Lamont Education LCAP Town Hall, 4/16/19, 6pm

by Juanita Chavez | Apr 17, 2019 | Education Blog

LAMONT NEIGHBORS UNITED INVITES YOU TO JOIN US FOR A

TOWN HALL

Tuesday, April 16, 2019 6-8 pm

at the San Diego Hall, 10300 San Diego St Lamont, CA 93241

Let LESD know we want…More Counselors! More Nurses! Less Suspensions! Less Expulsions!

Find out how YOU have a voice in how the Lamont Elementary School District is spending our money! Join parents, community activists, and school representatives to talk about what we need to make our schools succeed!

Raffle Prizes. Food. Music!

For more information contact: Timoteo Prado 661-669-6597

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VECINOS UNIDOS de LAMONT TE INVITA A PARTICIPAR EN UN

FORO COMUNITARIO

Miercoles 24 de abril 2019 6-8 pm

En el Salon San Diego

MUSD…Queremos Más Consejeros! Menos Suspensiones! Menos Expulsiones! Más Enfermeras!

Su opinión es muy importante en decidir cómo el Distrito Escolar las primarias de Lamont está usando nuestro dinero. Acompañe a padres, líderes activistas, y representantes del distrito escolar para hablar sobre qué se necesita para que nuestro distrito sea el mejor!

Habrá comida, música y rifas.

Para más información contacte a: Timoteo Prado 661-669-6597

Call to Action: Join The Kern Education Justice Collaborative for a Community Forum, Thurs. 1/17, 6pm

by Juanita Chavez | Jan 10, 2019 | Education Blog

The Kern Education Justice Collaborative invites the communities of the Kern High School District to join us for a Community Forum.

Thursday, January 17, 2019

6 PM – 8 PM  

Fellowship Hall at Mill Creek Church
1660 “S” Street
Bakersfield, CA 93308
Corner of Truxtun & “S” (more…)

DHF in Action: DHF proposes new Kern High School District Trustee Boundaries 4/9/18

by Juanita Chavez | Apr 10, 2018 | Education Blog

On Monday, April 9, 2018, the Dolores Huerta Foundation (DHF) participated in the second of five hearings the Kern High School District (KHSD) Board of Trustees is holding to create new district boundaries. Gerald Cantu, Education Policy Director and Sophia Garcia, GIS Coordinator of the Dolores Huerta Foundation presented the organization’s proposed best practices and district maps to the KHSD’s Board of Trustees.

The Dolores Huerta Foundation stresses the significance of aligning the creation of new trustee boundaries with the following best practices in order of importance: equal population among districts, geographic compactness, line contiguity, preservation of local political subdivisions, the preservation of communities of interest, and the protection of incumbents. The foundation finds that current district trustee areas do not comply with California’s and the Federal Government’s Voting Rights Act, have diluted the Latino population and vote, and only have one effective Latino-majority district, District 2, even though Latinos are 52.8% of Kern County’s population.

In 2016, the population within the Kern County High School District was 635,411; therefore, each of the five districts should have a population with a small deviation from 127,082; DHF proposes a district map with a variance of 4,268, or 3.4%, while the current district map has a high variance of 39,382, or 31%, due to natural population growth. Furthermore, census designated places such as Rosedale and Oildale are divided in three and two respectively. District boundaries should not cross through municipal lines and census designated places to preserve local political subdivisions. Most importantly, the foundation firmly believes that the Latino population has been intentionally dissected into three: District 2, 3, and 5; this undercuts Latinos’ voting power as a bloc. In response, the foundation would like to see two Latino-majority districts come out of this redistricting plan.

DHF would also like to note that trustees from District 1, 3, and 4 have secured seats despite living within a three-mile radius from one another, while their districts in total cover 2,500 square miles of land. In order to utilize best practices, DHF considers the location of incumbents to be important, but recognizes this principle is low priority and subordinate to the aforementioned best practices.

The Dolores Huerta Foundation is counting on the Board of Trustees to correct the current district lines to provide our communities with proper and effective representation in the leadership of the Kern High School District. For more information on the ongoing redistricting plans, please contact Gerald Cantu at gcantu@doloreshuerta.org or by telephone at (661) 322-3033 ext. 209.

Kern High School District Redistricting Story Map

by Juanita Chavez | Mar 27, 2018 | Education Blog

Historic Settlement Reached in Lawsuit Against Kern High School District, 7/26/17

by Juanita Chavez | Aug 11, 2017 | Education Blog

In a substantial victory for the Dolores Huerta Foundation, Latino and Black students, their parents, and community organizations, Kern High School District (KHSD), the largest school district in California, agreed to settle a lawsuit in which DHF charged KHSD with disproportionately suspending and expelling students of color due to implicit bias. The settlement requires that the district implement positive discipline practices to address disparate discipline outcomes and provide discipline-related training to all staff and personnel operating within the school environment. The lawsuit also includes terms which will allow advocates to work with the district to ensure that these reforms are actually implemented in the future.

“This is a major step forward. We intend to work with both parents, students, and KHSD to ensure that what has been agreed to in the settlement will actually be implemented and respected. This is also a strong message for the rest of the Central Valley. 40% of the school districts that have the highest suspension rates of Latino and African American students in California are located in the Central Valley. What we see happening here in Kern County is happening throughout the Central Valley. So we’re going to continue to work in many other school districts to make sure our Latino and African American students are being prepared for college so we can dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline.” said Dolores Huerta.

Among other things, the settlement requires that KHSD:

· Use nationally renowned experts selected by counsel to track and evaluate discipline-related data with KHSD’s current consultants for 3 years.

· Provide mandatory professional development and staff training for teachers, school police, and security, and other classified staff.

· Hold community meetings twice a year to present the public with timely discipline-related data and to allow the community to provide input.

· Recognize Black History and National Hispanic Heritage Month

· Uniformly implement discipline reforms to ensure equal treatment of students in relation to disciplinary practices

Background: In October 2014 California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA), and Greater Bakersfield Legal Assistance (GBLA), and MALDEF filed a lawsuit against the Kern High School District (KHSD) on behalf of the Dolores Huerta Foundation. The legal action specifically challenged KHSD’s discriminatory disciplinary policies and practices. Individual plaintiffs and community based organizations involved in the Kern Education Justice Collaborative (KEJC) later signed on, including Building Healthy Communities – South Kern (BHC-SK), Faith in Action Kern County, National Brotherhood Association,  and Children First. later joined on to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit was filed in response to data provided by the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Office showing that Kern County schools were suspending and expelling African American students at a rate 500% higher than Caucasian, and Latinos at a rate of 380% higher. KHSD had the most student expulsions in all of California. Schools in Kern County reported 2,578 expulsions among a student population of 173,365. Astonishingly, in terms of raw numbers this was even more expulsions than Los Angeles County which had a student population nine times larger.

To make matters worse, expulsions disproportionately affected students of color. Whites were 32% of enrollment and 22% of expulsions. Latinos were 55% of enrollment but 60% of expulsions. Blacks were 8% of enrollment but 15% of expulsions.

The majority of expulsions were for offenses in which administrators had discretion to recommend a punishment other than expulsion, such as fighting, being intoxicated, or engaging in “willful defiance,” a highly subjective, catch-all, category that is so vaguely defined as to include any form of disobedience such as classroom disruptions, cursing, etc. Safety, therefore, was not the primary factor in such high expulsion rates. Rather, it was a zero-tolerance, law-enforcement-first mentality attitude to school discipline applied by administrators within school communities.

When asked to explain the inordinate expulsions, KHSD administrators responded by claiming it was done in the name of safety and there had been no call for a change from students’ parents or the community.

Kern County schools were clearly doing a disservice to a substantial percentage of their students by removing them from a path to graduate on time and to begin college or a career. Recent research shows that students who are expelled or suspended are more likely to dropout and/or go to prison. With an expulsion rate of 15 per 100, Kern schools funneled thousands of its students into the school-to-prison pipeline and made them more likely to end up in prison or on some kind of public assistance.

Dolores Huerta Foundation took action partnering with “Families in Schools” to build the capacity of like-minded organizations through funding and technical support in order to engage parents, families and the public in the decision-making process. In 2012, the Dolores Huerta Foundation partnered with Building Healthy Communities – South Kern (BHC-SK) to convene the Kern Education Justice Collaborative (KEJC), whose members include the Dolores Huerta Foundation (DHF), Faith in Action Kern County, National Brotherhood Association, California Rural Legal Assistance, Greater Bakersfield Legal Assistance, and Children First. The Collaborative proceeded to develop a set of recommendations for the KHSD LCAP focused on ending the “school-to-prison pipeline” by improving school climate.

The KEJC used a multipronged approach to address the issues including Grassroots Mobilization and Advocacy, Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) Parent Trainings and Advocacy, a Public Awareness Communications Strategy, and Integrated Voter Engagement.