Hate Crimes Workshop Last Night in Davis: All Crimes Are Not Hate Crimes

In December of 2007, there were two hate crime incidents. One involved the spray painting of two sets of residents. The other involved the vandalism of Holmes Junior High. As it turned out, the second incident involved students of color seeking to either deflect blame or rile up the adults. However, that makes it no less insidious or hurtful to the broader community.

Last night, Jann Murray-Garcia put together a program called: "Arent's All Crimes Hate Crimes? No." The goal is to prevent student hate crimes in Davis. She brought together a broad and diverse group of people to get the message out including Lt. Darren Pytel in the Davis Police Department and Director of Student Services Pam Mari. Also in attendance was Superintendent James Hammond who did the introduction, two school board members President Sheila Allen and Board Member Susan Lovenberg; Climate Coordinator Mel Lewis; Lt. Tom Walz of the Davis Police Department; Supervisor Mariko Yamada; Ombudsman Bob Aaronson. Conspicuously absent was anyone from the District Attorney's Office and anyone either from the City or the City Council.

Dr. Jann Murray-Garcia discussed at length a history of hate crimes in Davis, definitions of hate crimes, means to prevent hate crimes, and what hate crimes mean for a community like Davis.

The presentation was recorded by the folks at Davis Community Television for rebroadcast on Channel 17. I strongly encourage people to watch this presentation it is very informative and deals with a number of myths and misperceptions.

In what follows, I will discussion some of the things that are of most interest that came up during the presentation.

First is the myth that hate crimes or what is sometimes referred to as "bias-related crimes" are aimed at certain "protected" groups with a special status under the law.

According to author David Neiwert writes, “Every citizen, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, gender or sexual preference, is protected equally. Indeed, the most significant test case for hate crimes laws - Wisconsin v. Mitchell, a unanimous 1993 Supreme Court ruling - involved a white victim and a black perpetrator….” (p. 131). According to U.S. Department of Justice statistics, approximately 20% of hate crimes victims are White.

In a hate crime, the victim is not merely the individual but rather "entire groups of people who share the same characteristic." Moreover, "controlling for type of crime, they leave victims more chronically traumatized."

According to the presentation:

"A 2006 U.S. Department of Justice study reports that there are more than 7,000 hate crimes or bias-related crimes across the country per year.

In an average year, watchdog agencies like Southern Poverty Law Center receive a dozen or so reports of noose incidents from across the country."

Dr. Murray-Garcia also showed in her slides a January 21, 2003 letter to the editor from a Fairfield High School basketball player (see below in the slides and pictures section).

"In 2002, Fairfield High School basketball player, Ian Blair, wrote a letter to the editor of the Davis Enterprise, shocked at the behavior of Davis High School students. By his report, confirmed later at a Davis High student forum, “cheering” students shouted some of the following slurs when Ian came down to their side of the court:

“Cornrows!”

“Who’s your baby’s momma?”

“Food stamps don’t buy a Hummer!” (apparently in reference to then high school star Lebron James, who purchased a Hummer automobile prior to signing with the NBA.)

“Who’s your fifth baby?”

“We go to college; you go to jail!”

Students were reprimanded only for “negative cheering” and “poor sportsmanship,” given what was reported to DHS administrators. Less than two weeks later, the spray painting of the N-word in West Davis occurred."

Dr. Murray-Garcia then went on to describe a series of recent hate crimes perpetrated by Davis Students.

Winter 2002: A white Davis High (DHS) student serially harassed an African American DHS student, ultimately featuring the Black student on a sophisticated web site, frequented by several DHS students, graphically detailing the physical harm he would like to do to this student (whom he named).

February 2003: a White DHS student spray-painted the N-word in red on the cul-de-sac where a high school party had been held the evening before.

October 2003: Four young people, including at least one DHS student, tagged with graffiti and threw more than several dozen eggs at the car of an openly gay Davis man who lived in Central Davis. The victim had a gay pride flag hanging on the door of his townhouse.

December 2004: The newest constructed building of DHS (the P-building) was vandalized with racist and sexually explicit graffiti, targeting an African American staff member by name (with the N-word) and a White female vice principal.

February 2005: During the night, two Davis students vandalized Fairfield Elementary School and Holmes Junior High School (both in Davis) and two Davis churches. They went from rural West Davis to East Davis, causing almost $30,000 worth of damage. They used swastikas, satanist language, and phrases including, “Kill the Jews! Kill the N_g_ers!”

December 2007: The garages of two East Davis homes were vandalized with horribly vulgar hate graffiti. In the house least affected, the writing read, “KKK. F__k N_g_ers.” Two DHS students were arrested. Though the incident was allegedly sparked by a conflict between longstanding friends, the intensity, sophistication and volume of the hate graffiti are particularly disturbing.

December 2007: Five days following the incident above in east Davis, a “large” amount of racist graffiti targeting African Americans and Asians was found on the Holmes Junior High School buildings. Five students were involved and were arrested for felony vandalism. The “ring leader” was allegedly angry with one of the school’s administrators.

Who are those most likely to commit hate crimes? Not surprisingly, not those who are on a "life mission" to commit acts of hate like members of the KKK. Dr. Jann Murray-Garcia cites David Neiwert:

“The reality is that…”local kids’ are in fact the most common perpetrators of bias crimes. Numerous studies have demonstrated that only a small percentage of hate crimes are committed by people with any connection to or background involving organized “hate groups”…What these studies have found instead is that the majority of bias crimes are committed by seemingly normal, mostly law-abiding young people who often see nothing wrong with their behavior. Bias crime offenders are predominantly young white males, typically from working-class or middle class backgrounds. And though ties to hate groups are rare, the perpetrators are clearly inspired by these groups’ rhetoric, shouting their well known slogans, parroting their political rhetoric, and displaying such symbols of white supremacism as the swastika or the Confederate flag." (p.46)

Instead most are committed by what they term as "thrill seekers." This means the hatred behind these crimes is superficial. The offenders are not "profoundly convinced of the legitimate of their criminal acts." They can be more easily dissuaded from repeating them. And the threat of criminal sanctions may be enough to convince a group of "bored young men" to do another activity.

This makes it important to apprehend and deal with hate crime perpetrators at this point in time. It takes a concerted community effort however to do so before they graduate from property crimes to crimes that involve physical injury.

When these crimes are not taken seriously however, the perpetrators become more violent, it tends to be an affront to the offended community. We need to assume that any such crime is the tip of the iceberg until and unless proven otherwise. Moreover, we miss a teachable moment, such as this, for the community and its young people.

Dr. Jann Murray-Garcia repeatedly has found that students are more aware of the hate crime problem than adults.

These are quotes from in-depth interviews that were done with former Davis High School Youth In Focus Student Research Scholars from the academic year 2003-2004. "The students express disappointment with the lack of adult leadership and guidance regarding troublesome issues of race relations in Davis, including the incidence of hate crimes."

"[T]here is a problem and like students know it is a problem more than I think adults do. Students are more aware that there is racial tension and racial inequality in Davis more than adults do.

[T]wo years ago, I mean someone spray painted the, you know, n_g_er on this guy’s lawn pretty much and I look back at my family and no one talked about it at all…It was never talked about…no one would of ever really known about it if this group of African Americans hadn’t, you know, said what the hell is going on…

[W]hat really happened in Davis, um, most of it is swept under the rug and they do a very good job of just keeping things under wraps."

Lt. Darren Pytel of the Davis Police Department discussed a number of crime related issues. One point of particular interest was the difference between hate crimes and a hate incident. A hate crime is an act of bias crime perpetrated against a specific individual. A hate incident is an act that involves the same sorts of features but is not directed against an individual. For instance, if someone spray paints an racial epithet on the home of an African-American that would be a hate crime. But if they spray painted the same thing on a park bench with no clear target, that would be a hate incident.

Pam Mari spent a good deal of time talking about cyber-crimes including cyber-stalking and cyber-bullying. These types of crimes are on the increase as students become more technologically sophisticated.

This was a good start for a community discussion, the one real draw-back was the limited number of people actually from the community.

In what follows is a serious of slide from the presentation that were of most interest. The reader should be warned in advanced that some of these images may be disturbing. However, I think the community needs to see some of these things and the blog is a better vehicle than the newspaper which is governed with strict laws about what they can and cannot publish.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Confusion and Misunderstanding at Root of Thursday's School Board Meeting Complaints

Many proponents of the Valley Oak Charter school were stunned last Thursday, when a group of Spanish-speaking families spoke before public comment at the Davis school board meeting and leveled criticism at the proponents of the proposed charter school perceiving that they had misrepresented and twisted their intentions.

Maria Cabrera, who works at Valley Oak, spoke on behalf of many of the Spanish-speaking families and accused charter proponents of twisting their words for political reasons.

The Vanguard has looked into the allegations by Maria Cabrera and now has an understanding where these complaints come from. However, there is little evidence that the Valley Oak charter proponents made any attempt whatsoever to intentionally deceive Spanish-speaking families. It is our belief that there was miscommunication along the way that fed into this problem, but also at the core an overreaction.

At the core of the complaint was a letter that was sent to the district a few weeks ago. It was a letter that complained that they felt left out of the Valley Oak closure process from the beginning starting with the "Best Use of Schools Task Force." This letter was picked up by newly elected school board member Richard Harris, who criticized it, suggesting at the time that no one had respected the community more than new Superintendent James Hammond. But Harris missed the point of the letter.

However, so did apparently Charter Proponents, who it seems felt that the letter was a pro-charter letter. However, it seems it was more basic than that. Asking for the chance to speak directly for themselves, they want choice of placement for their families and they want to be respected.

They became angry when the letter was tied to the charter issue since it was not. Maria Cabrera suggested that they were being used as political pawns by the Charter Proponents and that just because they spoke Spanish, did not mean they were stupid.

To me, I can understand some frustration here on the part of the families, but the level of response seems more than a bit disproportionate to the offense.

Adding to this incident was the leaflet sent out by the charter proponents to invite members of the community to a meeting a week ago Saturday in support of the charter but also to give out information in English and Spanish about the Charter.

Apparently Maria Cabrera and some of the families felt the leaflet was misleading. The translation from English to Spanish was admittedly not perfect. There is no perfect translation of "Charter" that conveys the actual meaning in English into "Spanish." So if the English version said "support the charter" and the Spanish translation said "Support the community school" there might have been some confusion.

However, reading the full leaflet in Spanish, it mentions "Charter" repeatedly even if it does not in the "headline." From our perspective anyone who read the Spanish version would see the word "charter" in italics used over and over again. If there was confusion it would seem reasonable to approach the proponents and explain the problem instead of criticizing and blasting them in front of the school board. It is clear from reading the two versions, which readers can see by clicking the link below that there is no clear intent to deceive.

To see the leaflet, click here (my apologies I was only given a blue version)

In my conversations with both charter proponents and district staff alike including board member Sheila Allen and Pam Mari, that is really at the core of my concern--why simple misunderstandings were blown into some sort of large and angry conflict such as the one that arose on Thursday. This remains a point of concern for me.

The suggestion was that there was some kind of history here between the two sides, I do not know what that is exactly.

Finally I am concerned by reports from some of the organizers for the charter school that families were under the impression that a charter school was not a public school and would require tuition. And this was not an isolated belief. Someone had to be spreading that rumor around, I do not know who did though.

The bottom line here is that emotions and tensions were very high on Thursday and I'm not exactly sure even now why that was the case. I see no evidence that the charter proponents were intentionally attempting to mislead Spanish-speaking families, in fact all I have seen is evidence of respect for these families with Spanish-translations and a bilingual presentation on Saturday night. All of this appears to be a misunderstanding blown out of proportions.

In speaking with several of the families on Thursday in Spanish, my wife Cecilia and I, were told that they want to send their children to Valley Oak and to the Charter School. In fact, many of the families who spoke out on Thursday were actually wearing Valley Oak Charter buttons. For their perspective they want to be heard, they want to be respected, and they want to choose where they send their children to school. Who can argue with that.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

School Climate Report

Last night at the city of Davis' Human Relations Commission, Mel Lewis, the Davis School District's Climate Coordinator with assistance from Pam Mari, Director of Student Services presented a brief overview of the results from the Yale School Climate Survey.

For those of you who are long time Vanguard readers, you will recall back in May, we were critical of the use of this survey for the purposes ascertaining school climate. There were four versions of this survey: Elementary and Middle School, High School, Parent, and Staff. Last May we were able to obtain the Parent version and post it on the Vanguard. Mr. Lewis informed us that the results of this survey are proprietary, and therefore they cannot post the results of the survey. This is basically a $30,000 survey purchased at public expense that cannot have the full results posted--a problematic aspect to begin with.

They were able to show us summary and graphical results.

There were 17 major categories of questions. The first graphic to the right shows the 17 categories and their distribution within the surveys. The first six are incorporated into the Elementary and Middle School Survey. Categories 2 through 7 are incorporated into the High School Category.

The big findings are represented on the second and third graphic. These pictorially demonstrate a consistent pattern that on most questions, "Black" and "Latino" students rate their school climate less than their "White" counterparts.

To Mel Lewis, this was clear and convincing evidence that the school climate was not perceived the same for all students and it was systematically more difficult for minorities than for white students, according to this survey.

Mr. Lewis stressed that this data will allow us to move away from assumptions to reality. In other words, we do not have to assume that these problems are here, we have evidence and we can now deal with them. As a result, we can improve communication and awareness. And this will help in the formation of various programs that we have discussed such as the Safe School Ambassadors program, the Unconscious Bias Training, among others.

One of the questions that had among the lowest ratings was the question: "I can talk to my teachers about my problems." Overall, only 42 percent of students agreed, that number dropped to 6 percent among black students at one Junior High, 15 percent at another.

Before I proceed with this, I want to stress, that to me Mel Lewis and Pam Mari are very sincere on this issue. They have concerns and I think they are sincere in wanting to address these concerns.

Nevertheless, even though I am sympathetic to the results of this survey, I remain troubled by some of the interpretations of the findings.

First, as a social scientist, I question the interpretation of the results. There is a consistent pattern that shows a difference between minority and white respondents across the board. However, without having the actual figures those differences appear small numerically. Furthermore, given the low sample size for minorities, I am not certain how robust these results are and how confident we can be that these differences are not due to mere chance and random variations.

