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

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

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

"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

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: Incident Represents the Latest in a String

To be honest, I do not even know where or when to start with this, but to be very frank, everyone should be very concerned at this point with the Davis Joint Unified School District. Last summer the Davis Human Relations Commission was disbanded for a number of reasons, most of which had to do with the mishandling of a case involving a 16-year-old Davis High School student of Muslim heritage. And I think if you pin down those involved in the situation from the police to the city council, at some point all will admit that they did not handle it as they should have. What should have been a minor incident became a major incident that eventually led to a city manager, police chief, and a city commission all being fired in one sense or another.

What does this have to do with the Davis Joint Unified School District? Bear with me on that for a moment. The Davis Human Relations Commission had the authorization according to the Anti-Discrimination ordinance to "investigate and mediate" any alleged violations of the anti-discrimination ordinance. However since the body was placed on hiatus, the body has largely been a ceremonial body--hosting a few community events, but taking no part in the more formal functions it once served.

Therefore, in each of the incidents that have occurred, there has been no body sanctioned by the city that could act on the behest of aggrieved or allegedly aggrieved parties.

In November, we discovered that a Harper Junior High School student had been harassed by his peers because of his fathers' (plural), sexual orientation. The concerning aspect of this is that the initial response at the administrative level was completely inadequate. The Principal in this case was much too lenient initially which created a safety issue and turned a small incident or string of incidents into a situation where the student would be unable to return to school and the school district is being sued, now not by one student, but by two students. The school board did eventually and fairly quickly step up and make strong changes to the discipline policy, but by that point, the damage was done. Could a body like the HRC have stepped in and prevented this case from going into the legal system? Hard to know, but that was one of the reasons it was established to begin with.

On March 1, 2007, the Davis High School principal suspended the Black Student Union at the Davis High School. A huge rift had developed in the group following the resignation of the popular club adviser Courtenay Tessler. Tessler's resignation was due to internal tensions in the group, mainly with some of the parents. Those tensions blew up in the wake of Tessler's resignation and a subsequent meeting that created a power struggle that devolved into "rude and disrespectful behavior" according to Ginni Davis, the association superintendent of the Davis Joint Unified School District. Climate Coordinator Mel Lewis was temporarily named as adviser following Tessler's resignation, but that moved served to just further fuel the flames, part of which seems to centered over a rift between black immigrants versus US born African Americans.

Aside from the fraternal nature of this incident, there are two key issues. First, that there are around 60 African American students but no African American teachers at the school. Second, and related, the BSU had served as a group vital to the student in terms of support, community, and solidarity, and now that outlet is gone. That vehicle has at least temporarily been disbanded to create a "cooling-off" period, however, this has not prevented the tensions from continuing as the students marched in the streets and have held a serious of meetings to attempt to rectify the situation and force the school district to reconsider their policy.

At around the same time, the school district led strongly by an appointed task force, made the determination to close down the most heavily minority and section 8 school in the district. The closing of Valley Oak Elementary school has been covered extensively here. While in none of these incidents would I suggest that racism played a role in the handling of the situation, I would suggest that the handling of each of these was poor. I would also suggest that in the case of Valley Oak, that the fact that this particular school was slated to be closed may have to do with some political situations. There may have been a thought that it would be easier and less controversial to close Valley Oak as opposed to say North Davis Elementary or Cesar Chavez Elementary.

Regardless of intention, the effect I believe will be to put disadvantaged kids at a greater disadvantage. The sad thing was that this was a successful school. I am of the belief that you do not close down successful schools, you find ways to fund them. Already, I am hearing that the proposed closing is having a huge impact on enrollment and parental activities. Moreover, now the parents at Valley Oak Elementary and deciding how to proceed and one option that they are considering is a charter school--which would be a very risky and difficult venture, at best. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a great option, even the one available, the parcel tax, will be exceedingly difficult to pass.

That leads us to the most recent incident involving a Davis High School student, apparently asked to take down a poster of Malcolm X because it contained the phrase, "by any means necessary." The teacher then explained to the student in front of class why the poster was inappropriate. She mentioned a "terrorist" message--which is ludicrous. The student then was asked to give a speech before an assembly, he sent the organizers two speeches, they picked the one that he gave and was told not to mention the teacher, the teacher left the assembly in tears, and the student was suspended for three days. Now the teacher has informed the family that the student is not wanted back in class.

From what I have seen this situation was completely mishandled. There is no way I can see to justify a three day suspension (which carries with it permanent repercussions to the student's academic future) for an incident like this. There is no way that this situation should have been handled as this one was. This once again seems to be a failure of the administration to properly handle a tough situation.

The school board despite some controversy did the right thing when they "fired" Superintendent David Murphy in early March. However, what appears to be in order is a thorough house cleaning of many of the administrators that were hired under his tenure. Each of these situations except for the Valley Oak one, stem from an initial mishandling of a situation by a site administrator. In some cases an overreaction and in another an underreaction.

The initial mishandling set the tone for future interactions and the sad fact is that somehow the district has been unable to extricate itself from the problem once the initial incident was mishandled. Will that continue in the latest case? Will this end up being another lawsuit and drawn out incident? Too early to tell, but the district needs to take the initiative early on in this case and prevent it from being an ugly legal battle. There should be room from compromise and room to work out an acceptable arrangement, but the trajectory on this latest incident does not appear headed in that situation.

At some point the board needs to step in early and prevent this from becoming a lawsuit and from harming a promising student's academic future. It is very important that they act soon. In the meantime, we have to all ask ourselves why these situations continue to occur in our community. At the recent Caesar Chavez event a couple of city officials asked me point blank why there were so few (no) minorities in attendance? The same was true at the MLK day event. It is a simple answer to unfortunately a very serious question. Meanwhile just last week, the Davis City Council took another step toward re-writing the city's anti-discrimination ordinance. And people wonder why so few minorities attended events that used to be the most diversely attended events in the city.

People will accuse me, as they often do, of exaggerating this stuff even as more and more minorities tell me that they have to move out of Davis for the sake of their children and not wanting them to grow up in an environment of what they perceive to be intolerance but worse than that, indifference by the majority of the people to what is actually going on. I fear that this situation is about to come to a head. I would hope that those leaders in this community would be able to step in and prevent it before it reaches a boiling point.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting