Article linked from the San Fernando Valley Sun 01/28/2010

A Day of Action at Cleveland High is the first article of a three part series.  The following articles are: Cleveland High School Principal Responds (2/3/10) and Policing in LAUSD Schools (3/3/10)

Students from Cleveland High School in Reseda participated in a "Day of Action" rally Tuesday in conjunction with the release of the report, "Police in LAUSD Schools: The Need for Accountability and Alternatives." Similar rallies were held on other LAUSD campuses including Manuel Arts and Westchester High Schools.

The report published by the Strategy Center's Community Rights Campaign attributes the increasing presence of police in and around LAUSD school campuses as contributing to student's dropping out and being "pushed out" of school.

Wearing tee shirts that read Hey LAUSD, I'm Pre-Med, Pre-Job NOT Pre-Prison, Cleveland High Students at the Day of Action rally said they agree with the report's findings.

"We have to take a stand, we can't sit back and watch bad things happen to our peers," said Carla Duarte, a junior at Cleveland, "We have to make people aware and let them know that these things are happening."

They said they believe that school police currently assigned to their school, practice racial profiling and discourage students from coming to school by regularly issuing truancy tickets to students who may be only a few minutes late trying to get to class.

"The tickets cost $250, so if a student is running late, they'll stay home rather than face getting a ticket [that they can't afford to pay]," said Eric Fuentes Casas, a senior. "They even handcuff students when they are writing the truancy tickets which makes students nervous and scared about coming to school."

Casas said he's interested in becoming a plastic surgeon and someday working with an organization like Doctors without Borders. "Right now, there are many more police officers than school counselors," Casas pointed out.

"When you're stopped the school police can detain you for as long as an hour, making you even later to school," student Michael Brazell pointed out.

They don't consider why a student might be late for school, the bus may have been late at the bustop, traffic, or there might be a problem at home, but they don't bother to ask. What was in the past a school issue has now become a police matter.

"Then a student who gets a truancy ticket has to take another day from school to go to court with their parents who have to miss a day of work, it doesn't make sense."

"If you make it into the campus and you're a few minutes late, teachers shut the door on you and you aren't allowed into class," said Brazell. "They have tardy sweeps, you are funneled to the cafeteria area where you have to fill in a blue slip, and you can get detention, which means you might be ordered to clean up the trash on campus."

Students attending the Day of Action rally said they consider the school's current truancy policies as being harmful, and punishes students without bothering to find out what the circumstances are, making whatever problem the student is having even worse.

"We aren't really benefitting from this, there seems to be more police on campus," said student Melissa Lemus.

LAUSD currently has the largest school police department in the country. Manuel Criollo, an organizer with the Strategy Center said two years ago the LAUSD Board directed the District to review and evaluate the current school policies presence including their polices and practices relating specifically to the equitable treatment of African American and Latino students, but according to the report issued by the Strategy Center, that review has yet to occur.

Criollo, is currently working with students on the Cleveland High School campus. He said what in the past was handled by school counselors is now being handed over to police and LAUSD's move toward police-in schools is part of a broader "zero tolerance" approach to school discipline which in the end he said doesn't work and is creating what the report describes as a "school to prison pipeline."

The report issued from the Strategy Center reads:
Police officers on school grounds patrol around schools and inside school hallways and increasingly districts are turning to law enforcement to enforce discipline rules on and around campus. The increasing presence of law enforcement in schools has contributed to moving student conduct into the domain of the criminal justice system. This contradicts United Nations human rights standards that school safety and discipline policies should avoid criminalizing the behavior of children and adolescents.

The report cites incidents of police misconduct on various LAUSD campuses based on student surveys. Many of the students attending the Day of Action were members of the school based group Taking Action that assists students who have received truancy tickets or experienced rough handling by police.

Casas said he has seen many instances of racial profiling on the Cleveland High School campus.

"The police never bother the students who are mostly White that go to the magnet school, even though you can smell marijuana coming from their bathroom area, but they come down hard on the students of color and at football games. I've seen the White students just let in without being checked and they search the Black and Latino students backpacks and purses. They took a female student's purse and they spilled everything out of her purse onto the ground, they didn't even bother to pick it up," Casas said he knows people who don't want to go to the school's football games because of the treatment they receive by police.

Criollo said the report issued by the Strategy Center is making several recommendation including the formation of an independent police review board made up of parents, students and community members and establishing an office of equal protection to serve as a clearinghouse for discrimination claims.

"We want members of the school board to create new policies and recommendations that are transparent and make the L.A. School police accountable to the civil and human rights of all LAUSD students. The policies to criminalize students must stop." The report concludes.

Next week and in additional issues of the San Fernando Valley Sun continues interviews on this issue with students, parents, administrators, members of the school board and school police.