Let me give a clear and simple example. Let us suppose that there were only 10 black students at a school and 7 told us that they did not feel they could talk to their teachers. That, would be 70% percent. A one student difference in the results would drastically change the results. If one extra student said they felt they could talk to their teachers, the number would drop to 60% or if one fewer student said they could not talk to their teachers, that number would rise to 80%. In other words, one random change in the responses could swing the results by 20%. Even if you have 19 students, as was the case in one of the surveys at a Junior High, small random variation can lead to drastic change in results. Are the differences in the results between whites and non-whites, large enough to overcome the potential for random variation? If they are, they are what we would call statistically significant. If not, then they are not. From the results that we see, it is difficult to tell if they are.

So again, while I might believe the results, I have difficulty having confidence in the process.

Secondly, while I think the results are instructive, I am still far from sure that they asked the key questions. As I was skeptical in May, there were few questions that I would consider actual climate type questions. Few that asked about racism. Few that asked about race relations. Few that talked about harassment, discrimination, differentials in punishment, bullying, etc. The key issues that we have faced over the past few years are not covered by the survey. So yes, we may have stumbled onto some results here, but we might still not be asking the critical questions that will really show us where the problems lie.

Finally, as several told me following the meeting, it is far from clear that the questions asked here are much different from what was found nearly 20 years ago. We do not necessarily need more surveys. We have had surveys. We have developed programs. What we have not done is follow through on these programs with any type of commitment. In May, we talked about the "Racial Climate Assessment Report" that was done nearly 20 years ago and yet could have been written today.

Long time activist Tansey Thomas asked the school district in May:

“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.”

As one person said last night, we've studied this enough, time for action.

The key question is whether these programs will solve the problem and whether the new board and the new superintendent will have the tenacity to follow through with these reports and implement these programs and ensure that programs will do what we are saying they will do. Short of that, we are engaging in academic exercises for no apparent benefit.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

School Board Receives Full Explanation of Truancy Policies

It was a meeting in stark contrast to the previous board discussion on the issue of truancy. The meeting was such a stark contrast to the point where people were openly shaking their heads wondering why the original meeting in September had to go as poorly as it did.

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.

Chronic truancy is also linked to criminal behavior and substance abuse.

Currently they are allowed by the education code to return the students to school. This does not constitute an arrest, and nothing is placed on the record or legal action taken, however, they do intend to notify the public.

Pam Mari laid out what amounts to seven levels of intervention based on the severity and persistence of the problem. (See the slides from the powerpoint presentation).

These range from preliminary steps to make contact with parents and students at the low levels of the policy to home visits in the middle levels, to full legal action at the high levels.

Police involvement begins at level three where a visiting team of the Davis Police Department Youth Specialist or an officer and a school administrator attempt to visit the home of a consistent truant. This is a consensual visit whereby the policy have no authority to enter the home. They can enter only by consent. They are limited to attendance issues and prefer to have school personnel present. There is a letter that would be deliver to the student or parent and they then follow up with a certified letter to the home.

At the level five, the student is classified as an "habitual truant" and is generally referred by the Yolo County District Attorney's office to a Truancy Mediation program. Finally level six is where formal legal action occurs where by a notice-to-appear in court is present and the students and parents can face legal action.

It should be noted of course that level six only occurs after the previous five steps, it does not seem likely that this would ever be implemented unless the parents are being almost intentionally neglectful. Assuming that they follow through with the first five steps as diligently (as it appears on paper) they should be able to avoid full legal action.

On the other hand, Pam Mari remarked that the first letter finally went out last week, and this letter went to 45-55 Davis High School Students, which seems to me, a very large number of students who would have enough of a truancy problem that they required a first letter.

Board member Tim Taylor - who had expressed some concern at the previous meeting - expressed that he was both happy and impressed with the thought and explanation that went with this.

Taylor remained concerned about one aspect, and that is about how this process works and what criteria was applied for students to be brought back to school. Lt. Pytel explained that mostly the police made consensual contacts with people, cruising around and stopping kids who appeared of school age to ask them where they are supposed to be. Chief Black clarified with me that this largely occurred around the school itself but occasionally went into the broader community. However, it was not a large scale community-wide effort and was also not generally focused during times when students would have legitimate reasons to be about--such as during lunch or at the end of the day when some students had no classes or other arrangements.

The question of suspension came up. It seemed contradictory to Tim Taylor, Jim Provenza, and Gina Daleiden that suspension was a viable punishment for a student who was being truant. There was concern expressed, since suspension was the only punishment laid out in the policy code. Pam Mari suggested that it was largely counterintuitive, but said that every so often it makes sense. She suggested that two students had been subjected to this over the course of her tenure, in over 1000 cases. Tim Taylor pressed this point, suggesting that there may be reasons for suspension in addition to truancy, but does not understand why the punishment for not going to school would to keep the student from going to school.

Board member Keltie Jones suggested a scenario where a good student might blow off a single class that bored them; however, this does not seem to be a very likely scenario for habitual truants.

Jim Provenza eventually read from the education code which suggested looking for alternatives to suspension and detention. There also seemed to be a consensus to deemphasize suspension but not take it completely off the table.

In general, there was concern about how to handle the academic component of this. Two problems that are foreseen is that students may be reluctant to go back to school after missing considerable class due to being so far behind. Trease Peterson approached me after the agenda item to explain that they have given this dilemma considerable thought and have attempted to incorporate it into the broader program, so that students are not simply left with a sense of hopelessness.

Additionally, there was concern about the district policy whereby suspensions automatically mean coursework would become a zero. For students to suffer an academic punishment for behavioral problems, again seems counterintuitive. Many of the students who would be truant or suspended for other purposes, are likely to have enough academic problems to begin with.

Superintendent Richard Whitmore, who was in his final meeting as interim Superintendent, said that his single biggest regret was that they did not address that particular issue.

The issues that were not raised were SARB (School Attendance Review Board) which was multi-jurisdictional, and the issue of portable PDA devices and their use on campus.

However, for the most part, the key issues got raised, the school board had considerable buy-in to the process, and again one has to wonder why these things have to be so difficult. Had the initial presentation occurred like this, much anguish and confusion would have never materialized. Hopefully this is a lesson learned.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Truancy Issue: Getting Some Answers

As we continue with our look into the Davis Joint Unified School District and other jurisdiction's truancy efforts, we are finally getting a little bit of clarity as to what the policy entails and what it does not entail.

At one point during the school board meeting last Thursday, Davis Joint Unified School District Director of Student Services, Pam Mari made a somewhat awkward statement:

"And interestingly enough, there could have been an incident that happened today that had nothing to do with anything about this topic, but the last perception is crucial."

This statement turned out to be true to some extent. The police action on the high school campus did indeed have nothing to do with the truancy "sweeps." The action was actually related to a separate police led crackdown upon violations of the provisional license portion of the vehicle code section 12814.6 subdivision (B) which specifies:

"during the first 12 months after issuance of a provisional license the licensee may not do any of the following unless accompanied and supervised by a licensed driver who is the licensee’s parent or guardian, a licensed driver who is 25 years of age or older, or a licensed or certified driving instructor:

(B) Transport passengers who are under 20 years of age."

It is the view of the police that most minors do not believe that this section of the vehicle code is enforced and therefore they determined that they would crack down on this behavior by the students. In a future installment, we will hear from some of the students at the high school about their perceptions about what happened and is happening on the campus. But a number of public officials have expressed privately some concerns about this crackdown by police.

There is a specific provision in this law that students cannot merely be pulled over for suspicion of violating this law. They can only be pulled over if there is probable cause of some other violation.

Hence subdivision (c) reads:

(c) A law enforcement officer may not stop a vehicle for the sole purpose of determining whether the driver is in violation of the restrictions imposed under subdivision (b).

In other words, we have cleared up some of the confusion as to what occurred on campus on Thursday of last week, where there was mass confusion and a number of complaints about the police presence, activities and presence on campus. That said the very idea of a crackdown and enforcement of this law appears to go against the spirit of the law that the legislature passed which specifically sought to avoid the type of profiling and stops that appear to have occurred on the campus. The actions performed by officers may well have fallen within the letter of the law in terms of using secondary violations as a means by which to pull over the students, but the intention of the law and the spirit of this law have clearly been pushed to the brink at the very least.

Moving on to the truancy policy itself, there still appears to be two major problems with the handling of the policy by the school district administration.

One is largely a communication problem, where the policy was never communicated from the administrative level in the school district to the policy level (i.e. the school board) and probably not adequately communicated to parents or the community. As a result of that, large portions of this policy are now on hold. This was to be an interjurisdictional policy with coordination between the District Attorney's Office, Police Department and School District. However, somehow and for some reasons none of the policymaking bodies--city council, school board, or board of supervisors--were informed of this coordinated activity.

The second problem developed from the use of the word "sweep." As Lt. Darren Pytel of the Davis Police Department explained to me, the police's use of the word "sweep" is a much broader term than what non-law enforcement think of the meaning of the word "sweep."

At one point during the meeting, Pam Mari recognized the word "sweep" was part of the angst that had been created with the board about this policy.

"Perhaps we are really hurting on this word sweep... And if the word sweep were eliminated and it was home visit, I wonder if we would be as hurting. I apologize if that word is what is causing the trouble, that’s a word that the police department uses to mean on a given day we are going to use a lot of our energy and do this.”

It is interesting because according to Lt. Darren Pytel, the department is now also using the term "home visit" rather than "sweep" to describe the operation.

While the use of word "sweep" may have been unfortunate. It was probably not the chief cause for concern among the school board members. It is also unfortunate the way the meeting itself was conducted. First, the board was provided with exactly one paragraph of written documentation for a fairly complex policy that required a good deal of coordination and explanation.

Second, if all of these agencies (police, school district, district attorney) were involved, then why not have representatives from all of these agencies present at the school board meeting. At the very least, if Lt. Darren Pytel and Deputy District Attorney Jonathan Raven were present at this meeting, they could have responded to some of the concerns. Instead, we are having to ask questions of them outside of the public setting. Normally an interjurisdictional presentation would have each of the participants as part of a broader presentation. None of this happened. Instead there was a paragraph delivered to the school board.

It is only now that there is any kind of clarity about this policy and that in itself remains a source of discomfort not only for community members, but public officials whose duty it is to run various bodies.

There are actually two parts of this operation according to Davis Police Lt. Darren Pytel. The first part is that when the district recognized they had a truancy problem (Lt. Pytel said that the truancy problem began before the computer glitch and extended past it) and the police quickly discovered that a large portion of the students who were skipping class had actually gone to the park right next door to the school, and so with minimal effort of increasing patrols by the police, they could transport those students back to class. Therefore, this was a relatively simple and straightforward way to get a good percentage of students back to class.

The second part of the effort, which was what they were calling the "sweep," actually were these home visits, where the worst of the truancy offenders would receive home visits by the police and a school administrator. They would make contact with the parents and hopefully get the students back in class. According to Lt. Pytel, this was very successful last year.

Their goal for this year was the top 20 offenders at the high school, the five worst offenders at the Junior High, and all of the elementary school students who were truant.

That brings us to the next question: why do the police have to do this rather than merely the administration? There is a concern that some of the truants are not merely students who are not wanting to go to school but some may also be involved in criminal activity. Therefore a home visit by an administrator alone may introduce an element of danger and risk that they should not have to undertake. That is the job of the police. (The real question that we will discuss a bit later is whether we are to the point where the police need to become involved).

Therefore, again according to what the police are saying, there is no general sweep in this plan. A general sweep would be a broader crackdown within the community whereby the police would look for minors who were supposed to be in school and bring them back to school. Again, the claim by Lt. Pytel is that this was not in the offering.

That said, there is a degree of skepticism by some officials about this claim. Some of whom believe that it is possible that the original plan did call for a more general crackdown on truancy which did involve the police going into the larger community and attempt to find students who were not in class and bring them back to class. And that this represents a bit of backtracking on the part of the police after getting some negative feedback from the community. (I am not really in the position to judge this now, all I can tell is you is what I have been told.)

Lt. Pytel also claimed to not have knowledge about the proposed use of PDAs to identify the students who were supposed to be in class and those who were not suppose to be in class. This was mentioned by Pam Mari but it was not clear who would be the jurisdiction that used the PDAs and how they would be used.

Lt. Pytel did say that in general it was fairly easy to determine which kids were out legitimately and which were not. That most of the students were actually very honest when they were caught. A few of the students did however lie about their identity, but that was quickly discovered as well with a radio to Marc Hicks, the School Resource Officer.

As I said, the questions and concerns now raised by the school board have put this on hold for now. We need to have future discussions in the school district and community at large about the problem of truancy. It may be a serious problem. But the way that this policy came together is also equally concerning. The lack of communication to the policy makers is a serious problem that needs further inquiry. The school board should never have been put in the position that they were on Thursday.

Originally the police were going to conduct their truancy sweep, I mean home visits, on September 19, 2007. As we discussed previously with our look at the education code, legally, the code provides that certain steps be taken before such actions could occur. So there would not be sufficient time to send out the right number of letters or follow the steps laid out. That would mean, that legally the police could not enforce the truancy laws, all they could do would be to go to the home of the students and attempt to get them back into school that way.

I think this is an important that bears consideration. The justification for this was that by the time they could get the letters out, the students would be hopelessly behind in their studies. Therefore, if they could get to the students in September who were already having serious problems with truancy, they could get back into school and be able to catch up.

In theory that sounds good, in practice, there are two important considerations. First, that the law is very specific about the protocol that needs to be followed, in such a way that law enforcement involvement necessarily comes at the last possible step. And second, there is a reason why many of these students are missing class. So even if you get them back into class early on, you still have to deal with those contributing problems. In other words, merely getting them back into class is not a solution but rather a step in the process. There is an advantage to getting to them sooner, but not at the expense of process.

During the course of the meeting on Thursday, Pam Mari was dismissive of the creation of a School Attendance Review Board (SARB) as a means deal with this issue. However, Lt. Pytel offered it as perhaps the ultimate direction that they want to go. The concern though was that it would take time to set it up and it is by its nature a bureaucracy that relies heavily on the coordination between a large number of jurisdictions.

Here is a good definition of SARB:

"In 1974, the Legislature enacted a statute to enhance the enforcement of compulsory education laws and to divert students with school attendance or behavior problems from the juvenile justice system until all available resources have been exhausted. This statute created School Attendance Review Board (SARBs), composed of representatives from various youth-serving agencies, to help truant or recalcitrant students and their parents or guardians solve school attendance and behavior problems through the use of available school and community resources. Although the goal of SARB is to keep students in school and provide them with a meaningful educational experience, SARB does have the power, when necessary, to refer students and their parents or guardians to court."

It seems that the reason that they did not attempt to create a SARB was that it would take a good amount of time, large amounts of efforts and cooperation to create. But this would be a body that would have the authority to do what was needed to get kids back into school but it would not begin at the law enforcement level.

And this remains my concern with this process. I believe that the goal of getting students who are not attending school into class is a very admirable one. But I do not like the way this was approached. Without board direction, an administrator with the school district reached out to law enforcement bodies for help. Law enforcement has a very specific role to play in our society and that is to enforce the laws and punish people who break those laws and who represent a danger to society.

However to put it simply, they are a blunt object. Their presence is marked by fear, intimidation, and authority. In some cases, that presence can be helpful in being the two-by-four that wakes up parents and students and gets their attention. But as Lt. Pytel acknowledged, kids are not a one-size-fits-all subgroup. Rather different kids will respond to different stimuli. For some kids, this type of action may help them. For other, it may push them into other directions.

I think the statement made by School Board member Tim Taylor remains crucial for those of us who are still concerned about this policy.

"One of the things we are struggling with is that regardless of whether the law allows certain things to be done, if they haven’t been done, we have two choices, we can hit the ground at 100 miles per hour or we can have a discussion with ourselves and the community and the public and discuss what are we going to do and I think what you’re hearing and certainly what I’m feeling certainly is that the 100 mile an hour approach while perhaps legal may not be the best fit. Because people are gong to feel like they are getting run over. That will cause community pullback… instead of buy-in, which I think we need, that will have the opposite effect."

The goals involved in this program are as I said, admirable. But really the middle people should not be the ones creating the policies or at least new procedures by which to deal with existing policies--depending on what terminology you want to use here. What I would like to see now is a prolonged discussion in the community, where you have parents, community members, students, the police, the district attorney, the traffic commissioner, the juvenile justice community, the city council, and the school board all sit down communicate about the issue of truancy.

First I would like talk about what the problems are. I still do not feel I have a good appreciation for what the problems are, how extensive they are, and what other problems exist.

Second, I would like a full detailing of present efforts to curtail truancy. What has been tried. What has worked. What has not worked.

Third, determine a course of action. It is my opinion, that law enforcement should be the absolute last resort for dealing with this problem. And quite frankly, law enforcement in this case was not the last resort. Pam Mari argued strongly during the meeting that she exhausted everything and therefore was forced to bring in law enforcement, but that is not true in the least. The next step should have been to take it to the school board. Another step would have been to take it to the public in terms of community forums. Another step would have been to create a task force. Another step would have been to create a SARB. All of these are things that were not done prior to an effort to outreach law enforcement.

It may be that at the end of the day, we do need to be law enforcement. But at the point when we will have done that, we will have engaged the community on this issue and will have brought them along in the process toward that conclusion. As it stands now there is confusion, there is anger, there is fear, and there is trepidation. That does not lead to community buy in, it leads to community pull back.

And let me be very clear, my complaint here is not with law enforcement. It may not even be with this policy. It is with the process by which this policy was created. There are key lessons to be learned here, and the biggest one is that the best of efforts and intentions can be undone by failure to communicate and failure to follow proper process.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Commentary and Analysis: Looking Closer at the Truancy Issue

This is part of a continuing examination of the Davis Joint Unified School District truancy issue. On Monday, we reviewed Thursday school board meeting. Today, we will examine the claims made by the Director of Student Services Pam Mari regarding the need for changes in truancy prevention as well education code. As we assess some of those claims it brings up additional questions.

Pam Mari in her presentation to the board of education, made the argument that the reason that the police got involved in this process is that the district had made a number of attempts to rectify the problem of truancy and those efforts failed. Numbers were cited with regard to lost revenue by the school district in the form of ADA (Average Daily Attendance). One number that floated around was $500,000 was lost at the high school in ADA dollars due to truancy.

However, information that was present in April 11, 2007's Davis Community Advisory Board (CAB) through the police department, raises serious questions about these claims.

According to the minutes from that meeting, Lt. Darren Pytel, one of the innovators of this program, said:

"At the beginning of the school year Davis High was having problems with their telephone computer. Parents were not notified about attendance issues and the students figured it out. Around November, December the district informed parents of the problem and let when know what outstanding absences were not dealt with."

As the result of this computer glitch, up to 200 kids had missed five or more full school days.

My reading of this situation is that a one-time computer problem made it difficult for parents to be notified about attendance problems. The students figured out there was a problem with the computer (the administration did not) and that they would not be caught and therefore took full advantage.

If that is what happened, there was a known cause from a known problem. That would differ from an ongoing problem of truancy. If this interpretation is correct, do we really need to change the way that we are enforcing truancies? Do we really need a radical approach? Shouldn't this issue have been assessed by the policy making policy (i.e. the school board) prior to changes in procedure?

The basic question here is was this a one-time problem as the result of the computer glitch--which was not mentioned at the school board meeting--or is this an ongoing problem? And why did the administration not cite statistics for the board to put numbers on this?

What happened next was largely a result of the truancies caused by this computer glitch. The claim in the school board meeting on Thursday was that the truancy sweep would only involve getting the 15-20 worst offenders into school.

This is not what happened last spring.

"When officers saw school aged kids, they were to ask, “Where are you supposed to be right now?” Then they would verify with School Officer Mark Hicks, who has a police radio and can tell from the school computer if the student should be in school. If so, the officer would give them a ride back to the school" (CAB Meeting minutes April 11, 2007).

This does not sound like an action limited to a few students who are the worst offenders, it sounds like a blanket sweep of the community.

The other problem at this point is that the police have really conflated the issue of truancy with the issue of students driving accompanied by friends in the vehicle--which they are not supposed to do if they have had their license for less than a year. Previously, police did not stop students solely for the purpose of checking whether their friends should be in the car.

That policy has now changed and the police are cracking down on this. They are specifically pulling over cars with young drivers and looking to see if their should be able to drive with friends. That has been a focused effort on the part of the police. That of course leads me to the question and I understand the law, but is there a compelling reason that the police need to expend a large amount of manpower to enforce this law, other than it is the law?

Reading the notes from the CAB meeting which occurred back in April and was actually referenced in March, leads people to a further question--why is it that the school board was not made aware of the changes in policy? This meeting by the way, was one of the first attended by new police chief Landy Black.

However, these discussion appear now to go back six months. How is it that all of these changes in procedure could occur without school board input?

Of all of my concerns about this policy, that is the biggest. The school board is elected to represent the interests of the public on the school board. They are accountable to the public. If they fail to do their job, they can be voted out of office by the public or even recalled under extreme circumstances of dereliction of duty. Administrators are not accountable to the public directly however. They do not have to face the voters. The administration works for the Superintendent and the Superintendent is hired by the school board.

The argument made by Pam Mari is that this is authorized by the California Education Code and therefore they did not need board consent to change their procedure for dealing with truancy.

School Board Member Tim Taylor nailed it on the response:

"One of the things we are struggling with is that regardless of whether the law allows certain things to be done, if they haven’t been done, we have two choices, we can hit the ground at 100 miles per hour or we can have a discussion with ourselves and the community and the public and discuss what are we going to do and I think what you’re hearing and certainly what I’m feeling certainly is that the 100 mile an hour approach while perhaps legal may not be the best fit. Because people are gong to feel like they are getting run over. That will cause community pullback… instead of buy-in, which I think we need, that will have the opposite effect."

However, the other question is whether or not this is even allowed by the law and authorized through ed code.

My reading of the education code does not suggest that it "authorizes" this kind of approach. It does not appear to prohibit this kind of approach necessarily. But it does not automatically authorize it.

What it does specify are definitions for truancy and recourse that the district can take for habitual truants. According to the education code, no pupil can be classified as habitually truant without an effort to have a conference with the parent.

"Any pupil is deemed an habitual truant who has been reported as a truant three or more times per school year, provided that no pupil shall be deemed an habitual truant unless an appropriate district officer or employee has made a conscientious effort to hold at least one conference with a parent or guardian of the pupil and the pupil himself" (EC Section 48262).

The prescribed penalty for habitual truancy:

"(c) The third time a truancy report is required within the same school year, the pupil shall be classified a habitual truant, as defined in Section 48262, and may be referred to and required to attend, an attendance review board or a truancy mediation program pursuant to Section 48263 or pursuant to Section 601.3 of the Welfare and Institutions Code. If the district does not have a truancy mediation program, the pupil may be required to attend a comparable program deemed acceptable by the school district's attendance supervisor. If the pupil does not successfully complete the truancy mediation program or other similar program, the pupil shall be subject to subdivision (d)." (EC Section 48264.5 Subdivision C).

The penalty phase according to the education code appears after the fourth truancy. Penalties at that point include community service, fine of no more than $100, attendance in a court-approved truancy prevention program, and only then suspension or revocation of driving privileges.

So to repeat, after reading through education code, one could probably argue that school policy is not prohibited by the code unless they are attempted to revoke driving privileges earlier than allowed. However, it is not clear that ed code authorizes this approach or that this approach could be undertaken without board approval. I am not familiar enough with the law here to be able to assess what control a school board has in implementing education code policies.

Regardless, it would have been helpful for the administrator in presenting this program to have a written citation of the relevant sections of education code for the school board to see in advance and help them in understanding the new policy and how it fits in with the requirements from the state.

Many questions still need to be answered. Some of these questions include what is actually going on, what this policy will actually do. Other questions include who knew what and when and why was neither the board of education nor the city council aware of these activities by the school district and law enforcement. Answers to those will hopefully occur at the next City-School District two-by-two meeting and a subsequent school board meeting.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting