Parents hope district’s efforts aren’t all talk
Santa Monica-Malibu Unified administrators announced they will formally create a task force to investigate claims its discipline policies are discriminatory.
The announcement comes days after a newly formed group, Mothers for Justice, held a demonstration attended by hundreds of parents and children at last Thursday’s school board meeting.
The group’s members believe their Latino and black children were unfairly targeted for suspensions and expulsions based on their race.
District officials said the parents’ concerns have not fallen on deaf ears. They pledge to investigate their complaints.
“It’s apparent to me that we need to review the policies that the parents are upset about and then make changes where we feel they are necessary,” said school board member Brenda Gottfried. “And we need to do that as soon as possible.”
The school district’s annual discipline report to the state showed that Hispanic and black children were suspended from its schools far more than white students.
Superintendent John Deasy said the task force will consist of no more than 20 members drawn from throughout the school district and the community. The Santa Monica Police Department will have an officer serving on the task force.
“No matter if the concerns are true or false there are always things we can do better,” Deasy said. “If we are going to be for continuous improvement, I think these are issues we would need to have looked into anyway.”
A schedule of meetings and the group’s roster is currently being hammered out by school district officials, which will be created next week. Officials believe the task force may begin its meetings by the end of the month.
Deasy met with SMPD Chief James T. Butts, Jr. Tuesday to discuss the concerns of Mothers for Justice. Butts asked Lt. PJ Guido of the department’s youth services division to represent the department.
“We will participate and help out in any way possible,” Guido said. “The police chief meets monthly with the superintendent to discuss these types of issues, and we have always had good cooperation with John Deasy.”
Members of Mothers for Justice are asking school district administrators to re-examine their disciplinary policies in order to balance how they are carried out along racial lines, and to involve the parents more — particularly when the police are called.
The group also has released a report on institutionalized racism and its impact on students of color, which they say reveals that black and Latino students are suspended and expelled in disproportionate numbers throughout the school district.
They also say the report shows how officials are more likely to involve police in school disciplinary matters if the student is a minority.
Organizers of the group applauded Deasy’s action and they hope the task force will do more than talk about the district’s problems.
“We need to really scrutinize this and find out how we can protect the students from racial profiling and selective enforcement,” said Maria Loya, one of the group’s organizers.
“The fact that the superintendent proposed a commission, especially during the summer, is a good sign that he is serious and he takes the issues we brought forward seriously,” she said.
Loya said the group’s members were positive about having the police department participate on the task force, but she emphasized any new discipline policy should advocate police involvement as a “very last resort.”
“We’ve demonstrated that student civil rights have clearly been violated, either in the school district’s interrogation process or when the police are called in,” she said. “We are very concerned with the violation of our students’ civil rights.”
“We are very concerned with the violation of our students’ civil rights.” — — MARIA LOYA Mothers for Justice organizer
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 3, 2002. Read the original PDF.