Good evening. Is that coming through? Okay. Are you able to hear me now? Here's what yours. All right. Is it better now? How about that? There we go. All right, so I'm going to go ahead and call our meeting to order. So welcome to our PBSD special board meeting. We have translation available in Spanish. If you need that support, please see Virginia Gonzales in the back. Virginia, can you raise your hand? There you go. If you would like to speak to an item on the agenda, then please complete a speaker card and place it in the basket at the end of the stage prior to the start of the agenda item. Each speaker will have two minutes, and we know that it is easy to lose track of time, especially if you are unaccustomed to speaking in public. So rather than cutting, just cutting people off at the two-minute mark, Vice President Shocker will hold up a 30-second reminder card just so you can gather your thoughts and and wrap things up. And I know we have, you know, quite a few new faces here this evening. So I just want to take a moment to establish some ground rules and that there is likely to be differences of an opinion, sometimes strong differences, and please give those who are speaking the same respect that you would like to receive when you are speaking. That will allow everyone to be heard in the board to conduct its business. So I'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance, and I would like to ask Trustee Orozco to lead us in the pledge, please. All right, thank you. So we'll move to item 4.1, approval of the agenda. Can I have a motion? I'd like to make an motion to amend the agenda. So I would like to make a motion to extend comments to one hour per item, 5.1, 6.1, 6.2. Thank you very much. So if we can go ahead and put up the PowerPoint, that would be great. Okay, so tonight this afternoon this evening, we're going to be speaking about a few things. We're going to first, I'm first going to speak to the historical context in the initial July 2020 Board decision, kind of remind everyone what had happened at that point. I will be discussing several research regarding the benefits, challenges, and impacts of school resource officers. Then Ms. Chaus is going to speak to data on suspensions and expulsions. Also data from stakeholder surveys and the recent thought exchange that we had. Talk about the various roles that we have that's linked to student safety. And then we'll be going over other proposed safety measures. And lastly, we will be talking about staff recommendations for future next steps. So I just want to orient us to the historical context of what had happened previously. So we did introduce SROs at Watsonville High School in 1994. There actually was a 10-year delay and then there was an introduction of to PVHS and Aptos High in 2004. There was between the months, probably prior to this as well, but specifically just looking at emails and conversations that we had, there was a real call to action from the community between April and June of 2020. Really speaking to the request and the need to remove SROs from our campuses. So the initial happened on June 24, 2020. Staff did present a presentation on research, suspension, expulsion data, risk management data. And then at that time, we also had a June 2020 survey data. We also held various student voice listening sessions, probably our largest occurred with myself on July 7th. So myself and also staff participated in a listening session with our students regarding the presence of SROs. At that point, the students very much voiced for the most part a desire to remove SROs from campus and you'll see that also in the stakeholder feedback survey that I'm going to show you in a minute. So July 9th to July 15th, we asked all stakeholders to provide us their input on the effectiveness of SROs and also the benefits and impacts of SROs. And then the board did take final board action on July 22nd to remove SROs at that point indefinitely from PVUSD schools. So I just wanted to go over the data quickly that this is from July 2020. So you'll see there are three principal groups and you'll see that there's varying degrees of feeling that it makes them safe and also being comfortable with presence of SROs. So initially the board very much was listened, it was very in tune with what the students were saying for the most part and you can see from the graph that it's up that for the most part it was about a third, a third, a third slightly off, but about a third, a little over a third, said that they agreed that SROs made them feel safe. A little over a third disagreed and then there was a little less than a third that was neutral on the point. When we looked at how comfortable they were with the presence of SROs, talking about students and former students, the same breakdown basically occurred with a third, a third, and a third. Where we see some differences is in terms of the other stakeholders. So when we looked at teachers and staff, and this was specifically teachers and staff at the three comprehensive high schools, so I want to make that point that this didn't, this was disaggregated and included only staff members at the three comprehensive high schools. You'll see that when we look at this that the majority of staff, at least at that point in July 2020, believed that SROs did make them feel safer. You did have 22% that disagreed and 21% that were neutral. And then a grand majority felt that they were, they felt comfortable with having an SRO on campus. It then again shifted when we looked at community members. And so community members ranked a little under half, so 46% said that they agreed with having SROs, making them feel safer. Versus 34% that said that they disagreed and and 18% that said that they were neutral on the point. And that mirrored pretty close to how they felt with the presence of the SROs. And I mentioned that just to provide perspective because it has been a year since that occurred. But really what we see within our own survey data is what we are seeing in the research itself. So the research is, and all of this just for the public to be aware, all of these are actually on our board docs. So if you wanted to refer to them, the source is down at the bottom. So the only one that really had more of a balanced findings was the congressional report from 2013. So it just spoke to the conflicting conclusions. So it spoke to two different things. One, it spoke to the fact that SROs are most likely to arrest for low level offenses. And they also can deter students from committing assaults on campus as well as bringing weapons. They did believe that some of the activities can contribute to school safety as well. And that was again in 2013. If you go to other sources, there is an abundance of other sources that really speak to the detriment of having SROs on campus. And specifically, this one is the Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights. I think the main difference is it specifically has more detrimental effects for students of color and students from vulnerable student populations. And so they cite how SROs do not improve school safety or reduce school violence. Also how students feel actually less safe and more fearful at school with SROs. And that SROs do lead to more expulsions and suspensions. And similar to what the last research that they also tend to criminalize and arrest use for minor misbehavior. And that a lot of times they're involved in school discipline. That's not where no crime has been committed. This one I think is a really interesting study because I believe that it speaks to context matters. So this specifically is from Sage. It's a very recent study. It was released just this year in 2021. And it really speaks to the broader context. And what they found was that there are contextual features that shape independent or individual behavior. So how an SRO behaves on a campus is directly linked to three elements. One, security measures, two, exclusionary practices and three restorative practices. And so what they find is when a school is focused on exclusionary practices and safety measures such as metal detectors or other things that generally feel like children are being criminalized, that the SROs respond in that same manner.  So I really think that this research speaks to the importance of training and the roles that are established matters. And we definitely if we have a focus on exclusionary practices which is suspensions and expulsions and we don't focus on restorative practices, what will happen is SROs will take a reactive and law enforcement approach that will lead to poor student outcomes. And so we need to be aware of that and be mindful on that. Then this is for ACLU cops and no counselors. I think this is really what the board was at that time. We didn't have the additional one-time monies and so the board really had to make the decision of where should that allocation of resources go. So this from ACLU really speaks to the fact that and I still firmly believe this to be true that school-based mental health providers do improve attendance, do lower suspension and expulsion rates and in fact do in fact improve school safety. And the ACLU cited that there's no evidence that police in school actually improve school safety and in their research actually leads to greater student alienation and a poorer school climate. And I think something that I pointed out earlier is if you are from a vulnerable student population, you will have a likelier chance of having a negative interaction unless we do something to change the context in which SROs are in the schools. And so students with disabilities are arrested at a 2.9 times more than a student that doesn't have a disability. Latinx students are arrested at 1.3 times that of white students. Black and Latino boys with disabilities 3% versus or just 3% of the population but are 12% of all school arrests which really leads to the disparity in data. So this speaks to the mental health needs that we were talking about. So it came up, it has come up through that Aptos death of how does social emotional counselors, mental health clinicians, how do they actually help with the safety of students? And so what we know is that that mental health disorders are prevalent among youth that are involved in the justice system and that the majority two-thirds of all the students, all the youth that's in detentions or correctional settings do have a diagnosable mental health disorder. So when we're thinking about upstream services, when we're thinking about how do we support students, then us continuing to place the importance on social emotional needs is paramount and can actually decrease aggression, restlessness, hyperactivity, and that is all correlated to youth violence. I do want to note just because it will be important that you can have a mental health disorder and not be part of the juvenile justice system and likewise. However they do very much go hand in hand. So now I just want to talk a little bit about what our students are saying in terms of what they need. So I've been meeting with student groups. This happened last week. I met with the Empower Watsonville student group and these were their exact words and so I know the board cares very much what students are saying and so I wanted to provide this perspective. So they feel like they're even though, and we'll speak to the numbers in a minute, even though we've increased dramatically the number of social emotional counselors, mental health clinicians in the district, that there's not enough counselors in the district and that they're not able when needed to make an immediate making appointment. They have to make an appointment and they don't have immediate support and they also spoke to the wellness centers. So those that have been tracking the district know that we're going to be opening up our new wellness centers. They're just talking about them not being available to students at all times and really looking to extend those drop-in hours and their recommendation was until at least five p.m. And then their other recommendation was that they believe that we needed to provide more mental health training for teachers and staff. So we have started the year with the restorative start but we need, from their perspective, we need to continue to provide that training. And we knew that this was important because of the data that we had received from students previously. So I just want to put this information out there because there was a op-ed that came out that had highly inaccurate data. So we have not had any reductions over the last five years. We have only increased in social emotional support. So we have had a small increase in high school counselors. So now we have 23 which is a 10% increase since 2018. We do now have 17 social emotional counselors which is a 55% increase since 2018. We now have 14 mental health clinicians. That's where we've been putting most of our focus because they can provide therapeutic support to our students. And we have had a 180% increase since 2018. And then we also have increased school psychologists by 12%. We have 19 of them. This just kind of shows you another version of the social emotional support over time. And you'll see that we did hire our first set of social emotional counselors in 2006. In 2020 we did decide to use the monies from the SRO contracts to hire one mental health clinician at each high school which did occur. Then in August 2020 we expanded PVPSA services for non-medical students and families. So before if you made over a certain limit and you are not part of MediCal then you would not have been able to receive services from PVPSA. Between June and August of 2021 we hired one additional academic counselor. So I just saw her today. So she is at Renaissance and New School. We hired five additional social emotional counselors to reduce the ratio at elementary and middle school. And then we hired one additional mental health clinician using federal one-time funding. Between August 9th and 12th we did our restorative start for our staff and families. And then December 2021 we will be adding one additional mental health clinician for our wellness center which will be opening prior to the winter break for our wellness center at EA Hall. And now Ms. Chaus is going to speak to some data. And while you're passing that off I just want to remind members of the public that you know county and CDPH guidelines require masks well indoors. Thank you. Good evening President Holm, Dr. Rodriguez, Board of Trustees. I have a pleasure today of giving you kind of the data behind where our kids are currently at. Some history of where they've been with suspensions and expulsions. And really some of the factors that have played into this. So we had a very successful pilot with Sone to Grow. Sone to Grow is a platform based program that actually does check in pieces with our students. We piloted over the summer and we launched with the restorative start pieces. You can see up there about 5,200 students are currently in. The data is reflecting when a student and teacher have engaged in at least one data point or more and in addition to up to three data points in a month. So again as you see kind of the initiation of a first start with Sone to Grow you can look over to the right hand side. A lot of interest in how our kids are currently doing from their voice. So important to look at what our students are feeling. You can see to the right hand side you'll see a range of that dark green which is the very happy and then happy right underneath that. So it's the green band really that we're trying to get to. On the left hand side is PVUSD. So you'll see over 50% of our folks are feeling very happy or happy. So to the right of that for referencing of other districts that are using similar softwares to Sone to Grow you'll see the right which is where other districts started this year. So same time frame. Our kids and I think it's a testament to the amount of connection that staff had during the pandemic but you are seeing that not all is ill out there either. So our kids are feeling happy and re-engaged with their sites in addition to. This is also from Sone to Grow. So what you'll see up there is the breakdown of sites. So on the left hand side what you're trying to really get to is looking at a five. So the top mark is five in terms of their happiness rating. Each one of those sites calculates it for all the students that are involved in it. To the right hand side you'll see what the district emotional scale read. So with all of our sites all 31 sites included they're reading at about a 3.8 just in that line of happiness. And again you can see kids are depending on site you know their factors may have changed their environmental factors may have changed. We don't know exactly what's occurred for each one of our students. But what this allows us to do is to get to a targeted support and actually provide additional supports to sites that we may not be seeing the same outcomes from. Follow up to Sone to Grow. So at this point we have three sites Lakeview, Wixah and Alianza that have completed a post survey. So how this works is our students have a pre-survey. Everybody in the district has done the pre-survey at this point in terms of the the 5200 students that you saw. So if they are in the system and actively using it they've done the pre-survey. What you are seeing in this particular example is the pilot piece of the three additional sites that have now done a post. So what that means is that there's been either a curriculum or an SEL lesson or additional pieces from either Sone to Grow. Or teachers also did additional lessons in between and then ran a post survey. So highlighting and noting a couple of things here. When you take a look at where the growth was in initial impact. So again short amount of time since we've been back to school. But if you take a look at these two bands and take a look at what those look like. So I know when my feelings are making it hard for me to focus and I know what my strengths are. So if you recall our restorative practices pieces when we came back were around identity belonging and agency. Those are two attributing factors to those pieces. To the right hand side you'll also see some places that are identified in growth for us. So we haven't seen the substantial gain in terms of what that will look like. But what we are seeing is what our kids are feeling. They're not exactly sure how to calm themselves down at times. They also may not be able to completely name what they are feeling. So again that self awareness and that social awareness of what we're currently coping with still has room for us to continue to work through it. But these pieces of pre and post allow us to see also the effect of what kind of lessons we're providing. So we know where to go next. So I want to reemphasize what Dr. Rodriguez said which is that suspensions are not restorative. So suspensions are necessary at times. But they are also not restorative. And if they're not coupled with corrective measures and actual supports they're actually hazardous and end up going the opposite direction for our kids. A few pieces and I will highlight some pieces that if you recall I've actually mentioned these several times to the board and other presentations. Our system in synergy came on in this this year in between. So as we launched into 17 that's really when we started to move from East schools into synergy completely. So I want to preface this piece of the data of years prior to their compilation of what we were able to pull from East schools and hard copies at times. So the system and the structure really was not built to read the same things that we're reading from 17 18 on. So to give you an example of what that looks like prior suspensions. There were pieces that were not in fact all of our pieces at that point were not tied to Ed code. So that basically means that any of the suspensions that occurred from 2013 up until the point of 16 17 it doesn't mean that they were necessarily coded to an Ed code violation which means you may have gotten something in there like a third grader that hit somebody on a playground and it's marked as a hit or somebody that is doing a lot of disruptive behavior and somebody suspended them which actually is not allowable at this point after 2009. So some of these pieces that you're seeing was the real alignment of us moving to a better student information system that was capturing those things. But I also want to caution you to realize that there may not be directly apples to apples in this particular case. What I will note is that when you are taking a look at the transition of data the 939 if you will that's up there also important to look at per capita. So what does that really mean? So the 939 if you were to use the district enrollment at the time is about 18 percent of our students at that time period were being suspended for one thing or another in a high school level. You can also run down to probably our most closest year prior to COVID the 18-19 school year was at 13-13 so that's a 5.9 percent suspension rate. So gravity of moving from an 18 percent to a 5.9 is incredible for a district to move in that direction. It also is relative to what you're seeing in these declines we're looking at what are we implementing and trying differently versus just doing suspension. Again you will see a missing year there that is COVID year so 2021 there really is no data for us to be able to project into that piece. We did not suspend students during virtual space as you will. I don't know that it would have changed their environment at that point. A couple of other pieces so again you can see a little bit of a difference in the graphing of what happened in middle schools. I was and several other people were not necessarily here during that 16-17 year but there are some intriguing factors so when I did talk to administrators to in regards to why some of the glyphs and the bumps again you were at 986 which was 27.7 percent of our middle school kids. So almost a third when you think about the number of kids that were being suspended in 2013 and then drastically obviously dropping to the 569 and then ultimately the 61. 61 in all fairness it's year to date so if you were to project that out springtime is a little bit heavier than not. If you were to project that out over four quarters you're looking at about 240 but again those things have not happened and we don't also wish them to happen so but in trajectory you'll see again the band growth of each one of our schools and they are highlighted above within their school color in terms of what that looks like. You'll also note that in the 17-18 school year I know that the board is familiar with this but for those that are not in the 17-18 school year we also received funding from the low performing block grant. The low performing block grant was actually identified for middle schools for this exact effect. It was looking at what are we doing academically with math, English and culture and climate if you remember. So heavy emphasis was put on what are we doing with PBIS and our tiered fidelity inventories to really look at why is this occurring and why are they still so high. A couple of pieces in regards to expulsion so these pieces are framed between high school and middle school. So again a couple of pieces in regards to data points. These are years prior to us having the data collected. These are hard copies so essentially school districts are required to have a certain number of years back of hard copies of expulsions. We did go through those files that are generally housed in student services departments and you can see up there four and four again as far back as we could go with the files that we had that were not electronic at that point in time. You'll also see the heavy lines up here so the longer lines with the little flag pool if you will at the top that is the total number throughout the district. So if you take a look at the top lines up here you'll also see the schools represented in terms of the number of expulsions that they have had and represented. In the district level you will see there was 57 expulsions in the 14-15 school year followed by 15-16 at 42, 29 and 16-17, 35, 14 and then three in that year prior right at COVID line. So again a couple of attributing factors to expulsions that you all should be aware of. There are five majors so five major expulsion components are mandatory so there is nothing that you can do in corrective measures. There is nothing that you offer in restorative practices. Those five have to come to the board as a full expulsion. Any other offense so those are top five offenses so firearms are one of them explosives etc those are the top five that regardless of what has been done in corrective action they do end up coming to the board as an expulsion. Any other offense in edcode has to meet two measures those two measures are that other means of correction are not feasible meaning what did we do to support a student and put something in place so you'll see things like behavior plans you'll see things like checking and check out you'll see things like we've provided counseling or referrals those are all corrective measures they're not always used but they must be offered and we must actually try to change the behavior in a different way other than a punitive function and then the last one is in the second measure of the dual piece in the expulsion line is does the act that the student committed end up resulting in something that presents a danger to others if they were to return so those are the two double measures of anything else outside of those top five within physical encounters and take a look at a couple of pieces both in high school line and middle school line so within the high school line and I'll point out very quickly because I know that if I'm Watsonville high I always think the same thing too there's things in per capita so I want to caution people to read this and not really truly understand it so if you were to read this at naked eye and just go my goodness you can clearly see Watsonville high's numbers are higher that's not a per capita drive so when you do a per capita you're taking the total number of offenses and then you are actually dividing that by their total population so as you know Watsonville high is at 2100 2300 depending on the year so those are calculated a little bit differently so if you were to look at it in just this effect you would clearly see that they look like they are higher than the normal students in per capita I'll take one of the years and show you what that breakdown would look like so in the 2018-2019 school year that per capita rating for Watsonville high would have been a 6.2 PV high would have been at a 5.6 and Aptos high would have been at a 2.1 so it gives you kind of a parameter as to what it looks like to break it down not just by sheer offense but what does that mean in the actual total population or enrollment same is true of our middle school encounters so middle school encounters and I should also note that as we're talking through this some of the codes that were found within e-schools again this category had probably over 12 different taglines it could be fight it could be fight battery it could be slap it could be hit it could be inappropriate conduct exclamation and exclamation so a lot of work has been done in the the correlation of moving from e-schools to synergy to standardize this so you will see some of the impacts of doing that too we need to log things we need to know what the actual accurate story is in order to actually be able to do something about the story so again as you kind of look through the data you are beginning the years of really our first three years prior to covid of having you know what I would consider going into what I would consider going into a student information system appropriate and in alignment with what your ed code lines are which is what you really want to see over trajectory and time and lines a couple of other pieces so these are formal threat assessments so formal threat assessments many people know them because they sometimes hit social media and that rises to the occasion it essentially is somebody that has made a comment it could also be a group has made a comment and a direct threat to an individual on a school campus could be a principal ap could be another student it also could be the ones that you guys have probably seen most recently in regards to kids making comments out loud about harming a school so when you make a comment out loud that actually follows falls underneath forty nine hundred point seven it's considered a threat it's a direct threat to the community in the school community what that means is that the school district counselors mental health and law enforcement are all involved in that threat and they have to assess the viability of it so it's the district's response that through the threat assessment if that is heard and we know that it automatically goes to law enforcement as well it is used as really a bandwidth of multiple professionals in that area to decide did they have viability did they have the options to actually conduct that and again with social media would certainly caution people and also use it as an educational point for parents to be cautious of what your students also say a lot of times kids say things that they don't necessarily mean we treat every threat the same way and unfortunately that is very hard to restore kids back to their communities in their settings when they said something that they may have thought was a joke it's it's not a joke so please take the opportunity also to help your students know that and know the difference a couple of other pieces survey data that just went out in september of twenty twenty one looked at a couple of different areas you'll see up there that there were two thousand two thousand uh two hundred and sixty nine folks that responded to it of that sixty two percent were parents or guardians uh six nineteen percent were staff members and then also students of the seventeen percent and what was generally asked in this piece was looking at as you've returned to school what are the health and safety pieces that you are in need of so if you take a look to the right hand side there a couple of things over fifty percent lines so i will pull those for you really quickly but as you can tell they're all very similar nature in terms of how many responses were made so those over fifty percent were additional campus supervisors additional security cameras and better communication systems trailing very closely behind between the range of forty three point three percent and forty six point one percent were additional social emotional mental health services presence of school resource officers and emergency training with alice the same survey also indicated the impacts of covid so up here you'll see how much impact did it have with our students you will also notice that three is about the midsection right so anything to the right hand side five means that it really truly impacted them in a big way if you have those two pieces together both four and five which lean to that right hand side of it is significantly impacting them you're at fifty percent fifty percent of our students and families that responded to this indicated that it was significant impact in their household for mental health the other piece that is obviously of caution is that three so the three sits on the fence sometimes are better some are not so again more students that we definitely need to be clearly aware of so that we don't actually push one way or the other also reflected in trauma care so how are we receiving kids and how are we working through that to make sure that we service that need before it heads in the opposite direction you'll also see down here the impact on academic learning again four and five significant impact that was at forty seven point four percent if you add those two pieces together so you're roughly sitting around that fifty percent line again with just as many in that third band we also had another format so outside of survey we moved through thought exchange feedback thought exchange feedback is a platform base that allows participants to use their thoughts and then other participants to weigh in on what those thoughts are so it's almost as if you are having a dialogue with others where you can say yeah I actually agree with that too or no way I don't agree with that and you have different ranking buttons that allow you to do that up here you can see the total return from september seven through the thirteenth we had nine hundred and fifty five participants of those participants we had oh just over a thousand thoughts that they gave in regards to where we are at with school safety and mental health pieces over the those same nine hundred and fifty five people marked over twelve thousand ratings and responses in addition to so the word cloud that you're seeing this is what's referred to as a word cloud those words popped out in more of their feedback than not so this is generated directly from their feedback so the more that you actually see a term the more that it will actually show up within the word cloud itself little deeper dive into that data so within the thought exchange piece itself it also allows us to create and look at what those themes actually are based on the feedback from from the participants so a few pieces that may resonate with people that they they are aware of campus safety monitors those are campus supervisors yard duties etc so supervision of such SROs included law enforcement WPD sheriff etc so any references that were in regards to that covid and safety measures included testing masks etc caring staff so caring staff was actually a deliverable of folks asking that the adults that are caring for our kids and our families are receptive and warm what they were asking for was a level that you you see what we've gone through and you can connect with us so it was highlighted by multiple families that they want to feel kind with teachers with staff with principals they overall want to have an experience where they feel welcomed and warmed you also have a couple of other pieces here the increase in communication was also highlighted you saw that in the initial survey as well comprehensive school safety plan actually referred to the discipline policies or bullying aspects that have come up or egress ingress exiting and entrance of schools for proper care other other fell into it may not have necessarily been attributed to mental health directly or safety and security these were pieces such as substitutes class size or online schooling so things like virtual academy needs and those pieces mental health mental health clinicians this also called out the need for in several comments and highly rated comments they were asking for additional training to for teachers in regards to really making sure that they understand what those needs are in a better way to be able to assist with students a no idea generated down here it was a thank you or appreciation of ascending out the the survey to ask and then you have counseling right here on the end so again attributing to your top themes so now it got into the place of folks being able to really rank those things so all those rankings those 12 000 rankings here are the top rankings so the score of five is really the highest of the rankings that we get um very much so plateaued across the board meaning folks really do have a significant need for many of these pieces it does tail off the two pieces that are highlighting tonight that we're discussing that are connected as well are going to be those campus safety monitors as well as school resource officers and also mental health so one of the things that the program and the platform does is it looks for folks that ranked similar items and then what came out of that was that the majority of folks that ranked the same item were around SROs on campus and mental health so in this particular case you had 190 folks make comments and rankings and association with SROs and 53 folks really looking at the mental health aspects of what those needs are too so the way that you read this is to the left hand side these are the sides and the comments that generated the most energy around rankings of the community and what you will see here is essentially the the number one piece that came up was concerned during school hours to make sure that their son was taken care of and that police presence would provide safety so again other parents and other students also indicate that as a high ranking and then police officers up here you also see as a high rating on the flip side you will see mental health clinicians and mental health in general this piece was essentially no permanent police presence we do not draft these are direct comments from folks we need to better address how to ensure everyone's well-being a lot of research shows SROs don't reduce school violence and then the last one no SRO in schools armed police are dangerous to black and brown students these two also were highly rated according to our rankings interestingly enough what both groups called out so it didn't matter whether you had reference side a or side b both sets actually highlighted these two at a high frequency which was the need to really truly have caring and attentive staff and also communication systems that parents also felt worked more efficiently and with that a couple of things as we go into some some possibilities or some options that you may have it's important to understand as we're talking through these some roles of various people that are actually linked to the direct student safety piece so you'll see up here the campus supervisors and the mental health clinicians these are both specific to their job titles and job descriptions so in this case you will see our campus safety and security officers that are on each one of our high school campuses as well they're there to really provide a safety and support they assess they monitor they generally work their way kind of in with with our kids they're very knowledgeable about seeing our kids on a frequent basis but their oversight really is to look at being a problem solver so they may be assigned to certain areas they may be developing and observing certain pieces that are occurring and they also prepare reports or records in order to be able to kind of assist us in moving forward they are what I would say parents are most accustomed to seeing when you actually end up going on a campus mental health specialist so in our case there's a couple of different ways that we provide this and it actually breaches out even further to our academic counselors as well at times so many of them have the same credential in line as well as our social emotional counselors but in this case it's highlighted that the mental health clinicians and social emotional counselors they provide really three different areas so one it's the mental health support to individuals groups so we do group sessions as well and families that are in direct service or crisis we also take a look at participating as part of the part of the public and the school team so they generally work on our multidisciplinary teams our wellness committees those pieces that really generally require somebody to have a high level of expertise in this area so ssts IEPs they also go to and then compliance and maintenance of files and those records to make sure that we are getting and meeting those professional and ethical standards and then lastly SROs so school resource officers SROs responsibilities this definition was taken from the congressional study that dr. Rodriguez referenced earlier there are three major functions so the safety expert and law enforcer making arrest issuing citations on campus taking actions against unauthorized persons on school property responding to off-campus criminal activities and serving as responders in the event of a critical incident secondly they're also there as a problem solver and a liaison to the community resources developing and expanding crime prevention efforts and community justice initiatives for students and then lastly it's indicated as an educator and again that reference and definition is from the congressional study shared with you guys some other proposed safety measures so there are three and then I will pass it back to dr. Rodriguez these three specifically look at restorative practices so if you actually recall I believe it was last week we were at our general board meeting our student services director Rick Edo and myself spoke to restorative practices that is a pilot piece that we are putting in place this actually would allow us if approved is one of the options this would allow us to actually begin working at a more expeditious rate to be able to include more of our schools in the process the the major factor in this and if you look at the connection this is a tier two support within pbis it covers options so we need to be able to have options for different types of interventions and then 2.7 so this is that framework piece of pbis also that the practices match what the students need so again the the difference between suspending and then moving in a direction that actually allow us to meet the needs and to repair harm and repair relationships versus having students you know be off campus and not be you know present to be able to have that connection with us in addition the center line is the student success project I also spoke to you guys recently about this piece this piece actually is a project through santa cruz county probation it currently is at three of our sites pv high renaissance and new school it's currently through a grant so it's not a district grant it's actually a probation grant grant that was submitted and we were partners within that so it's allowed us to have those services the extension though and this is a possibility is to extend that partnership with probation to include aptos and Watsonville high important to notice this these are uh they do not cite students they don't have the ability to cite students in this case so what this really is is looking at the the program focuses on the prevention function it looks at the strength assets if each one of the kids it does goal setting it assesses their social emotional needs provides supports outside and also does family and parent engagement wraparound it serves both probation and non-probation youth so again they've been a part of our wellness over the past two years at the schools that they're currently at and have had much success we're currently evaluating what the cost would look like in order to be able to do another piece with Watsonville and aptos as well and then lastly additional campus supervisors and training in this proposal we would be looking at adding one additional full-time campus supervisor to the three high schools uh in addition uh most recently SB 390 was an addendum to SB 1626 so 1626 actually said that if you worked in a security guard function on a campus and worked more than 20 hours a week you needed to make sure that you had some additional training to do so in July one of 2021 which was just recently here 390 passed which was to basically say that regardless of how long your work hours are if you are in the the session of supervising students or on a campus you must actually go through the the post course so in this case those of you guys that are not aware peace officer standards and training those focus areas that are required looks at the the role and responsibility of school security officers the laws and liabilities security awareness in an educational environment mediation and conflict resolution disasters and emergencies dynamics of student behavior and there actually is a requirement for that one hour exam in order to be able to receive that post uh training cert in addition you'll see at the bottom here i referenced it in an earlier uh session during one of our community forums so district safety and security walkthrough tool so our comprehensive school safety plans there is not a tool uh that the cde or department of education has had around this other than a checklist uh what we've actually been able to do and i've had success with this also in other areas is to be able to use that and combine it with our homeland security piece on the guide to k-12 school security what it allows us to do is look at eight factors that are common that can be assessed at any time so what this would allow is it would allow our campus supervisors to look through these eight modules in real time on a campus so as students may be in in periods actively in classrooms and you have coverage you could have one of our campus supervisors as well as our ap's principles nurses anybody else that that is uh really living in this space has the opportunity to be able to do these modules what this setup would allow us to do and there's no cost associated with that piece what that setup allows us to do is more frequency of checking these pieces whether it is access control all the way down to school culture communications or the security equipment that a campus has it also allows us to move those forward to m and o and other folks that can assist us in prioritizing the alteration and the fixes of those approximate cost outside here that is largely in part due to the salary lines which includes the statuaries and benefits of the additional campus supervisors and then the training costs associated with each one of the members that we would have in this space and with that i will be passing it back to dr regus hopefully the board what they find is that all of these proposed safety measures and the ones that i'll be speaking to on the next slide are directly related to the survey data and the research that we found so when you think about when we talked about the context and how the context matters it specifically spoke to restorative practices and the need to have restorative practices be a base on a school campus the student success project really speaks to our need to continue to provide upstream services to our students and then the campus supervisors was one of the main areas in which our families requested that we continue to move forward so then you continue to look at the other proposed measures one of them is improved self-service specifically at aptos high school we there actually was a conversation prior to my arrival in terms of the self-service so we are able to effectively do that we have just recently just within the last week or two we have reached out to both paris in and at&t and they are able to provide additional self-service for us through many cell towers i just want to note that i believe it was in 2015 so right before my arrival there was a conversation about that and there was decision not to put the many cell towers in the schools and this but this would be an option for us and there would be no cost to us we maybe even could figure out if there was a way that we could have some type of funding back to us and associated with us but because this would provide service throughout the aptos area that area then there would be no cost to us we also looked at two different things in terms of the camera system so i do want to note that the self-service is specifically for aptos but everything else that we're discussing in terms of the proposed safety measures are for all three comprehensive high schools so improvements to the security system security camera system we have been upgrading both the cameras and the infrastructure for many years this would be us adding an additional 25 coverage at the three sites and really continuing to improve our current servers so an example of what that would mean aptos high currently has 39 cameras we would increase that to 50 which would allow us to increase the specific coverage that increase of the 25 percent coverage would be about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars it would just be a one-time expense we are looking also at software which we can actually integrate with our current system so there is software and surveillance software that allows for texting alerts so for example if a student is in an area that shouldn't have traffic at that point there can be texting alerts there can be advanced 13 capabilities so facial recognition pattern recognition and then also object detection recognition we weren't able within these last two weeks to find an exact cost but we were able to confirm that we're able to use our current cameras which definitely will bring down the the cost and we also heard from our families that one of the things that was really important to them and students was communication systems so how can we improve that we this actually is not on there but what one thing that we are going to do is develop a buddy system so when we we do have a text and email and all call system for families what we did not have in place was someone double checking that the message went out to the right to the intended party and so we are going to start that buddy system but there also is the rave mobility safety app so I'll kind of explain what what that would be so every staff member on on a site would have the app on their phone or they could choose to have the app on their phone it would allow them if they press on it and maintain holding it down for the 30 seconds they would be able to automatically call 911 fire and medical it also allows for geofencing so some of us really know what that is because of footsteps to brilliance but basically what it does is once we establish that geofencing let's say that I'm in e21 once I when I'm pressing it down it will send the signal directly to dispatch and it will identify it will tell them that I am in e21 with the geofencing district-wide if we chose to use that safety app a five-year plan would be 158 thousand dollars 557 dollars and 50 cents and that would allow staff to also receive those messages so let's say that we go on lockdown and there's an active shooter we are able to not only in one button a send that to send that to 911 but we're also able to send that to staff and any district staff that also should be aware of it so currently if if a site calls 911 the district is alerted through a log this would be even faster than that because we would know right away to our phones versus it going to a to an executive assistant that then has to then tell us so we think that this would be an excellent way to ensure that staff was up to date and also be able to quickly receive all those first responders. The last thing that we are suggesting in terms of safety measures is an independent evaluation of Aptos high school event so we want to make sure that we do our part in really understanding what occurred before during and after the event so that we can make changes and improvements to systems who ensure that we can try to prevent this type of tragedy in the future and also improve overall school safety and so this is an estimate it could be less but we're assuming it would cost about $30,000 to have an expert come in and do an independent evaluation in a after public comment on this item we will be asking the board to do a formal vote on the SRO as they took out the the SROs out of the schools and definitely it is it would it's a requirement for us to have the official vote on that there are three options that staff is is recommending and so you will see it if you in the next when the next action item occurs or the first action item occurs if you are voting yes that would be delineating that you are that you are wanting to move forward with option one option one is not actually us going back to what what we did previously in 1819 it's us looking at what the research is saying us looking at what our community is saying and engaging in a pilot where we would pair an SRO with a mental health clinician doesn't mean that they would be in separate areas but that they would be partners and that they would help to ensure that we can do what we had what was in the research which is change the context and the mindset of the SROs within the schools that it becomes a prevention upstream on support in terms of safety we are recommending a pilot because it is it is being done in in many cities but we want to make sure that it works within our context and we're suggesting it at two schools that our suggestion at this point is at Aptos High on Watsonville High we did not select PVHS because they currently are part of the success program that you just heard about and so we would be doing those two schools and inch and helping to to evaluate it and then determine at the end of the year if the pairing actually was supportive of the goals that we have the cost of that would be almost 1.2 million ongoing cost is what we would have to absorb eventually into the general fund so currently we would be able to use one-time funding we would we are not proposing any reductions of mental of any social emotional or mental health supports in order to fund this so I want to to make that apparent to everyone is we're we're this would be over and above what we currently have it would not cause us to reduce anything what it would require us is we would have to buy 2024 we would have to find within the budget the 823,000 either through COLA or other additional funding that we receive we would have to fold that in but for the first three years we would be able to use our ESSER funding which is our one-time funding that we're receiving from that well it comes from the state but eventually from the federal government one-time cost is the 373,557 I do want to note that option one includes all of the safety measures that we noted on slides 31 and 32 as well so it includes the geofencing app and includes the cameras and includes the campus supervisors if you vote no to SROs on campus then the staff recommendations are one of two things option two would to be to as our students had said as as many of the researchers said we would add additional mental health clinicians on top of what we already have so we would add one additional mental health clinician that cost would be almost 1.1 million 715,000 would be ongoing and 373,000 the same as all because it's the hard one-time cost would be for the one-time and then the third option would be to if the board selected would be to only do the safety recommendations that are on slides 31 and 32 and that would be a cost of 577,257 ongoing would be just the cost of the campus supervisors which is the 203,700 and then the ongoing the one-time cost would be the other measures and so we will we can take this down but we will put this back up when it is time to do the vote so that you are also aware and we will stop the presentation at this point. Are there any public speakers to this item? So I'm going to call you up three names out of time to take your turn speaking at one minute 30 seconds I will let you know that there's 30 seconds left you each have two minutes to speak and this is just a reminder that comment cards need to come in before we start commenting or I'm sorry before we start our proceedings on the topic so right now we're at topic 5.1 we'll be hearing public comment for so the first person Daisy Brooks, Christa Sausalito and Gina Castaneda. Vice Chair Trustee Shocker could you tell us how many speakers you have on this item please. There's approximately 65 total. Thank you for 5.1 so for 5.1. Good evening Board of Trustees my name is Daisy Brooks and I am speaking to you this evening not only as a classified employee but as a concerned parent. SROs are for the benefit and safety of students why wouldn't we want the safest environment for our children in our school system these SRO officers are specially trained in handling youth especially those who have experienced trauma this is our opportunity as a community and school district to work together with our local law enforcement to create a safe environment for our students there are a lot of activities going on in our schools that are not all reported at the middle school I work at there have been multiple fights on and off campus within the first week of school all recorded by students and posted on social media we have children who are bringing drug paraphernalia knives, vape pins to school I've had my own children tell me that kids are bringing in drugs and vape pins and smoking them in bathrooms cafeteria and even classrooms a 17 year old student was stabbed and killed while attending school by two other students a 13 year old student the very next day was arrested for brandishing a knife on another student while on campus I was in addition we also need more training for our classified and certificated staff on school emergencies and planning we as a district are not fully prepared for the possibilities so with all that being said I'm encouraging you the trustees to make the right decision when it comes to the safety and well-being of our children in this district these children deserve a safe environment to learn in thank you for your time my name is Crystal Salcedo my request this evening is for the board to reject the options given by the district and to immediately reinstate the school resource officers at each and every campus and as I have stated in the data presented by Dr. Rodriguez this evening what is missing is the application of that data to our actual community to PVUSD what's missing from the data is the pairing of how many actual students have been arrested and actually traveled to the juvenile hall from campus over the last three years and that number is three students only three students have been transported to juvenile hall from campus over the last three years and what where is the data on the Caminos program at Watsonville police department there are so many ways in which this school district can partner and wants to partner with its police and they are willing to be not only a restorative justice partner but also work on exclusionary practices which the SROs are in no way in charge of that's the district's responsibility to work on exclusionary practices but our police have absolutely been dedicated to restorative justice and where is the communication with probation and where is the communication with Watsonville police because they have said over and over again we are dedicated they made the Caminos program in Watsonville literally to wrap around juvenile at-risk youth and to completely divert them from the juvenile justice system our police want to be partners with you but you have to let them in finally you yourselves were protected on campus during a police football game time thank you good evening my name is Gina Castanio then I stand here I coach several soccer teams in the community these young men are going to stand here because they don't want to speak but have the same kind of opinion that I have I want to say in the past few months since the SROs have been taken out I want to say I can't believe it I can't believe that anybody would say that Watsonville PD or any law enforcement would incarcerate youth because that's the only thing that they want to do there's been so much work and so much collaboration with law enforcement probation the schools and nonprofits just like the one that you talked about the SSP program when I had worked for a local nonprofit I saw firsthand the compassion empathy comfort support and police gave youth and their families they treated them with respect and they helped the victims I think that's where we have lost the victims look voice culturally I will tell you in our community we have failed because we parents tell kids all the time we have instilled fear in our own kids by using the police to parent our children kids that live in their homes wear gangs domestic violence and other violence they are schooled down or taught by people that are victimizing them not to trust in police probation counselors our teachers these kids because I know because I was one of them did not trust and did not come forward to get the support that I needed to be able to become the person that I am today victims schools are a place where people can be safe I would like to see the community data you talked about juvenile probation where are they they're the experts they touch social emotional social aspects positive social activity law enforcement and change there Santa Cruz County is one out of four departments in the nation that is changing the way that it works with law enforcement schools and communities you talked about data I want to see what restorative you talked about restorative practices okay next speakers April Hernandez Mirella Gonzalez and Bobby sorry Marshall come on up good evening thank you my name is Mireya and I am a parent with PVUSD and I can just tell you that in all the history of an SRO being on a campus there has never been a death for our school okay this is the first time that we've had a situation like this because there is no authority no SROs on our campuses also I had done some research and I went on to the Santa Cruz County probation website and if you look at the data the Santa Cruz County shows that the juvenile hall has had the lowest rates of incarcerated youths in its history this is due to the collaboration of police non-profits and probation since removing the SROs the number has doubled okay thank you very much hi I'm April Hernandez I'm a parent of two children that attend PVUSD however they are only in middle I mean elementary school it still just saddens me to hear this they were on the road to go to middle school at Aptos junior and then go to Aptos high and now I really wonder if that's the right decision to make as a parent when I hear about this I feel like this was a tragedy that could have been prevented there were eight fights on campus and in the two first weeks of school and I hear that only two were reported if an SRO had been on campus I really feel like that would have been different and something would have happened action would have taken place mental health is very important to have as well but what did they do in the situations where they notified about the fights on campus where those children seeking help I think that in that instance SRO would have made a bigger impact and a bigger difference and been able to report these fights and hopefully not let it get to the point that it did thank you sorry hi there thanks for your time my name is Bobby March assault I'm a resident of Watsonville in addition to being a minister I am a teacher in PVUSD as is my wife we have a student at Watsonville high as well as a middle schooler and an elementary school or all at PVUSD my heart goes out first of all to all the youth and families involved with and affected by the recent violence at Aptos high and in our communities I do appreciate Dr. Rodriguez your effort to include a social emotional aspect to the SROs if it were to come back I recognize that and say thank you however I will be the first one tonight to be a voice to ask that you not bring SROs back on campus I just want to encourage you not to make a knee-jerk reaction to recent events police in campuses is not the answer to creating a healthy and safe environment at our schools and especially without a more robust conversation than what we have been able to have in the last week or two's time as a member of Watsonville's ad hoc committee on policing and social equity I have had the opportunity this past year to get to know our police department well and I have a great deal of respect for them these concerns are not a sweeping indictment of police due to a woke ideology as has been suggested by some the decision to remove cops from our campuses was made as a result of thorough research and listening and while it is true we find ourselves in a very different place a year and a half later the decades in fact much more of history that led to that decision that leads many of our most vulnerable students feeling less safe have not gone away in fact many have been exacerbated let's continue to invest in social emotional supports let's bring more counselors as the option to suggested for students who have missed a year and a half of that support let's partner with nonprofits and individuals who can work on our campuses with at-risk youth provide intervention invest in cell towers and cameras okay I am not in support of bringing back srls in any of our campuses but also is it a one-size-fits-all can we look at the different communities and are all of our schools have the same perspective will all of our communities feel the same way thank you next three I use a carol val visual and marcia delfino Maria hi my name is eisha carol I have a son first time at aptos high school I have also in my profession I deal with most of the populations that all of this is talking about you can find data on both sides that is valid and current that will support either sro or not sro Jennifer and I have both worked at an institution in the past together where people that worked there were being assaulted and our lives and the lives of others were put in jeopardy we did not ask for counseling we have counseling we asked for immediate security and to help people be protected from violent acts that is what I am asking of you today you are responsible and we're adults asking for this for ourselves I deal with youth I deal with teens I deal with gang members cops all of it my son is attending you guys are responsible for my child well he is at your school you have active gang members you have students with weapons you have students with violent criminal history if you are going to accept as we should everybody then you need to make the community safe while your mom my child is in your care so despite the fact that you have the counseling and all the stuff you've talked about a poor young man was stabbed to death and died at the school campus every time my son walks past that he thinks about that boy who lost his life talk about needing counseling okay this is a situation not about fear this is about a child that cannot be brought back and we need to prevent that from happening again hi members of the board my name is Val and I'm speaking to you as both the mother of a current freshman at Uptos High and also as a local emergency department physician and one that was lucky or unlucky enough to be involved in the tragedy I do want you to know a couple things I do think that some type of security would be useful on campus I you've presented lots of different options and quite frankly I think mental health is truly necessary as well in combining the two seems like an excellent approach I think the idea of a resource officer of any type on campus in a punitive fashion however is a horrible idea so this would be just a resource offer to keep our kids safe my understanding about the event is that there was at least one perpetrator who is not a student at our school and my question to you is how how did they get on campus how did they get on campus why didn't anyone know where this kid was why did he have to walk so far to get help and then I do want you to know that I appreciate everything that the school has done in the school board coming to meet efforts were truly hampered by lack of cell phone service so I'm very happy to see that being noted and addressed and I just want to take a minute to recognize Gerardo because it was a horrible loss please protect our students thank you my name is Maria and I'm a former Aftos high school alumni I graduated in 2015 I remember my year there were three students who committed suicide and after the first suicide you guys acknowledged it by bringing in a lot of counselors and there were still two more suicides and so I see the importance of having counselors I know that was something that I'm sure brought a lot of the counselors in but that shouldn't mean taking a safety officer out my experience with the safety officer is he was a younger gentleman probably in his mid 30s who everyone saw there's like a respected person that they would go talk to you I mean I don't think that there was any fear that I was aware of he was another advocate for students who would you know go up and talk to him during breaks and lunch and it wasn't a punitive thing and it was a great way for young people to learn how to speak with police officers and how to have a respectful connection with them because they are members of our community who we need to know how to learn to talk to you and what better place to learn how to be respectful and to be respected than on a school campus okay next speakers Teresa Delfino Brandon Diaz and Reverend Beverly Brooke hello I have been a parent of a child at Pajaro Valley schools for 20 70 years I have seen a lot in the school district when the school resource officers first came on campus it was unusual but over the years I have come to really appreciate it there has been an instance while I was called into school and I met with the vice principal and I was given the matrix this is what your child did and this is the punishment there was no discussion no no no anything but this is the consequences of what your son did I was so upset that I went I was going to go to the police and I thought well let me check in with the school resource office first and he calmed me down and listened to what I had to say he educated me he was a liaison he he got to really educate me and make me feel comfortable and safe that my child would be protected at school I think it is of the utmost importance that they be at school I agree that counseling is a good idea but often people who need counseling the most don't seek it the officer the officer on campus can come and mitigate and it is aware and I'd like to know how many I was surprised when I found out that there are kids on probation at the school call me naive I didn't realize that when I was in school they went to other schools they called it continuation school I think that there should be I don't know what the ratio is but I would like to see maybe one SRO for every 10 formal parole students I think that would be a good idea all right well greetings my name is Brandon Denise and I'm an educator at Lakeview Middle School and this is my seventh year in the district I would like to extend my thanks to the board for letting me speak today and I would like to express my sympathies for all those impacted by violence in our schools just yesterday at my site we had a shelter in place and none of our staff had had a training for this in over two years I understand that many of us are here to talk about school resource officers and I feel this focus is misguided based on the reality of the contextual features causing our schools to be unsafe I would like to speak on behalf of our Watsonville families and students particularly those at the middle and elementary schools I hope that the board will not make a rash dishes in tonight based on fear and politics I feel sad the sheriff at every given media opportunity continues to perpetuate the myth that school resource officers keep our schools safe and his choice to politicize this tragedy shame school resource officers fuel bloated budgets student anxiety the military and police industrial complex and the school to prison pipeline the day after the Aptos tragedy a student in one of our middle schools was detained for brandishing a knife and attempting to stab appear this incident was not even communicated to the staff until the end of the school day what are we doing to keep our middle school safe because reinstating SROs won't make a difference for our middle school or our elementary school students the choice to reinstate SROs would be short-sighted and a decision based on fear and political pressure we should be investing in our students and families by investing in people and not the police we need a sustainable structure of campus security counselors and mental health clinicians instead of reinstating SROs we should be filling the close to 50 vacant teaching jobs and putting the staffing in place to ensure that our students are safe at every level teachers and students currently do not feel safe and supported we do not have adequate staffing in place to support safe schools and bringing SROs back into our high schools will do absolutely nothing to change that we need to change the context and how we establish school safety because student resource officers are not the answer good evening and thank you for taking the time to listen to the community's concerns and desires my name is Reverend Beverly Brooke I am a pastor with peace united church of christ I serve as a chaplain at the santa cruise juvenile hall and the county jail a month or so ago a young man in juvenile hall and I were talking when he started crying and he said I knew I would end up here I just didn't think it would be this soon what the 16 year old meant by here was his facing serious charges and potentially numerous years of incarceration I thought what is wrong with this picture why would a 16 year old know he was going to end up here in the past five weeks our community has experienced the loss of six young men of color through acts of violence two deaths and four looking at years of incarceration these tragic losses are providing our community with the opportunity to rethink our priorities and demand that we do better research shows that youth experience five separate incidents of trauma prior to getting into enough trouble to land them in juvenile hall trauma such as racism poverty immigration unemployment food insecurity homelessness and the pandemic how we address these traumas how we hold that pain and work with it how we turn the power of suffering toward healing is crucial because violence is what happens when we don't know what else to do with our suffering and our pain guns knives violence provides our youth with a sense of agency I appreciate that the easy answer to the recent violence is to put an officer back on campus providing us with a perceived sense of safety but this is a band-aid approach to a complicated issue this is not a law enforcement problem nor is it really a school district problem it is our collective communities problem and we must do better we have to provide mental health resources employment opportunities expand recreational we're at time oh i'm sorry oh all right and i just want to add one thing we pay 320 thousand dollars per youth per year at juvenile hall we can do better okay next speakers brady sorry i can't make out joe s name tiffany and kaolin my name is tiffany chatman i'm the mother of four pvusd students two currently at aptos high i have been a part of this school district for 14 years and by the time my youngest graduates i will be 20 i'm here today to ask you to do the right moral thing and bring sros back on campus i have watched the last several board meetings and i'm appalled at your back peddling and excuses constantly trying to defend your decision to get rid of sros on campus i have a huge problem with your statistics stating that the mental health of pvusd students has gotten better of the last two years as a direct result of hiring more counselors how could your data be correct given the fact that you didn't even have students on campus for most of that time while the sheriff's data every article and every article i've read state that anxiety depression domestic violence and child abuse are on the rise which directly correlates to the rise in violence we see on our school campuses i am happy about the increase in mental health available to our children but it cannot be at the expense of their safety in an action in an article written by outlook santa Cruz dr rodriguez stated that she doesn't necessarily believe a security officer would have helped in this specific incident this was just hours after the murder of a student and your initial response was to defend your bad decision without any facts to back it up shame on you i honestly believe it was dr rodriguez and the board's negligence that led to this young man's death sheriff hart stated that finesse roe had been on campus the perpetrator who was already on probation would have been pulled off campus after his first fight and would have been dealt with through the probation office your inability to respond to the increase in violence on our school grounds should result in all of you losing your jobs it was your negligence that directly contributed to the murder that took place on school grounds during school hours we all know pv ost is going to be sued and held liable for the death of this young man and this is why you continue to defend your bad decisions instead of focusing on the safety of our children i along with many other pv ost time demand that you return as a rose to our campuses good evening i'm them it's on excuse me please do not shout she has her mask on okay she's adjusting it we we ask you to please be respectful to everyone so everyone has a chance to speak okay we we're watching okay so please be respectful good evening i am the mother of a fantastic sophomore at octas high i've been wondering when the board severed ties with our campus police did the board think that they would do a better job at protecting and serving than the police do i don't think so now we have a murder in broad daylight and two parents who will never again hug their son we've seen no evidence of remorse from this board it is alarming that they are looking at our kids vaccination records while ignoring their criminal records one of the murders had a record and he would have been removed from campus had the sheriff been involved no one needed to die we want campus police and law enforcement and sros and every possible safety measure we want it immediately permanently and without pause we want it not only for our kids but for our amazing teachers they too are at risk protect them all the pavement of aptas high will forever be stained with the blood of that poor boy it could have been my boy your boy your girl to the members of this board please show a modicum of integrity and please bring back sro and law enforcement and safety your data is meaningless and to the family heraldo i am profoundly sorry for your loss let us honor his memory and do what we know to be right thank you this is the last call for brady listed as a partner there's brady here moving on chris webb nicky halstead and irine o'Connell i teach at renaissance which is composed predominantly of the vulnerable students disproportionate likely to be targeted by sros the sro from that we have had at our school have been from sheriff hearts department and they've been largely a wall when we did have that program since they've been gone we've had no fights we did have fights sometimes before they them not being there was kind of a good thing because a lot of the students were not really feeling them and given the way they kind of function it's made for the best however it means that the spending on sros was not fiscally prudent and hard himself when he's spoken about his service he always neglected to mention renaissance based on the feedback from students and the lack of renaissance's mental health clinician being available to serve renaissance after the aptos tragedy clearly it seems to me that mental health support is where we would be better poised to spend our money i would also argue lack of supervision in school structure played a bigger role in allowing the violence on campus more than lack of sros i think we should do more to develop students coping skills and we should spare the four hundred thousand dollar car ride that renaissance used to get from the sro because that's all we got if this district must regress and then i think we should adopt a couple contingencies insist that sros not be in full uniform with no visible gun insist sros actually be a part of the school community they serve and have implicit bias training and finally ensure that sros be of the community they serve thank you hello my name is iran and i'm speaking today on behalf of food what food what is a youth empowerment and justice organization serving santa cruz county high school youth most of them living in watsonville together we co-manage a farm and create space for young people to authentically express themselves the recent incident at aptos high as well as other recent incidents of youth involved violence in watsonville have greatly impacted our youth crew yesterday we asked the youth what they thought solutions to on campus violence might be we heard some stories about helpful counselors who made a big difference but overwhelmingly we heard a sense of hopelessness from the youth a majority of youth share that they feel violence on campus is inevitable as an organization dedicated to the well-being and safety of young people in our community this was very hard to hear we asked our crew if they would feel safer with sros on campus most of them said no some of them were unsure nobody said yes but there were nuances in their responses we asked if access to mental health resources was the solution most said yes yet some were hesitant due to counterproductive experiences that they've had with school counselors there was a range of opinions among our crew about what made them feel safe and what it would actually take to shift the culture of violence in our entire community at this time of tragic loss and urgency to respond we would like to encourage pbsd leaders to pause take the time to really listen to students right now what we are hearing from youth is that there is complexity beyond the binary argument of sros versus mental health counselors to oversimplify the multi-layered and generational issues playing out in our community does not move us closer to understanding the problems at their root we need a more intentional process of deeper listening and an approach that more profoundly invites students and families to the decision making table we ask you to please pause and consider the long-term consequences of having more law enforcement present on campus more sros on campus do not necessarily guarantee safety on campus and they do not build the culture of empowerment and hope that youth need and want to feel right now more police on campuses are a message to students that we do not trust them thank you bernard gomas anthony and martha victoria vega my name is anthony floris i was a former watsonville high school student class of 2020 and prior to graduating i helped me and my best friend yvette castillas help create and carry the wellness center with our administration and miss nunia so if you guys have any questions about that ask her and essentially the reason why we created the wellness center was to help bring resources like monarch services pvp s a and the diversity center and other services to help youth kind of get access to mental health services because that's especially needed right now especially after the pandemic and i want to point out something that police and sros don't prevent crime they come and kind of assist crime that's already committed so you know they don't really prevent anything because crime is always going to happen no matter what and especially amongst our youth i believe that mental health services are really needed and more wellness centers because our youth sometimes have no idea that we have social emotional counselors in our school as a matter of fact i believe most of watsonville high school had no idea until we created the wellness center so we have all these wellness resources they're not being applied to students and they're not being told to students and they have no idea that is why we have the lack of mental health services being provided to students and that's why we have poor mental health and amongst our students in the pvp osd so i know sros are probably going to be implemented into our schools so i ask that we also implement supervision but like supervisors like you guys are talking about um because sros bring a type of fear to people of color especially here at watsonville high school um we've never felt safe with sros at any point that i've been here my four years um at all the onset they had supervision but the supervision were adults from the community that looked like us and that were us you know they were latinos who have been through the same thing as we do so they're able to give perspective and um help students in that way so if you guys are going to bring supervision i recommend they match what we look like and that they are from our community from our community thank you thank you very much uh good evening buenas tardes um so you know what i'm hearing is that the administration is uh it's not doing their job and sros are the answer i mean is that what i'm hearing anyways i want to express my deep condolences to the families who have been impacted by this unfortunate tragedy lateral violence a tragedy that is all too familiar in the beautiful brown community of watsonville and the surrounding areas pvusd cares whole child whole family whole community that is something that is a that is something that i want to be a part of and contribute to but what i'm seeing at this very moment is what child whose family and what community no one is ever prepared for a situation like this and it must be difficult to it must be a difficult task to navigate but the moment that's bored and the superintendent allowed these forums to take place in the manner that they did you created a segregated politicized and racialized conversation not once not once expressing the condolences to the families not once addressing the bigotry and racism that was circulating but rather highlighting a sheriff in wpd listening to inaptos of fluent boys while ignoring the actual community who has been affected by this tragedy but really is policing our schools really the solution you want is this really your solution you want your legacy to be remembered by i understand that people are under emotional charge right now but to revert back to fellow practices and punitive failed punitive practices without giving process a chance to premature the unintended consequences of bringing back police to campus will fall heavily on students of color those are facts pvusd is under duress for decades schools underfunded teachers underpaid overwork with little help for a time students social determinants of health are under direct stress also we just need health love and care you know i'm saying we don't need cops now leave a carob box oh sorry good evening my name is marpa victoria vega i'm a watsmore high school alumni i live work in this community and i'm here today to thank you for everyone on the board as well as the community everywhere that is speaking on both sides i wish there was all the money in the world to be able to solve every single problem as i stand here today it's painful to see the limb divided it's heartbreaking to know a child died in school it's painful in 2012 and 2013 as i hold this i did a study a local study it's over 200 pages i've worked with students from monason's high school in our paharo valley uniform school board students i did qualitative and quantitative data both i listened to the concerns of the students and i've heard your proposals that you have and for mental health for social and emotional but for school resource officers i used to work in a different capacity where i was able to assist collecting evidence and going to autopsies those are images i will never erase from my mind i care for our community and our students and i hope you make the best decision to bring school resource officers to our community nely the carobogs greg checker travis walker good evening um i want to reference um a couple items that were on the slides you presented to the community um the number of counselors that we have available throughout our district i just want to remind our listeners that this is a very large school district and there are as per the 2021 l cap to parents um presentation just under 20 000 students that um they uh recorded for for the community to to see as public record record anyways 19 psychologists for 20 000 students across this district of 33 sites most of our psychologists are tasked with assessments 23 high school counselors so that would be at the various sites that we have it in the district and our counselors are working on scheduling working with students um getting them ready to apply for college planning their educational plan and addressing their social emotional needs but across the 34 sites or 33 sites there are 17 social emotional counselors for the district and that means that there are sites that have to share a social emotional counselor that's not somebody that's constant every day to help build that connection when we're talking about the whole child and the whole learning community we want to look for long term goals something that is sustainable something that our students will also be able to grow from elementary through high school and benefit so they benefit from counseling and understanding that the resource is there so we would like to see there be a strong need for a emphasis on hiring more social emotional counselors more mental health clinicians to help our students at our sites and to build those connections with our with our students thank you hello um i'm travis walker i'm a teacher here at watsonville high school um i teach history and one of the main things that we are tasked with doing as teachers is teaching students how to use evidence and as we've presented today you know what the evidence says about sROs there's no evidence that they're actually effective at bringing safety to campus there is however plenty of evidence that shows that they do while making some students feel safer they make students who look like me and students who look like most of my students in watsonville feel unsafe i went to a school when i was in high school that had sROs and i can tell you firsthand i did not feel safe there they harassed me and my friends we were searched on campus for no reason it happened several times throughout my experience there i would please ask you listen to the voice of your students i had a conversation with my students today about how they felt about what the board was discussing today there were some mixed reviews most students didn't want to bring them back some did what every single student nodded their heads to and what came up in every single one of my classes what students do not feel like they have access to mental health resources here on campus they do not feel like they have access to their academic counselors or the socio-emotional counselors they in every class they reported having to wait having to make appointments sometimes never getting that appointment after they've made it and actually being able to have the opportunity to speak with the professionals that they needed to speak to if there's anything that needs to be done today it's bringing more counselors on to campus thank you hi good evening i i don't envy any of your any of your seats right now this is uh this is a really tragic time but i i will say that police officers do not belong on a school campus unless there's an emergency unless there's an emergency situation in which case they're called and they arrive so fix the cellular reception spots add more cameras right but most importantly if we're truly about student safety and social emotional well-being our comprehensive high schools need to increase the teaching staff to student ratio or even fill all the open positions students are smart they quickly realize how any system perceives them more teachers and smaller classes mean we as a district as a community value these young folks as individuals armed officers tell these students something very different katie gabriel cox sarah lennard and nicky holstead good evening thank you for all of your energy and dedication to being here um my name is katie gabriel cox i am a mom to four boys my four boys are current future and past aptus high students i also work as a physician in this community and i was driven to come here tonight because i work in watsonville but i am not from watsonville and it is so disheartening to me to see our school district in our community divided across socioeconomic lines and racial lines um and you know i had a bunch of notes and i just put them aside and i'm here to say that i want my children to experience a cool a school system that amplifies the voices of our families of color we're those of us in this room are here because we're able to be here we had a car to get here we have child care we have jobs that don't allow it that don't require us to work these hours but i want my children to attend a school that listens to the voices of those families who are not here and my concern is that adding more policing in our schools will only hurt those families and not help those families thank you my name is sara and i'm here i've been to the board meetings many times this is the most profound one by all by far i'm here as a concerned parent a heart broken educator and a distraught community member my son attends aptas high the site of herardo's tragic murder herardo was in my fourth grade class eight years ago and his brother was in my class three years ago his family includes his two devoted parents his older sister and his younger brother the parents are raising their children to be kind and exemplary and responsible these attributes shine through each of them and it was a joy to be their teacher i watched the press conference on thursday september first and was struck by how heartless and mechanical some of it sounded i attended the heart wrenching memorial service last wednesday with my friends and co-workers teachers who like me are living with heavy hearts in the days after this nightmare began i walked up to the front of the church and stumbled on my words trying to console herardo's parents and his brother who sat crumpled in the pew only feet away from the open casket where herardo lay i walked down the hall to greet his sister who has been a pillar of leadership in the face of impossible grief yesterday by co-workers and i visited with his family at his home as we walked in we were overcome by a beautiful and agonizing altar for this young man that took up half of their living room potted flowers covered the floor with a decadent fragrance and framed photos of herardo with his feet and water in his head down his eyes intent on the freedom and healing quality of that moment were there portraits of mother barry adorned the space and harkened back to the memorial service where we were given a beautiful card with her portrait and details of herardo's life we offered support and gave the gift from our school and the card signed by our staff we communed with his mom and sister as his younger brother took his young nephew out to play when asked how the district and the high school and the junior high has reached out to the family and supported them the answer was we have not heard much from them reeling the tears welled up and cascaded around our masks as the five of us sat in stunned silence what could we possibly say i am here tonight to implore the pvsd community and the community at large to check our implicit bias whatever they are and shine with compassion like herardo shined throughout his 17 years the leaders of pvsd need to give freely driven by the concept that this violent act could have been our child galvanized by the idea that parents and our children to school with the faith that it is a safe space this murder has spotlighted the need for more supervision at aptos high the murder took place in the bus area and pickup area and that is in the front of campus there needs to be supervision in that area in the quad where students enjoy their break this supervision is crucial my students death has revealed the need for more compassion for a family that trusted their child would come home from school on august 31st and instead they are grappling with a life sentence of suffering as parents who have had to bury their child all right that's all the cards that came in at the start of the the agenda item all all cards need to come in before the start of the agenda item and we'll we're going to need to move on to item 6.1 so or excuse me are there any questions or comments from the board so trustee soto there are cards that were turned in after the item began we still have cards for item 6.1 and 6.2 that many people have put in and those items have not come up for discussion so we'll still be calling people if they're up for here for 6.1 and 6.2 trustee soto thank you can everybody hear me test test thanks um this whole situation is very very very unfortunate and should never happen the idea that a student got up in the morning mom probably packed him a lunch got on a bus or he was dropped off thinking that he's going to have a full day at school and this unfortunate situation happens we don't know why could it have been prevented could have not been prevented the idea of not having an SRO on site is I'll put it to you this way as an example being a former soldier former police officer I've made this statement before nobody understands public safety on this board more than I do now if you're if you're on the highway and you're passing a CHP on the side of the road and the zone is 55 and you're doing 70 what's your first reaction you you slow down exactly it's a deterrent it stopped you it made you think now do you think that day had a sheriff been on site that somebody wouldn't have thought twice about doing something so like I said it may or may not have been prevented but it wouldn't have happened at Aptos high school that day so just food for thought there's two sides to every story and everybody has their feelings about how they feel about things I'm gonna ask the members of the public to please be respectful of the many different opinions and give people their opportunity to speak and that you treat people the way that you would want to be treated when you were speaking thank you president home now we got to remember we live in the united states we have freedoms you can think how you want to think and I can think how I want to think trusty the serpent can think how she wants to think she's free to do so we're all free to do so we need to respect that among each other that's the problem today is nobody has any respect towards ideology towards anything towards religion towards school towards authority nothing that's gone out the window that ideology has undermined our country as a whole and it's our in our backyard now so we need to we need to think about that as we go into the future here thank you Vice president shocker thank you president home first off I'd like to say that I am truly sorry that our community has experienced being the loss of a student losing a student through a tragedy through a homicide is not something that I ever thought I'd be sitting and dealing with and talking to the public with and sending sympathy to the family who has lost their son permanently this is an experience that none of us ever thought we'd be sitting on this board having I'm not having a knee-jerk reaction I'm having a reaction from reading hundreds of emails from concerned parents from students from community members who took the time to write their thoughts on both sides of the issue what I have learned through their studies they have sent me their thoughts their experiences is that we're a community divided and if we're a community divided it's going to get us nowhere we sit at a different place yes it's true we set a different place than we were a year ago we're still in a pandemic nobody thought kids would be out of school for 18 months nobody thought they'd be losing loved ones to a novel corona virus there's sorrow and fear in our school community and when there's fear it gives way to manifest to anger and anger leads to division the only way out of this vicious spiral of fear and anger is love compassion and empathy I have read I have thought I have asked questions but I am humble enough to realize how little I know in the long run fear and division is more destructive than any decision I sit here and make today for me I must choose empathy and compassion to all in my community no matter what side of the table they sit on I will listen and learn with an open mind and I hope all of you will do the same this mindset is the one that opens you to discovery innovation and wisdom and I hope that this tragedy can draw this community together so that we can come and bring innovative solutions to the table to take care of our youth to stop systematic racism to keep our students safe on campus to provide mental health resources for our students and yes it does come down to money sometimes and that's a hard thing to say but it's the truth and I'm not going to lie about it and what can we do to change that we can write our legislatures and we can write our senators and ask them to fully fund mental health programs in schools to fund living wages for our teachers to fund so that our buildings can be repaired because we as a board these are the decisions that we have to make these are the decisions that we sometimes we have to choose a building repair over a counselor for our students and we shouldn't have to be in that position and the only way out of that position is if this community comes together and bands together and works together and brings in more programs for our youth we had a center youth now closed in Watsonville where are those middle schoolers going to go we need programs that support our youth after school so they're not turning to a gang for a family so they're not going home to be abused so they're not going home to situations that they're afraid they might not wake up tomorrow in so we need the community's help to make these changes and so I'm asking all of you to help make these changes and help move this community forward and heal everyone's broken hearts. Thank you. Do any other trustees have any questions or comments? All right. Trustee Orozco? I just want to say that there this is unlike a town hall a school board meeting has pretty strict laws on how we conduct the meeting so open comments from the floor won't be recognized I'm sorry. If you want to put in a card it comes in before the item starts. Trustee Orozco? I'm sorry I'm sorry President Trustee Holm it may be a similar topic since we're not at 6.1 he could put in a card could put it in for 6.1 could you please address that yes so if you it is about the agenda or excuse me for 6.2 put in another card yeah yes we will hear that was a question will we hear their public comments before we back so we do ask that people follow the county and state guidelines please. Trustee Orozco? Let's please be respectful of one another okay I'm asking everyone members of the public please we've had we're on to our public board comments there are times at 6.1 and 6.2 for further comment it is now time for board comments. President Trustee Holm I would just like to remind you of the training we received back in the spring of 2019 regarding the Brown Act and if you feel that a meeting as board president is going to be disorderly and we cannot conduct the district's business you do have the power and the authority to shut the meeting down so I'd like to make the public aware of that if the unrulyness continues our board president does have the authority to shut this meeting down and close it so please everybody everybody we know there is a lot of a passion and a lot of emotion on this topic but let's please not be disruely and be respectful and let's continue with the board meeting so our board president doesn't end up having to be forced to shut it down. So I have a couple questions regarding tonight's presentation Dr. Rodriguez the first one and it's also from listening to the public and some of the concerns that were brought up regarding having mental health be easily accessible to students and parents and how to better promote the services that will be offered through our wellness centers so I wonder if you can just touch base on what the plan is moving forward because as a parent I'm also concerned about that the lack of accessibility not so much not having access to the resources but making the public our families and students aware of those services. So I would say that I don't really it's not necessarily that what I'm hearing from students is that they are aware of it but they don't have access to it because there's not enough quantity so what I'm hearing from students is that they're trying to get access in a moment of crisis and they're told that they have to make an appointment or they are told that they have to wait so I'm sure that there are some students that don't know of the services I think it's actually the opposite problem that we don't have enough supply for the demand so we don't have enough services for students to do it we are looking of which we think will be helpful we are looking for our wellness centers our family engagement and wellness centers they will be open from 12 to 8 and it will be open on Saturdays which will allow families to be able to receive those supports at different times so I think that is important we also are introducing a new system called NALPOW which will be a warm handoff between our staff and other services so right now we have a referral process for example for PVPSA but it doesn't necessarily allow us to see we know we made the referral but it doesn't allow us to see if they actually went and how many times they were serviced so NALPOW will allow us to do that as well the reason why we did the restorative start was because we knew that 11% of our students over 2,000 of our students said that they had no supports at all and we knew that we weren't going to be able to support if you lined up 2,000 students you weren't going to be able to have the level of support that you needed so we needed everyone in the in the organization to be able to do a piece of that and that's part of multi-tiered systems of support right so you have a initial layer that then provides that that support and so what I would say is is we'll continue to message with students but when I'm talking to students they're not necessarily saying that they don't know about the services they're saying that they don't have access to the services because there's too many waiting for those few individuals that are there and so it's part of our wellness centers and correct me if I'm wrong and please elaborate if I'm right we're working with different community partners correct yeah so we have three main community partners or four main community partners that we're working with so that is PVPSA Salud para la gente Collective Action Board and Second Harvest Food Bank those are the four main organizations that we're working with and I'm assuming those were selected based on the needs we were seeing in the community and just also the strong partnership and their ability their current ability to support so if you think of the Watsonville community the Aptos community most but especially the Watsonville community most families are in contact with at least one of those four organizations great and I'm assuming that through those organizations they'll be doing their own outreach to parents and families within our community whether they're at Aptos High School here in Watsonville to ensure that if they have a question or any that they know to where to go yeah so it's a one stop shop the goal is to have a one stop shop to where because it was mentioned before sometimes we don't even know what we don't know we don't know what we need at times so eventually there will be three wellness centers so one the first one will be at E.A. Paul and then we'll choose a secondary Watsonville location and then we will have a location in Aptos as well. Thank you for addressing that the other question I had in regards to the presentation is addressing also the the need for supervision for additional supervision in our middle schools and I'm wondering there's a plan in place or if that would be something that would be discussing the future so we are having conversations regarding increasing campus supervisors for middle schools and really just more eyes around the campus so we're looking at it from a data approach of first the schools that are having more incidents and then following through there okay thank you those are all the questions I have at this point in time are there any other further comments from the board I'll defer my comments to the next item all right so we'll move on to item 6.1 a placement of school resource officers on PVSD campuses report will be presented by Dr. Michelle Rodriguez so if you'd be able to put up the last slide of the PowerPoint that would be great and so in July 2020 then the board did at that point make the determination that they would remove SROs from campus so at this point the board needs to make a recommendation to if they vote yes then our staff recommendation as I mentioned prior would not be to just simply replace the SROs but it would be to do a pairing and then if the vote no it would be either option two or three and and then the next the following vote is in regards to the sum of the costs and the approval of the cost and so I will leave it to the board for discussion do we have any public speakers for item 6.1 yes we do okay so I'm going to call speakers up same thing you have two minutes Elias Gonzalez, Gail Garcia and Adriana Torres. Buenas noches, Buenas tardes Dr. Rodriguez and school board trustees first of all let me take time to introduce myself as mentioned my name is Elias Gonzalez I was with you on the conversation around police talks of 2019 there was four of us at that point here I was also here for the conversation on SROs on July 2020 a couple more people showed up today I'm realizing here that there's a bigger place in the reality that there is division in the space it's quite apparent that the Aptos community and the Botanical Committee see very differently I think the reality here secondly I want to let you all know that I am a part of an organization that historically has been demonized and villainized for the work that we do in the community this is common practice that we unfortunately deal with in many environments where folks that do not conform with the status quo are outcasted and targeted the PDUSD is no exception we have black and brown students that are being targeted most importantly I'm a father of a current student and a graduate student from PDUSD that understands firsthand the needs of the community and especially those young people I was one of those young people I was impacted I was expelled by this district and the resources that were here were not sufficient then and are not sufficient now I can tell you that you all heard my daughter come in front of you and tell you that the system was not working she unfortunately is not able to be here but when she came to you she told you it was totally embarrassing we can do better school's not phrasing the reference to reinvesting funds into our schools and not into a carceral state we heard from teachers how the lack of funding impacts our teaching abilities we've heard from students we've heard the stories of staff bringing their own supplies to schools let's reimagine if we reinvest what we presently invest in one person in the california department of corrections I believe it was mentioned that we currently spend about 340 something thousand dollars in the juvenile law PDUSD currently invests 13 thousand dollars for students thank you good afternoon my name is Gal Garcia and I'm one of the part of the program is tecas I'm a student here at waltz and my freshman year there was some officers at the campus and I felt safe um I feel like I didn't have to worry about like anything happened to me or my my family my my little brother is a elementary student right now and I worry about him because you know I don't know what could happen to him I actually played with two officers in the tecas program I don't I'm not afraid of them because I know they won't do nothing to me and actually officer after Castillo's here um he he motivates me to to do better in school and have have good grades and everything um when what else I felt safe and when I was at I didn't let now I'm a junior and I don't feel safe because there's no clubs and campus um I think that's it thank you my name is Adriana Torres and I'm a former Aptos high student when I was at Aptos I saw I saw a lot I saw fights I saw fights in the shady trails behind the library by in the bathrooms I saw drug deals I learned what heroin cocaine and prescriptions pills were at Aptos high I saw a lot of sexual assault and I'm not going to go further into that because it can it can be triggering for a lot of people during that time we had cops on campus so where were they how were they going to heal and help the students did you know that most cops don't have degrees or SROs they don't have bachelors masters or PhDs a lot of people in the community like myself have gotten masters PhDs bachelors we're here because we want to help the students we need social workers we need counselors we need therapist psychiatrist we need to start at the root of the problem before it gets worse my last message is for Jim Hart I have a master's in Chicano Chicano studies and I'm going to get a doctor pretty soon so it's going to be Dr. Torres so I've done the research I've analyzed the data I've read the books I've read the articles the school to prison pipeline it's real in its inner community so just because it doesn't affect you does not mean it's not thank you bueno noches necesito un traductor okay soy isabel garcía soy madre de tres niños una ya pasó por Aptos high school la otra ahorita están Aptos high school my name is Isabel Garcia I'm on the mother of three kids one already went through high Aptos high and one is about to join up the side for about 15 years I've gone to district meetings every year we have to please hire more counselors who are prepared porque tuve una muy mala experiencia en Aptos high school de mi hija la mayor su consejera que ahora es también de mi hijo le pidió un consejo para que como podía ir a la universidad y la consejera le dijo que cuánta puntuación tenía y le dijo mi hija la puntuación que tenía le dijo no te preocupes con esa puntuación tú puedes ir a cabrillo entonces I had a negative experience with a counselor of my daughter when when she asked what would you like what is that when my daughter asked her how can I get to college and she the counselor said what is your grade point average and she said don't worry about that with that GPA you can go to cabrillo college she's now counseling my son too ahora esa consejera le tocó a mi hijo no quiero pasar por esa experiencia and I don't want to go through that experience with my son again my daughter the one I was just talking about she went through a lot of things at Aptos high school five years ago there were also deaths there por una arma muy poderosa que no se ha hablado aquí por el bullying due to a very strong weapon that you haven't discussed here bullying due to that there were about four deaths when parents go and complain to the office they are told that nothing happens there para los estudiantes que queremos que alguien les ayude emocionalmente this is a huge problem for our students we really want someone to help them emotionally that is my request to please to increase counseling services so that students don't suffer that much anymore okay rocio camargo sorry if I mispronounced your name Ernesto mario and edgar ebara can I move this can you hear me good evening board and community my name is rocio camargo I'm here as an alumni constituent parent and classified worker parent of a senior at Aptos high who had a class with head out of a little that morning so if there's anybody that's close to it I am definitely there I'm here because I get it I get why parents and why the community right away started looking for a reason how how did this happen why why did this happen and we try to figure that out because we want to prevent it right away we go to is this gang related is it gang related because if you say it's gang related then if I raise my kid right my kid's okay it's not going to be my kid and so you look for that then you'll find out it's not gang related okay so then the reason it was really frustrating for me as a parent to have to talk to my kid about this and have this be politicized to a talk about SROs there's absolutely no way that I believe that an SRO really would have prevented this from happening we went to these schools we know that people that really want to do bad find a way to do it if they don't do it on campus they ask you to go to the pit they ask you to go somewhere else in the community they find a shady tree we all know it we're alumni so what you're saying is it's okay if it happens in the community but not in this school and evermore if there was an SRO campus how do we know there's no federal fund there's no federal guidelines to their training how do we know we wouldn't have had three fatalities instead of one and we're also ignoring everything else that's going on in the world the size of traumatic experiences of a pandemic the intergenerational trauma that is passed down to these communities the SROs are not the answer and it's obvious in a parent that you know not everybody lives the same experiences in life that's just a reality for me I grew up with one my mom my three brothers and sisters four of us poor navigated all schools from hall all the way to calabasas right and you know we were poor we were homeless sometimes teachers were freaking by I was in elementary and they would give me detention because I was late to class they didn't know how to walk all the way from our jr. street to good wine solo you know they didn't know all that but at the same time it's unfortunate what happened to herardo he passed away and that's something that reverberates throughout the community everybody feels it but I lost friends that went to this school too to violence suicide drug overdose and to prison lost lost them all they all came to these schools where was the help for them where was the outcry from the white after my folks here you know in that class there was no white because we were brown kids from Watsonville that nobody cared for so I'm asking you all to really care for us and think of say no one SROs say no on that fight for us invest is going to take a cultural shift this is not a band-aid thing it's a cultural shift we have to go in there dig out the roots and plant something new and beautiful there's got to be something that's grounded in compassion love beauty you know platic on my mama we say it's platicando by talking we can fix things let's fix it let's fix it up you know you said you know everybody has different experiences in different perspective hell yeah I've had my house barge then had my cousins taken out shit the police were the kukui to me you know that was the reality but at the end of the day everybody has different experiences and I get that but we just got to figure this out SROs are not the answer point blank it's not the answer we got to go back plant some new seeds and just watch it's a whole new generation coming up whole new generation what are we going to do everybody's looking everybody's looking not just at y'all but at all of us and how we act sometimes we don't have access to healthcare this young man over here has access to healthcare and he doesn't care about our families just putting out two Bernard Gomez Hector Calderon and Anthony I would just like to speak on the situation that happened at Aptos and what happened to Hidalgo was like it's really really unfortunate and just like everyone said it really did impact the community and I believe that the community even right now is still trying to come together and I do hope that at the end of this that we could find a solution and if anything a compromise to figure out how we can go in the future I do not think SROs I just want to like reiterate this I do not believe SROs are going to be the final fix we're going to have to do more than simply SROs and I also believe that it's going to take implementing curriculum and education about mental health and services in our health classes it doesn't just it can't just be sex ed and what we eat it has to be what is in our brains and what goes through them and the chemical changes that happen when we experience trauma and things like that there's real biology and facts about all of this and we cannot continue to ignore it like previous generations have if we continue to ignore it we might as well expect this thing to continuously happen and no change to ever happen police are not social counselors they're not scientists just like someone just said a lot of them aren't even educated don't even have college degrees how are we gonna expect them to be the saviors of our children the true saviors are going to be the teachers and the counselors and the people who come together to invest and their students and their well-being and hiring teachers who care about their students as well will help along with that thank you for you guys this time I hope everyone has a wonderful night once again so I guess I'm gonna pick up where I left off so I want to start so I understand I understand people are under an emotional charge right now but to revert back to failed practices without giving process a chance is premature the unintended consequences of bringing back police to campus will fall heavily on students of color those are facts the superintendent just presented some data you know that SROs disproportionately target black and brown bodies but the process which I'm talking about here is the decision to invest in the health infrastructure for our students and their success it will take time to build adequate support for students for teachers for administrators for all those involved it will take time to address the traumas our schools have experienced it will take time to heal PBUSD has been under duress for decades schools underfunded teachers underpaid overwork with little to no help students social determinants of health under direct stress now more than ever we need to invest in positive view student development with the continuum of care that extends to their families and the community we need culturally relevant solutions a healing informed process a practice inclusive of all students we must address the root causes what the community partnership would love care understanding and open dialogue if PBUSD cares if PBUSD cares message is true then this board will reject this emotionally charged nearsighted status quo SRO element and provide true true leadership that will impact our students upward mobility safety and success support student healing not SRO surveillance thank you hi good evening my name is Hector Calderon and I'm here tonight because there will be a decision being made in terms of having SROs on campuses and as we know you know SROs presence knowing well that despite the general acceptance belief that stationing police on schools campuses makes schools safer when in reality the practice really harms many students as well as you know the schools in itself that you know promote this sort of idea you know I just wanted to say that yet instead we should be investing that money in school-based mental mental health resources and other supportive services because our you know brown and black folks in these in these communities deserve resources that expand and improve our students by having counseling services that allow them to have the space where one can't learn to heal because schools are a place to learn and to grow right not a place where the presence of a police makes them feel uncomfortable and feel like they're being you know looked at and that if at any moment they've done something wrong that the smallest mistake will bring them some sort of trouble so let us reimagine the safety without police and reinvest in positive supports that actually help our students and so by voting no on having SROs whether there is a mental health clinician I think that we really need to consider having more services for our students so that they are able to you know take those services in a way that will allow our community to heal thank you okay next speakers Jermaine Stephanie and Francis Elgato hi everyone first of all I want to say that my heart's broken for the family I definitely feel that a lot of the concerns that were brought up are valid and I'm especially concerned with the first accounts of people that were going to Hopkins high school regarding the different incidents that they experienced I remember too the suicides back I forgot how many years ago and I feel like SROs do not make any kind of difference um I also wonder what parents that were here if they were there for the family and from what I heard earlier they were not so I definitely feel there needs to be more support for the family of this victim which is Gerardo because my mind is always there with him I was so in 2012 my best friend's brother died his name was Jesse Lopez and this kind of meeting was never there for him there was not this kind of outcry every time I see a youngster die and they never get this kind of attention the family never gets support and I don't understand the why it's happening now and I honestly think there's racist undertones in this meeting especially when they're talking about criminals who are the criminals who are the people that are in probation it's brown kids and they're not saying it like say it you're saying that brown kids make you feel like you're in danger and you want the cops there to protect you from the brown kids that's what I'm hearing that's what I continue to hear from them and it's honestly very sad it's very very sad and I'm heartbroken for the family right now they need support they need love they need parents that were here to be there with them they don't need to be here weaponizing their trauma that they're going to experience for the rest of their life thank you I just want to thank trustee Orozco for correcting the thing on my name I feel really strongly about that first of all good evening members of the board my name is Herman Rafael Gonzalez my pronouns are he him and I'm a senior at Watsonville high school and I'm also one of two Watsonville high schools ASB presidents that are here tonight I spoke out last year in support of removing SROs from campus and my position has not changed police officers should not be on campus having a police officer on campus contributes to a deep anxiety for our most vulnerable students reinstating SROs would in no way promote this restorative healing that we need the day of freshman orientation I was introduced to Watsonville high school SRO and a million thoughts ran through my head w