th Senate District, if one might recall, is anything but a safe seat for Democrats.

In 2004, incumbent Senator Mike Machado had to stave off a furious challenge from Stockton Mayor Gary Podesto to eke out a narrow 52.2 to 47.8 win. A race that for most of the election was a complete toss-up and Machado was widely viewed as endangered. He managed to stave off the challenge by making the case that Podesto was too conservative for the district.

While it is true that the district has around a 12 percent registration advantage for Democrats, many of those are more conservative valley Democrats rather than the more liberal Democrats of Yolo County and particularly Davis. Though Wolk is not a typical Davis liberal, it might be easy to paint her as one to voters in the southern part of the district.

Greg Aghazarian is a sitting Assemblyman who will have the full backing from the State Republican Party because this is one of the few seats that are in play—especially with no incumbent in the race and possibly two legislators squaring off. This will be a hard fought battle for the Democrats to hold this seat.

However, before we get to November 2008, we might want to look at June of 2008. Because there is a formidable opponent awaiting Wolk for the Democratic Nomination. That is current UC Merced Vice-Chancellor John Garamendi, Jr. His father is currently the Lt. Governor of the State of California. Garamendi, Jr. has strong ties to Davis and Yolo County as well. His father represented the area when he was State Senator. And Garamendi, Jr. has resided in Davis himself.

Garamendi has let it be known that he will be a candidate and he will announce sometime early this summer. In the meantime, it appears that unions and other interests are quietly lining up behind him. Wolk has been scrambling for the last four months for endorsements.

This will be one of the toughest primary challenges we will see in the state and with a 25,000 vote registration advantage in the part of the district which Wolk does not represent, it is not clear that this is hers to win. She is certainly far from a lock. Stay tuned…


Update on the DHS Situation

In a letter dated May 1, 2007, Davis Senior High School Principal Michael Cawley informed parents that the teacher involved in the Malcolm X Poster incident has now taken a leave of absence. The teacher had previously with the backing of the DHS contingent of the DTA requested that the student be moved to another class. The district has apparently denied that request and now the teacher has refused to teach.

With the AP Calculus Exam pending, the school is making several tutoring sessions available to students during lunch and after school in an “effort to ensure students receive extra time and support necessary to be successful on their upcoming AP exams…”

This situation has still not been put to rest and I must now question the leadership of the Principal and Vice Principal who have apparently failed to bring the situation to a more amicable conclusion. It is my opinion that a good Principal could have stepped in long ago to allow both the teacher and student to return to class. At this point, we also have to question the judgment and maturity of the teacher. It was clear from the beginning that the situation was poorly handled by the teacher and administration; however, to allow this to continue is irresponsible. The school board and superintendent need to begin to quietly ask the tough questions as to why this has continued for as long as it has.

Good Quotes in Response to “Illegal Immigration Capture the Flag” Game

Davis Enterprise Reporter Claire St. John has written an excellent piece covering the ill-fated and ill-advised “Illegal Immigration Capture the Flag” Game by the Davis College Republicans on the UC Davis Campus.

There were two outstanding quotes, one by Babajide Olupona, a UC Davis student who went to Davis High School and served as youth commissioner to the HRC:

"The thing about it is, as a student out here, the idea of having this (game) on this particular day and during La Raza Cultural Days shows how narrow-minded these people are," said fourth-year sociology and African American studies student Babajide Olupona. "I really thought this was a joke. I can't believe this."

And UC Davis Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef, himself a target for some of the May Day protests in Davis:

"I was very disappointed that a small group of our students yesterday attempted to play an 'Illegal Immigrant Capture the Flag' game," Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef said in a statement e-mailed this morning. "In my view, it was clearly disrespectful and violated our Principles of Community.

You can read these Principles of Community here.

One that stands out in violation:

“We affirm the right of freedom of expression within our community and affirm our commitment to the highest standards of civility and decency towards all.”

Chancellor Vanderhoef is exactly right, the counter-protest did not adhere to those standards of civility and decency. This was clearly a case where a group of people were treated without dignity and civility and the Davis College Republicans not only deserve criticism, but as many pointed out, probably hurt their own cause by performing a game that would have been more likely to alienate and anger, than build bridges of understanding. Whose mind would they have changed by playing this game?

I believe deeply in the right to free speech and I wish they would have been allowed to play their game. But I also believe in the right to criticize and ridicule people’s choices for modes of expression. This one was not a good one and it deserved to be criticized. I hope that the organizers can learn from this experience, but from the quotes, it seems all they can see is that their rights to expression were violated rather than what they perhaps could have done differently next time to be a more effective voice for their own cause.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

"School Climate Survey" Missing Key Issues

In response to the Harper Junior High School incident last fall where a student was repeatedly harassed based on his fathers same-sex relationship, the district developed a number of programs including the school climate action plan as a means to assess the school climate and begin to attempt to teach students about diversity. One of the items on tonight's agenda will look at the steps needed to be taken to address the needs of a diverse community. This includes such important issues as hiring teachers and other staff who reflect our student demographics. This seems to be a strong and positive step that address some of the key concerns that have been presented here in recent weeks.

However, just before that item, another item appears on the agenda tonight at the Davis Joint Unified School Board meeting which will inform the school board on the climate action plan which includes the "school climate survey" which contains 41 questions and was supposedly mailed out to all of the parents in the school district.

According to the agenda:

"This Action Plan has been developed and reviewed by principals, the District School Climate Council, and site staffs. The Yale Survey has been delivered to each site, Holmes Junior High has obtained a grant and has held Safe School Ambassador training, assemblies on school climate are being presented, and many more complementary activities are happening to implement the actions in this plan. This is continuous work that will be focused in the future on the new comprehensive survey results.

The Yale Survey will be administered during the first 2 weeks in May, and the results returned prior to the end of the school year. The results will be shared with the district and at the sites through staff meetings, within classrooms, Site Councils, PTA, and School Climate Committees. Further actions will be developed from these results."

While I increasingly believe that a lot of the problems stem from the lack of responsiveness and poor handling from school administrators, I think that a good school climate survey could be a very informative means for the school district to assess the problems that exist in the schools.

The operational word here being "good" and the operational phrase being "climate survey."

An enraged parent delivered a copy of the survey for me. Perhaps the district has a different sense of what "school climate" means than the rest of us because not one question relates to the issues of harassment, discrimination, race relations, bullying, diversity of faculty, or any of the major issues that we have been dealing with this school year.

I even checked to make sure that this survey was intended to test the kind of "climate" issues that the climate coordinator was hired to handle. From the agenda item and the response I got, I believe the answer is affirmative.

What is on the survey? Well there are five questions about the appearance and/ or condition of the school buildings. I do not recall the condition of our schools to be a huge issue.

There are questions about participation by parents, standard of work, the way the principal treats the students, whether the students at the school enjoy reading, whether the school has a high standard of work, etc.

It is not that some if not many of these questions are not important. It is that there are clearly questions that are left out and those are questions which deal with the key issues that have been addressed this year and those are the key issues that the school district specifically created the climate coordinator position to address. To not have any of those kinds of questions on the survey, calls into question the entire survey and the entire program.

There is simply a lot of information that the school district needs to deal with issues such as race relations, bullying, discrimination, harassment, and the like, that they will not get from this survey.

I would like to know who was involved in the selection of this survey. The agenda item mentions principals, climate council, and site staffs. It leaves me to wonder if the school board looked at this survey before it was approved and sent to all the parents in the district. From the responses I have gotten, I would suspect not. And I would like to know what oversight is available for such matters because those who I talked to were unaware of the survey's existence even, much less its content.

It is my hope that the community and the board get some key answers to this tonight at the school board meeting. I would encourage any parents involved in these issues to come to the board meeting and ask questions.

To read the full survey with all 41 questions for yourself, please click here.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

DHS Suspension: Why isn't this issue resolved?

A few weeks ago, we reported that the high school under pressure from the school board and upper administration, had rescinded the suspension of a Davis High School student that stemmed from the student's Human Relations Week speech on an incident where the student's Malcolm X poster was removed from the classroom by a teacher who stated it was promoting terrorism. At that point we had reported that because of the fast action by the school board and others, that the school district had likely avoided legal action. However, since then the situation has begun to deteriorate.

The first problem was that the teacher refused to return to her class with the student in attendance. This produced a huge problem for the school and the students because the AP Calculus Test was approaching and they had no substitute teachers with enough knowledge of calculus to take over the class. This was temporarily resolved by having the other calculus teacher take over the class. However, the school now appears to want the student to move to the other class, which is at a different time and would severely disrupt the rest of his schedule for the last five or six weeks of school. This for a suspension that has now been rescinded.

To make matters worse, an article appeared on Friday in the HUB, the student newspaper that quoted from a memo from the DHS site representatives for the Davis Teachers' Association. We have obtained a copy of this memo, which is a public record.

The memo dated April 23, 2007 makes three key points.

First:

"The staff of Davis Senior High school would like to voice its concern over the possibility of the rescission of a suspension for a DSHS student. "

Second:

"The DSHS staff is concerned about the precedent that would be set if this suspension is rescinded."

Third:

"For these reasons, the staff is also concerned that the student has not been transferred from the classroom of a staff member whose reputation was attacked by said student during his speech."

They then conclude:

"The DSHS staff through its Site Liaison requests that the suspension not be rescinded and that the student be transferred to another classroom in order to promote a safe environment for all at DSHS."

This memo has apparently caused a number of problems as it appears that the administration at the school still has not put this situation to rest. Moreover, the DTA at the high school has caused tension by speaking on behalf of all teachers when it is not clear that all teachers are in support of their insertion into this situation.

Don Winters, a popular teacher and past president of the DTA as well as a known activist in the city of Davis disagreed with the memo and expressed concern that they had made the decision to publish it without full discussion from the membership at the high school. Moreover, he did not think the memo was appropriate or agree with their conclusions. The HUB then quotes him as saying, "I've already expressed my displeasure."

However, the HUB itself caused some controversy, when it prominently attributed the quote, "I'm not calling her a biggot or a racist, but your actions reflect who you are." In fact, another student was the one who used that line and somehow it got attributed to Mr. Winters in the paper. That caused more problems and eventually led to a retraction in Monday's HUB.

At this point, the insertion of the DTA into this process has caused additional problems and headaches to a situation that should have been resolved a few weeks ago when the district rescinded the suspension. At this point, a lawsuit is almost inevitable. There has been serious disruption to this student's academic year and to the other student's academic year and climate.

The HUB reports that as a result of this incident, the student body and administration have changed their policies on speeches.

"For assemblies in the future, there will be a much more strict policy on speeches, [on] who will be able to speak and the approval process to ensure that speeches that have been approved are the ones given." [Quote attributed in the HUB to Associated Student Body President Joe Glass].

Of course, after reading the speeches, the problem did not appear to be in the fact that the student changed the speech, but rather in the approval process itself that allowed the original speech to go forward.

I remain concerned about the well-being of the teacher as well, who has apparently not handled this situation very well first by choosing to confront the student in public, next by overreacting to the speech, then by refusing to return to class, and now apparently by leaving school once again when this article came out in the paper. There have been a number of other problems that have surfaced about this teacher that give one serious pause as to her fitness to teach high school at this point in her career. This is unfortunate, because these do not seem to be malicious mistakes, but rather a series of blunders without proper support from his site administration.

In the end, I think everyone involved is hurt by this incident and a teaching moment is devolving into a legal fight that no one will win in the end.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

HRC Gets an Earful on Race Relations at the High School

For the first time since the Davis Human Relations Commission was disbanded and then reconstituted, the HRC listened to members of the public talking about their concerns about race relations at Davis High School. While the topic started out focusing on the Black Student Union (BSU) suspension, it broadened into more general complaints about racial issues at the high school and in the broader community.

The unfortunate aspect of this meeting however, was the lack of presence by the school district, which is the authority with jurisdiction over the matter. The HRC meeting coincided with a special board meeting across the street. That meeting prevented Climate Coordinator Mel Lewis from attending the HRC meeting, despite the pertinence of the issue and despite his position as liaison and ex-officio member of the body. (Update at 8:20 am 4/27/07: It was reported last night that Lewis could not attend due to the school board meeting, but we have gotten word that the meeting only dealt with the issue of the Superintendent hire and Lewis was neither at that meeting nor is he involved in that issue).

Instead, Mel Lewis and Kevin French submitted to the HRC a two-page statement that purported to summarize the events that led to the suspension of the BSU. The complaints included a number of parent who attended the BSU meeting on March 1, 2007 who did not check-in or out of campus per the requirements. Moreover he charged that "negative race-based comments were directed at the principal and coordinator of school climate activities..."

A number of attendees at the HRC meeting had been in attendance at the BSU meeting. They took issue with the statement released by Mel Lewis--calling it one-sided and distorted. They claimed on the contrary, that there were never any race-based comments. Moreover, the statement claimed "the principal suspended BSU club meetings until parties offered apologies and held reconciliatory meetings. To date, no apologies or meetings have taken place." On the contrary, members present at the meetings disputed these facts suggesting that there was never a request for such apologies or meetings as a precondition for reinstatement of the BSU. Moreover, even if true, why are they punishing the students for the actions of the parents?

While it is difficult to ascertain exactly what happened involving the BSU and a number of parents have suggested that media accounts in the Davis Enterprise and Sacramento Bee were distorted and inaccurate, some of the commissioners perhaps got too bogged down in the specific facts of this specific issue. One of the members, suggested specifically that they did not have the facts of this case and therefore it would be difficult to take any action.

To a large extent this was true, however, the point was also made that this specific incident is part of a larger problem and that the issue of race and race relations needs to be considered as a whole rather than through one specific issue. Police Ombudsman Bob Aaronson who was attending the meeting, made the point that if there is a burning building, you cannot create a subcommittee to figure out what the facts are, if you do, it will simply burn to the ground long before you get the hose there. In these cases, sometimes you must act not on the specifics of the case, but rather on the overall picture.

Interim Superintendent Richard Whitmore also sent the HRC a letter outlining the steps that the district has been taking--mostly in the form of new programs.

"We are taking steps to evaluate those existing programs and determine when and how to improve them... We will explore additional opportunities to develop and articulate a curriculum that addresses diversity, but I would caution that curriculum does not change overnight, nor does it change without appropriate training and a cycle of evaluation and improvement."

While I can respect the Interim Superintendent's difficult position, I have a number of concerns that I do not think are addressed by curriculum changes. First, I am very concerned that the district and the HRC could not coordinate on this meeting. Frankly, Mel Lewis, Ginni Davis, and Richard Whitmore needed to hear what was said at this meeting. I do not understand why there could not have been some kind of cooperative effort here, but that is what needs to happen in the field.

Second, Mel Lewis is the climate coordinator however many of the parents and students believe that he is part of the problem (along with Ginni Davis). I have not witnessed this personally, but many believe the entire situation was mishandled. Mel Lewis purportedly was going to assume the role of adviser when the previous adviser, Courtnay Tessler, stepped down, however the students wanted no part of that.

Third, the primary problems I see are not curriculum based. I have very serious concerns about the high school administration. While it seemed that the school board and superintendent did a good job with the suspension of the student involved in the Malcolm X incident, that situation has still not been resolved. Apparently the teacher has refused to return to class while the student is present. That has left the students themselves without a qualified instructor right before their AP Calculus exam. Moreover, now the district is trying to get the student to transfer classes to the other calculus class, which would cause him to rearrange his entire schedule. They have not rescinded his suspension and that may lead to him getting a poor grade in a class where he missed an exam. In short, the high school administration completely mismanaged the situation there. That has nothing to do with curriculum.

Along the same lines, many parents and community members complained that the BSU situation was mishandled. Others complained that there are no African American teachers at the high school Courtney Tessler, a white woman, had reportedly not wanted to be the adviser again, but the BSU Students came to her and told her that no one else wanted them. This sounds like a horrible message sent to the students, and something that the administration at the high school could have handled much better.

Furthermore there are four years worth of survey data of high school students that show that the perception of the high school students--even those who are white or Asian--believe that black and Latino students are given harsher punishments for the same actions as their white and Asian student counterpart.

None of these problems it would seem can be resolved by new programs or curriculum changes, they all require tough choices by the upper management of the district and the school board. Unfortunately, it seems that according to some parents at least, Mel Lewis, the person who is supposed to be solution to these problems is instead part of the problem. One of his suggestions that apparently greatly angered many in the minority community when he suggested that they take the "B" out of BSU.

Then there is the issue of the Human Relations Commission itself. Leaving aside the handling by the council of the police issue last year, what was clear watching this meeting is that the people who were on the HRC were those in the room with the least experience and knowledge about these issues. On the one hand it was good that they got to hear these stories from long-time activists and community members. On the other hand, most of the members probably had no idea that this type of thing had been happening and for how long. What the community lost when the HRC was disbanded, was a tremendous amount of collective and institutional memory.

A number of long-time and esteemed community members at this meeting provided invaluable background and insight on these issues. People like former HRC Chair Rick Gonzales who not only described a number of first-hand incidents but also described some of the things they did 20 years ago on the HRC to look into these kinds of issues. Gonzales also brought forward 35 years of educational history. Desmond Jolly, has been in this community for 35 years and spoke about some of the issues that his son faced. Dick Livingston taught at the high school for years, talked about people like former HRC member Bill Calhoun who was for a long time the only African-American teacher in the High School and now there are none at the high school.

What resonated most with me was Ombudsman Bob Aaronson's warning that this is indeed not just a school issue, but a community issue. And that if these things did not get dealt with at this level, it would quickly filter down to the incidents that he does handle. Michelle Stephens, an HRC member had probably the most forceful advocacy of action, and she mentioned that she works with adult education and that these problems just carry right on to the people she works with.

In the end, the HRC was too limited in its power to do much. There will be a joint Council-School Board Meeting on May 23, and the HRC is going to draft a statement.

The old HRC could have played a much larger role in this matter. In 2003, the issue of bullying arose. That HRC held a community meeting where the Superintendent David Murphy himself got an earful from literally hundreds in the community including parents and students, many of them in tears, many of them angry on the bullying issue. This forced district action. Even as a mere educational body, the HRC could play this type of role. But instead they will make a mere statement and a recommendation.

My own personal issues aside with the HRC and my wife's role, it was never more clear to me how much this community has lost by the changes to the HRC.

Right now this situation is starting to boil with a number members of the minority community increasingly concerned about the climate in the schools. The stories we heard last night were the tip of the iceberg. Unfortunately those with the actual power to enact changes were not there to hear them. The HRC was created in the aftermath of the murder of a Davis High School student. This is an issue that they have taken up in the past repeatedly. And now they have been strafed of their power and the community as a whole is worse off.

It was a very frustrating night but I left with a bit of a smile on my face as I know that at least for one night, the HRC members got to listen for just a few minutes to stories about the dark underbelly of the People's Republic of Davis.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Commentary: The Issue of Race Relations Reaching a Boiling Point on the Davis High Campus

On Wednesday, I received a request from Bernita Toney to have space to present her case for a Boycott of the STAR Test. Concurrently with a People's Vanguard of Davis appearance Ms. Toney, who was the subject of a feature story not long ago, would also have a letter to the editor that appeared in Friday's Davis Enterprise, in addition she spoke before the Davis Joint Unified School District school board meeting on Thursday night. My policy has generally been to grant space to most people who request it. In addition, while I will not take a public position on the boycott itself, I support the larger cause.

