Thoughts for the School Board Meeting 4/20/10

Anti-violence
I gave a version of these quickly to the Board on 4/20/2010 -- 3 minutes is definitely not enough time when district staff and requested speakers have no limit and public comments can be VERY LATE on the agenda making it hard for normal people (those with school age kids) to participate.  Thankfully this meeting for us was shorter.

• Glad to report things have calmed down for my family.  It appears at least for the moment the message was received by the youth involved.
• To be clear the attacks this school year (there were 8 + 2 more after the attempted beating) were legally physical assaults that came only after years of bullying on school property that finally bled online and into the community – but the issues were all playground / passing period based. To only call them bullying, especially the events of the last year, since the district's removal of the safety officer is to degrade/downplay the seriousness.
• While I have not had time to closely review the new policies I’m sure they are approaching 90-95% of what is needed up from about 75-80% but the issue has always been more a problem with procedures and practices – reporting, investigation, tracking, cross site/student issues and effective interventions. This is then further hampered by a lack of serious focus on school safety as REAL issue for the district.  If I need to be the squeaky wheel -- I've now accepted that.
• The bias is still to protect and treat each case/incident individually -- all school district staff had the EXACT same position on this at the last board meeting. This attitude diverges from the written policy, which should be the basis for guidelines to be drawn with discretion being allowed but requiring documentation when that discretion/mitigating circumstances are used to deviate from the guideline.  These exceptions could then be reviewed (possibly by a committee, Ombudsman or AUSD School Board in private session) vs. every incident.
• Kids need limits and consequences – treating each incident uniquely every time leads to significant inequalities and potentially civil rights violations.
• I firmly support the idea of a Detention Classroom or School with linked in services to social workers, counselors and teachers trained to assess kids for special education needs. Part of the funding might be found in the allotment the district does not receive because of at home detentions.
• Efforts of supporting tolerance, diversity and anti-bullying that are currently being done and so wonderfully talked about last board meeting are insufficient, incomplete and likely completely ineffective. Outside of the freshmen class – every student I spoke with since the last meeting called them a joke from the lunchtime diversity events being the most ridiculed. They may make people feel better -- but only the adults.  Whatever programs are put in place they need VERIFIABLE data collected before, just after training and then again in a few months/end of the year to see if there was any impact.
• When issues arise they must be dealt with immediately and in a “Teachable Moment” type approach. Stop things, explain how serious it is, explain the golden rule (would you want this type of thing done to you or your friend?), ask kids to reflect, allow them to ask questions, comment and dialogue and then move on. The adult needs to have a very serious tone vs. playing it off as a joke or kids being kids.
• Lack of a racially / culturally diverse workforce including teachers and administrators makes situations EXTREMELY problematic for the district. The district really needs to work with a recruiter to find qualified candidates from all racial and ethnic backgrounds to better reflect the community and student body specifically in frontline teaching positions.

Special Education
I was unable to deliver these at tonight’s meeting but below are my opinions based on mine and other parents experiences with the district over the last 4-5 years at least as things have gotten worse.

• The centralization of Special Education case management and control at the district level vs. each principal having a say on staffing and focus has lead to many problems and a lack of accountability for district level staff and the teachers & para-educators they hire and manage.
• Special Education within the district now appears to be being treated as a cost center to be reduced with less and less concern to the law (and related rights) or the child’s needs and how that impacts the child, their classroom and the teachers.
• Not enough time is spent even in Triennials to actually diagnose underlying conditions and disabilities and then come up with sufficient goals to address performance gaps before they become permanent. District counseling/testing staff are not present at every IEP meeting and requests for testing are ignored or tabled. Give me the data has become my mantra -- it should be the districts. But having the data means the district may have to outlay more resources to meet the undiagnosed needs.
• There are a few key years/transitions that need to be handled with increased attention -- possibly K, 5, 8 are the key years to make sure that a student is prepared to advance. To me this would be a set series of at least 3 IEP meetings (1 month into the school year, half way through the school year and 1 month before the end of the school year). This would allow for the transition to be planned, ensure kids are on track to be promoted to the next grade and services are allotted for the following year and school site.
• Special Education has moved from high quality early interventions to follow the "Oakland model" which is what is the bare minimum required and do not help parents navigate the system to get the services their child needs or should be offered without the need of “magic words.” This certainly reduces your special education budget over time but does not serve the student, fellow classmates or the teachers.
• The district has lost the I for Individual in IEP. At the middle school they track the special education caseloads into certain courses and teachers often to the lowest common denominator of other special education students. I hear the word "No" so often even when there are specific and quantifiable deficits including official district benchmarks not being met. In those cases additional services to ensure a student's academic success is required.
• I have been told D's and F's are ok for special education students -- that it is a matter of motivation and that the child does not fit into the Albany mold then they can't ensure success.
• There is a lack of teacher interaction at the middle school -- specifically to attend meetings and work effectively with the Special Services case manager. This includes the need for all general education teachers to cancel other appointments so that they can be both physically and mentally present for all IEP meetings. If teachers need to be reimbursed for lost income or someone else needs to step in to help in their other duties -- that needs to be covered by the district.
• There is need to focus on general education teacher training to review the IEP laws, accommodations, rules and compliance with rights like Least Restrictive Learning Environment.
• I have been personally told by a teacher that they have a case load of over 100 different students a day and that they can only provide my son 1% of their time and attention.  We need to look at the overall number of students a teacher is managing and reduce that as much as possible.
• The district has apparently moved against teachers and some are afraid to speak their mind freely in IEP meetings in regards to services they think a child needs this includes having to check in with the district personnel before and after scheduled IEP meetings for "feedback." My understanding is that this pre-meeting and provision of services is not allowed under the due process rules.
• Based on my conversations with other parents, it appears that district staff have moved systematically on several cases in a coordinated fashion to reduce services that children were receiving and which would then allow them to eliminate positions or programs at school sites for next year.

Mass. Schools did not follow expert advice to improve PROCEDURES before suicide

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100330/ap_on_re_us/us_school_bullying

"She says South Hadley schools 'had policies, but the procedures need to be toughened up.'"

"Authorities say she endured months of verbal assaults and threats, mostly in school and in person, although some of the bullying occurred on Facebook and in other electronic forms."

"'Nevertheless, the actions — or inactions — of some adults at the school are troublesome,' she said."

Much like my son's issues POLICY may be 80% in place but completey ineffective since PROCEDURES are not standardized and followed especially in one school or across multiple school sites.  I think we need to have a very strong look at existing policy and the minimum requirements of the various laws.  Then we need to discuss what additional policy & programs are needed to be put into place to supplement the minimum and truly make sure we are addressing the problems and then finally PROCEDURES need to be written, followed and disclosed to all the right parties.

This includes written document explaining what the district has done/not done and the rights & responsibilites of the parent/child for both the initiator and the target of an attack.

Those PROCEDURES need to include working with county & state resources on Mental Health, Special Education and Berhavioral Assessments, Safe Schools as well as when, how and to what level of cooperation will the district work with the Police, Sheriff and other law enforcement.

Thoughts on MA tragedy & Facebook Failings & Ideas for Protecting Your Kids

A few people have written tonight about the latest bullying tragedy. So I wanted to share my thoughts on the recent suicide and criminal charges out of Massachusetts for cyberbullying that turned to rape and violence and suicide.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/03/holding_for_pho.html

Working in games / entertainment & social media/convergence field I've been dealing with online fans and communities since before the Internet. I am a very strong civil libertarian by nature but balanced by my belief in reasonable laws and limits applied fairly. I'm committed to communities/tribes self organizing and creating their own ground rules as long as they meet the lowest limit set by the law.

The problem of cyberbullying generally speaking is that it is now a stage in the overall bullying process and I've seen the media and our own district personnel miss that fact and only want to say we can't control it / do anything so we must ban access to the digital square.  It is very true that online word spreads at the speed of light and that people can say things they might not say in person if they saw someone's face -- but in reality these kids have already said those exact same things in person or to a friend in the real world specifically at school.  It is only wishful thinking to say that the internet/Facebook is to blame.

Deleting an account of a kid who was targeted can cause significant problems in collecting evidence.  If you need to / want to keep your child from seeing what is being said -- change the password.  Also be careful about un-friend-ing or blocking people on their account as then you may not have easy access to the piece of content in question that needs reported.

Using Facebook to find friends and things in common with people is the future to the "Bowling Alone" problem. As kids move from one school to another or have entirely new schedule/friends every grading period -- access to learn about each other and chat online helps prevent social isolation.  The problem is that it is proven in psychological testing --  the more people you put together in a space the less likely if they see a problem to speak up or help someone in need this is unfortunately true in the real world as well as online.  There are not enough Good Samaritans.

From what I can tell, the bullying starts in school with teasing, unaddressed it becomes intimidation, then hate and callousness this then flows into the community, then online and then back into the schools and the community. Often the kids don't even remember what originally happend to make them dislike the other person as they just keep ticking off more and more things they don't like about the target.  To the point of entirely devaluing them from a human being worth understanding -- into the "other" not worthy to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That "others" mere existence and happiness must be stamped out.

When it gets to that point you can only have SERIOUS intervention before it gets worse.  You also need to create an environment where teachers, parents and police seize upon those "teachable" moments and STOP EVERYTHING so a kid or a group of kids gets the message clearly what happened and how that was handled poorly and they must try and empathize with the target.  Its the "Love your neighbor as yourself" lesson.

I've actually talked to some media outlets on background about the fact that Facebook's reporting process has fallen behind all their other changes so you actually cannot easily report every piece of content and all the different content types or abuse in the apps. Their reporting instructions/systems are therefore out of date. Facebook keeps changing their page layouts and the report abuse system no longer works to report the many different content types. These changes do not allow 3rd parties like parents or schools who see some public piece of content to report it.  Plus after a user blocks an offending user -- they often can't even go back to access the proper spot to report abuse. This lack of simple working functionality for a company valued at $13billion is very bad.

There are some tips for parents and kids that they can do to protect themselves as the abusers often post threats and then delete them before they get into trouble/caught and lie about them. Many bullies had thought they had figured out they could just delete/hide threats and they'd disappear -- making reporting to the police harder as they need probable cause before Facebook would release information.

But if a user has Yahoo / GMail for their email and leaves the default "send an email notification" setting with Facebook then even if they delete that email from their inbox, it remains in their online trash and that will keep all the history of direct threats, inbox messages, wall posts, etc. with a trackable message id until a user dumps their trash manually. Anyone who posts a comment inside a thread and who has notifications turned on then gets further comments emailed to them so that content spiders out as well and multiple copies may exist in inboxes or trash cans.  All of this can then be used by the police in their supoena power to get the actual records of a users recent account activity.

Additionally, parents/kids can use the prints screen key and the "paint" program that comes in Microsoft Windows to capture shots and then cut and paste the other text from all the string of comments. That too can be provided to the police to meet the probable cause standard for them to get access to an accounts activity.  Mac users I am sure you can use the print option and then "Save as PDF" inside the Send to Printer Menu that pops up.  Know in both cases you may not capture all the information -- just the starting message/status update.  You should cut and paste all the relevant text into a document and then marry that to the graphic screenshot.

Wrote this last week - did not go live until today on the list...

I was called today by the Chief to follow up and make sure I knew things were underway. I am happy to say publicly that yes they are now officially investigating the latest series of incidents and taking a long term view of the problems my son has faced in both the community and in school since moving to AMS for the start of 6th grade.

I do want to make it clear that parents should be reporting crimes directly to Albany PD and not hoping, waiting or expecting the school staff to do so.

I feel I have been misled by school staff on more than one occasion that matters had been forwarded on to the police when they had not. I have now been told by school district leadership that they only allow reports of the "required crimes" dealing with drugs, sex or weapons (knife & guns only). I think this is a VERY LOW standard especially in light of the lack of resources and qualified individuals the district has to devote to safety and investigations -- since the end of the School Safety Officer agreement with Albany Police.

I personally take safety, gang-like activity and general hooliganism pretty seriously. I like to have fun and joke around myself -- working in the video game and entertainment industry maybe kids can identify with that. However as a Christian, I have very strong/critical feelings on the issue of real violence or threats of violence. I am extremely clear with my children on what is fantasy and where it ends and where reality begins including people's feelings and personal rights. Appropriate conduct, understandable "kid/teen" misconduct and illegal conduct -- all of our children for their own safety need to know those lines & related consequences at home, in the community and in school.

Suspension School - Time in now...

Brainstorming out loud here...

I definitely think participation in sports programs needs to be tied to behavior as well not just grades.  I can tell you several students said they felt that the reason some kids are not disciplined is that they are on a sports team -- whether this is true or not it is a perception.  Similarly open campus is a privilege and not a right - it should be curtailed for students with behavior issues.

If AUSD had an in-district suspension school program at least for violence/multi-day suspension/repeatedly suspended kids -- the district would then not loose/forego state funds right?  That money could then go to actually pay for the running of the suspension school.

Work assignments could be communicated, kids could be evaluated for special education and other services that may have not been properly identified. Specialist teacher / school psychologist/counselor or non-profit partner agency could be based close by if not in/next to the room. Staff cost could be covered by replacement of lost income district forgoes to suspend and send home.

We could possibly have a special suspension school bus that picks up and drops off those kids so that they are safe/out of the hair of the other school they are suspended from. Free school lunch to keep all kids on campus and make sure that hunger/blood sugar is not a culprit.

If over time these kids could then not be successful in the general population -- they keep getting suspended, but were still trying -- then the next step would be to setup a separate permanent program and offer the choice of that or expulsion.  Unfortunately you need to be careful then of separate but unequal.

It just would not have to be more fun than a normal classroom/school experience that a troubled kid would want to go there -- my nephew is one of those serially troubled kids who'd probably rather be in the small class and get the extra attention vs. figuring out how to be successful in the traiditonal program

Room at District HQ or that other closed down elementary on Albany Hill that houses NSELPA Campus / MacGregor could possibly handle this...

Irony of BAD district policy

I found it very ironic that this last week Albany High School suspended a student for brining a bottle of soda pop on campus while they still have not suspended a group of children who threatened to kill, attempted to kidnap and beat my son.

Only after a warning and TWO MORE incidents did they suspend ONE student involved for 5 days and that was for disobeying a direct order by district staff to not return to the Middle School property during school hours.

This group of students through Friday morning continued their online threats, harassing phone calls with death threats, and then PUBLICLY using Facebook to organize a new attack planned for Friday afternoon on my son at/near AMS and planning/suggesting they would vandalize our family home &/or car. It has also been reported to our family that this group has continued to return to AMS daily in hopes of catching my son.

If ever there was a need to review the discipline procedures and priorities for the district the time in NOW. This includes violence, threats of violence and bullying -- written documentation by the students involved -- not just the adult, safety & discipline council to review cases, reporting internally to school board, possible need for independent ombudsman that reports directly to the school board & public, in-district suspension school so that going violent is not just a "vacation", referral to police for investigation, student run grievance/mediation process, community service/youth court, etc.

A friend of my son's was shot at this weekend in Oakland just walking down the street in front of his own home with a friend. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Your child could be equally hit in "cross fire" of any kind when student discipline problems are left to fester because it is easier to ignore than it is to deal with the reality that we are living in an increasingly violent and uncivilized culture and that this reality reaches even our small community. Especially in the case of "Black-on-Black" crime when the youths involved are Albany born and bred but feel they must prove themselves to the "tougher" out of district kids so they focus on bullying down on special education students, immigrant children, children of LGBT families, etc.

Is the Answer to Close Middle Schools?

I just really wonder if the entire concept of the creation of Middle Schools
much like New Math or other "advances" in education or child development that
has done more harm than good and allowed situational problems to be
misidentified over time as people problems.

I also wonder if it is a part of the reason why parochial / religious K-8
schools seem to have better test scores with similar populations of kids in
certain communities -- even when class sizes are higher but number of students
in the overall program/number of unique students a teacher has all day is lower
than average. A teacher is in part a case manager for a students education --
throw more unique students on a teacher, more cases to manage and more
relationships to manage.

What I find funny as a child of the Catholic school system -- is that parents
were even less involved when they paid cash out of pocket because they had an
even further "market" based relationship with the school provider/teachers but
also then had a results based point of view.

On a personal level, I feel more and more certain that the number one thing we
should do to rescue education in the US is to close middle schools down and
create smaller Jr. Highs that are a part of the elementary schools but "schools
within a school" concept. It would mean transitioning one Middle School into an
Elementary and further dividing down the elementary population to free up
classrooms. It would mean that to create sports teams to compete at Middle
School level it would require "all district team" in the case of Albany.

If middle school is where parents are pushed out but simultaneously where
serious problems begin (performance gaps become permanent, kids who drop out in
HS tuned out in MS) -- keep the continuity of care from Elementary until High
School where kids are supposed to be more developmentally mature. I realize
there is a "we can't protect kids forever" and "social developmental skills
building is very different for middle school aged kids" type logic tossed around
-- however are those good enough reasons to not look seriously at this.

It is VERY clear to me that the transition from Elementary to Middle School is
very harsh & abrupt and that it creates too many situational problems/gaps that
then look like people problems. On a personal note, I think most Middle School
teachers are less friendly, less open more overwhelmed, less team oriented with
each other and with parents and a LOT less happy/satisfied than the Elementary
teachers I've dealt with.

Middle School has different rules, culture and bullying problems, mixing kids
together from multiple separate sites, lack of resources for supervision, lack
of resources for counseling, lack of communication/continuity of
issues/disconnection between elementary teachers and middle school to talk/share
individual student strategies, lack of communication/continuity between service
providers like special education, etc.

Anyone have the data on districts that have done this vs. setting up K-8
charter? Which is another alternative.