South San Francisco Unified School District officials back new school policing protocol

For more than a year, district and city officials have been crafting a memorandum of understanding aimed at clearly defining when school liaison officers should or should not be engaged in student disciplinary matters and programming. 

Unable to come to an agreement ahead of the new school year, SSFUSD trustees decided to suspend the use of SLOs on school campuses this summer until a formal MOU could be adopted by both parties. 

During Tuesday’s meeting, Superintendent Dr. Shawnterra Moore said the district has experienced some issues since suspending the use of SLOs on campus. Without an MOU in place, she said teachers and administrators have become reticent, “rightfully so,” to contact the police.

“I think it has caused just some ambiguity and challenges across the board because people need clarity,” Moore said, noting neighbors have also complained about increased traffic issues. 

Dr. Ryan Sebers, director of Student Services, said teachers and school administrators have also been hesitant to call the police even in instances clearly outlined in the education code. Though the board suspended the SLO program on campuses, school staff are still required to follow disciplinary protocol listed in the code and have been directed to do so, Moore said. 

But instead, Sebers said he and other district administrators have received calls in which school staff are seeking direction on whether a call to law enforcement is acceptable. The calls and hesitation have led to delayed reactions to issues that require quicker responses, he said. 

“While everybody could have different definitions of safety and so forth I think it’s pretty clear that administrators are very keen on physical and emotional safety of students and staff at the school,” Sebers said. “So what we have is, administrators are questioning where they normally would exercise their instinct.” 

Given that the district and police department have had some form of a relationship for decades, board Vice President Mina Richardson said the community has grown used to the program, requiring time for people to adapt to the changing partnership. 

“We have policing in our district for over 40 years. That’s a generation,” Richardson said. “Should we back out, these programs will continue, they’ll go on.”

Moore said responsiveness and communication between the two agencies has also become strained, leaving district officials questioning whether they’ll receive a response when calls for service are made. 

Responding to the concerns, Baker accused the police department of “metaphorical baton swinging” by upper management. He suggested the department has not quickly responded to issues like traffic support because the role was once the duty of an SLO, adding “it’s been very disturbing.” 

As the trustee who has recommended the most changes to the MOU, he doubled down on three deal-breaker issues he needed to see in the document before he could give the agreement his approval. 

To earn his support, the agencies will have to agree to review the document annually without an automatic renewal process, share data that indicates the program’s effectiveness and agree officers would not enter campus for casual discipline or without an adequate complaint process. 

The board was supportive of Baker’s top requests while also agreeing with a request by Trustee Patricia Murray to remove granular language from the document. Instead, the board agreed that details relating to how staff should interact with disciplinary issues or officers should be addressed in an internal handbook.  

“It’s not the job of the board or City Council to micromanage this process,” Murray said. 

Board President Daina Lujan and Trustee Chialin Hsieh also noted that the district serves students from kindergarten to adulthood whose experiences likely vary greatly and recommended that data collected across campuses be done so in a grade appropriate way. 

Additional language will be included in the document to more thoroughly address protections for undocumented students who may interact with SLOs, as requested by Student Trustee Samantha Avila Gomez. 

Murray also suggested the district reinstate the program after she received complaints from some community members who said they felt unsafe without the officers on campus. 

Police presence on campuses has been greatly reduced but officers have been requested on site by counselors or child protective services. Moore said she could count how often that has occurred this school year on one hand. 

Murray’s request failed to gain broad board support leaving the SLO program suspension in place until both parties can agree on an MOU. The newest draft agreement will now go to the city for review after Moore and legal counsel sign off on the document. 

If the city does not agree to the updated version of the MOU, the revisions will again return to the board for additional consideration. 

sierra@smdailyjournal.com

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