Ms. Toney's letter and support information would appear in Friday's Vanguard at noon. What I was not prepared for was an email from Interim Superintendent Richard Whitmore requesting a response. Again, I was more than happy to allow Mr. Whitmore a chance to respond. One of the reasons I founded this blog was the ability to have these kinds of community discussions.

I am very concerned about the trajectory of events at Davis High School, I shall lay that out much more fully shortly. However, I also believe that this Superintendent and this school board are committed to getting things right. I think they showed that in the manner in which the suspension of the DHS Student recently was handled. And I think they are committed toward rectify many of the complaints that Ms. Toney has laid forth. As one key person reminded me, Mr. Whitmore was brought on for the purpose of fixing a lot of this stuff, but he has only been on the job for a little over a month.

I will further say, the fact that Mr. Whitmore was so proactive in responding to the call for a boycott was viewed universally as a positive and important step. It demonstrated concern and commitment. Mr. Whitmore acknowledged the place that boycotts have had in assisting social movements. However, he has also played the role of the establishment by suggesting that a boycott here would cause a good deal of harm to the students.

As I said, I am not here to argue that it would or it will not.

What I will suggest is that it is time for the larger community of Davis to take heed to these concerns, because right now I see frustration and tension rising.

The issue of suspensions is of particular concern here because it reflects a broader concern that students of color--Latino and African American--are disciplined much more harshly than white and Asian students. In fact, survey data from that a huge percentage of minority students believe this and even white and Asian students believe that Latino and African Americans are disciplined more harshly and suspended more frequently and for longer terms than white and Asian students. There is a strong and abiding belief--and I do not know if it is true or not--that there was a racial component in the suspension of the Davis High Student, who happened to be Muslim and happened to be accused of posting a "terrorist message." Can this be coincidental? Perhaps. But it is a cause for questioning.

The district can certainly look at the specific suspensions that Ms. Toney listed, but I think it might be more helpful overall to look at discipline policy and suspension data to see if the actual punishment trends match the perception.

The issue of the suspension of the student organization the Black Student Union has become a flashpoint for all of these problems. The students felt like this was the organization that really helped them and represented their needs and interests. This was a dispute that seemed really spawn from outside of the students and was probably mishandled by staff who overreacted. The loss of the adviser was crippling. The decision to suspend it in the wake of problems perhaps even more so.

The issue of achievement gap has merited strong concerns. This gap is of course reflective of other gaps in society and this country as a whole. But I would suggest if we cannot deal with this gap in Davis where we have ample funding and resources, the rest of the country seems likely to fare much worse.

Furthermore the issue of hiring practices and the utter lack of African American and other minority teachers has long been a concern of many in this community, even more in the minority community, and recently of the school district under the leadership of the current school board. One of the reasons that David Murphy was replaced with Richard Whitmore as Superintendent was the need to address this issue--but there is mounting frustration and any solution is going to be long and difficult. The chief problem may not be merely the schools and their reputation but also the growing reputation of this community.

And that is the broader concern here--the problems in the schools are reflective of broader problems in our community. Last year the issue largely focused around police-minority community relations. And that area is still of a large concern. But it was part of a broader problem as was this.

Some have suggested that a STAR testing boycott will only hurt the district. What I have found interesting since the issue arose yesterday is how controversial the STAR testing program is in general--many people have opted out of the program on their own. In the past and in other communities, similar issues have arisen. I was particularly interested to here from my wife, that they had boycotted the testing in the mid-80s in Chico.

But what I want to suggest most here is the notion that somehow and in someway the broader community needs to become aware of the problems that the minority community believes it faces. In many ways, unfortunately, it seems the only time the community becomes aware of these problems is when these controversies also affect their children.

This community needs to have a long and difficult discuss on racial issues in general. Unfortunately that discussion was short-circuited last year but the problems have only been buried, they have not disappeared. These issues have arisen from time to time for the last thirty years and they will not go away unless we are aggressive and proactive. I just do not know that this community is ready to deal with these problems. However, one way or another, it may have no other choice.

At this point, I would like to thank the Interim Superintendent Richard Whitmore for his willingness to engage on this issue. I honestly believe that he and the school district have the intention of dealing with these problems. At this point, perhaps I would like to see strong public statements from the school district that demonstrates that they are taking strong actions to rectify many of these problems. I think that type of approach would largely reassure many of the parents and other community members involved.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Commentary: School Board Makes It Right in Contrast to the City Council

As the issue of the Davis High School student gets resolved in a rapid and largely acceptable manner, it is easy to look back upon the arrest of 16-year-old Halema Buzayan in 2005 and wonder what if it had been resolved as quickly and amicably as this incident.

Few except those intimately involved in this situation realize that the chain of events that the Buzayan arrest on that June night now nearly two years ago was entirely avoidable. For Dr. Buzayan's first call was not to a lawyer, but rather to his elected representatives. His first move was to go before the Davis City Council and explain his situation. His first action was to file a formal complaint with the department. Somewhere between that point and now things went horribly wrong.

In retrospect it is easy to find faults in the manner in which this was handled by the police officer involved, the city, and the district attorney's office. No one quite understands the reason that Ms. Buzayan was arrested in her home for misdemeanor. No one quite understands the reason that Ms. Buzayan was taken to the police department rather than a probation officer at juvenile hall. No one quite understands the need to arrest anyone for alleged bumper damage to a car.

It was only when the process failed that Dr. Buzayan felt compelled to seek out legal counsel. It was only when his complaint was rejected that the Human Relations Commission felt compelled to create a civilian police review board. Had the process worked, none of these things would have happened.

Certainly no one understands why this situation was catastrophic enough to take down a City Manager, a Police Chief, and the City's Human Relations Commission. But just over a year later it had done exactly that.

And while publicly you still may hear some apologists for the department attempt to argue that things were handled correctly, no one when pressed in private is willing to do so.

Frankly, I have not spoken to a single police officer outside of the Davis Police Department who upon hearing about this case would have handled it as Officer Ly did. No one would have arrested the minor in her home. Some may have had her father bring her down to the police station. Most would have let it go after the damage was paid. Once the victim was made whole there was simply no compelling reason to pursue the case. That is the purpose of the law to begin with--to ensure that people own up to the responsibility of their actions. That was the judge's ruling as well.

I will not get into the further arguments here about the evidence that the vehicle the Buzayans drove did not strike the Wonhof vehicle (and if you saw the pictures, you would be very strongly convinced on this point). Nor will I get into the actions that occur after the decision to arrest Ms. Buzayan.

The bottom line here is that the decision was made by Officer Ly to arrest Ms. Buzayan and the decision was made by the Police Chief, City Council, and District Attorney's office to complicate matters by failing to hold the police officer responsible for his actions.

We flash forward now to an incident that we have been following involving the suspension of a Davis High School student that is very similar except it involves a teacher, the Vice Principal and the school district.

In my opinion, mistakes were made at several different levels in this case.

First, the teacher made the decision to pull down a Malcolm X poster. This is the teacher's prerogative and fully reasonable--even if we might quibble at this. However, the manner in which the teacher reportedly handled it was unacceptable. The correct action would be to inform the student that the teacher had concerns about the appropriateness of the poster in a math class. The course of action the teacher took was to publicly embarrass and berate a student and to proclaim their poster a "terrorist message."

Second, the student was asked to give a speech, the speech was approved, and then after the fact the Vice Principal determined that this student should be suspended for three days for giving the speech. The official text of this speech is available on this blog.

Now here is where history was changed. The school district's upper administration and school board were clearly not happy with the handling of this matter and likely did not believe the punishment was appropriate. So instead of digging in their heals and blindly backing the teacher and Vice Principal, they forced a resolution of the situation which resulted in the suspension being ended, the student going back to school and back to this class.

Additional efforts to rectify this situation may happen in the future, but the major point here is that the school board took a leadership role and resolved this situation likely without any legal action. Because of that there will be no lawsuit against the district. Furthermore, there will not be a slew of upper administrators who will lose their job--although this situation should be viewed as wake up call for the district to look at their on-site administrators and teachers and better structure how punishments should be doled out and for what reason.

Finally, this situation will likely fade away rapidly whereas the Buzayan case is going to federal court. Just yesterday, the federal court judge heard motions to dismiss the portion of the case that is against the Davis Enterprise. That judge will rule on that shortly. Judge refused to dismiss the portion of the case against the Davis Police Department or the District Attorney's Office. So that case will continue for at least another year or so, while the most recent case will soon be forgot.

The moral of this story is for public agencies to take responsibility early and it will avoid problems down the line. It is a lesson that the City Council needs to learn from the Davis Joint Unified School Board.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

DHS Student's Suspension Ends Early

Apparently Davis School district's upper administration and school board have stepped up in a large way to rectify the situation that began when a Davis High School student was suspended for three days after giving a speech before an assembly of students. The speech discussed an incident where his Malcolm X poster was removed by the teacher. On the poster, the words "by any means necessary" were prominently displayed. The teacher reportedly removed the poster because she felt it conveyed a "terrorist message."

According to reports, the student is now back in school. The student served only two days of the three day suspension before being reinstated this morning following a meeting with school administration.

Last week was spring break for the school, however, there was apparently a large amount of progress made as the school board and district personnel moved very strongly to put an end to this situation.

The teacher in question had asked that the student not return to class, however, that has also been overruled. The student will be able to attend their class and make up any work and time missed, including two days prior to the actual suspension that the student was kept out of class.

The one issue still remaining on the table is whether or not the district will rescind the entire suspension--a move that the family is pushing for and a move that could occur later this week.

One thing is clear, on this issue the school board moved clearly and decisively to force an end to this situation and probably prevent any legal action from being taken against the district. This is the type of leadership that should be commended and expected in this community.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Update on DHS Student Suspension

Last week we reported on a Davis High School Student who was purportedly suspended from high school after delivering a speech on an incident where his Malcolm X poster was removed by the teacher. On the poster, the words "by any means necessary" were prominently displayed. The teacher reportedly removed the poster because she felt it conveyed a "terrorist message."

One of the issues discussed on this blog has been whether this represents a first amendment issue. Some have suggested that there is no free speech rights of high school students.

However, according to conversations I had with a lawyer familiar with this case and the law in this respect, that is not true. I have since verified these claims with another lawyer who is also familiar with this aspect of law.

Basically high school students at assemblies have the same free speech rights as anyone else. The school is not required by any means to provide the forum for speech. But once they have created the forum and invited the student to speak they have no authority to censor what the student can or cannot say in front of the assembly.

There are of course limitations to that right, they are the same limitations that anyone else has, which is the "shouting fire in a crowded theater" exception and also the inciting a riot or posing a "clear and present danger" of causing an unsafe situation. The standard for that is basically if they gave a speech and no action results from said speech, they have not presented a clear and present danger. Also the speech cannot be obscene. However, these are not claims being made to substantiate the suspension.

The student was basically given three reasons for the suspension.

First, the claim was made that the student had deviated from the speech--that the student had essentially given an entirely different speech than the one submitted and that the student had self-censored in the submitted speech in order to engage in some sort of deception to get it approved. Given the law, it is not clear that the school even has the authority to take this step.

Second, the student was cited for basically publicly humiliating a teacher--this despite the fact that the student never mentioned the name of the teacher and the teacher essentially outed herself through her own behavior. The teacher left the assembly in tears and did not return.

The law here would dictate that the speech be actually slanderous and the speech, text of which we have, seems to fall well short of any slander.

Third, the student was cited for disrupting an assembly--this charge is completely inaccurate by any standard that would be used. There was no disruption that occurred.

What this means is that according to the law, the school did not have the authority to suspend this student for a speech he gave in front of the school. And we can construe the actions of the school as a violation of the student's right to free speech--a right that contrary to some claims, the student does have under the law.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting