By Lida Dianti

With overcrowding, low student performance and unsuccessful education reform plaguing school systems in California, education officials have turned to a new, issue-specific instructional model for K-12 schooling. These magnet school programs, focusing on performing arts, science, math and advanced academics, among other topics, are very popular – so much so that the Los Angeles Unified School District recently approved a $3 million expansion of its magnet program. The money will fund three new magnet schools and 10 new magnet programs within traditional schools.

The intent is admirable. The ACLU of Southern California (ACLU SoCal) applauds LAUSD’s efforts to improve the quality of education for our children, particularly those who traditionally have attended under-resourced schools. But we are concerned that these efforts could inadvertently lead to a two-tiered school system that will leave many students behind and amplify existing inequities.
Even with its planned expansion, LAUSD’s magnet programming will only be available to a fraction of students. Enrollment rates in existing magnet programs have increased significantly in the last two years; LAUSD put 23,000 students on a waiting list this year alone.

Because admissions are lottery based and the number of available spaces at a given school are limited, ACLU SoCal is concerned that the students who don’t make it into a magnet program won’t receive the same chance for a premium education as the lucky students who, literally, win the lottery. LAUSD must ensure that the $3 million expansion, and subsequent funding required for specialized programs and curricula, does not come at the expense of adequate funding and resource distribution for students attending non-magnet schools.

LAUSD has justified its move toward expansion by pointing to the achievements of students enrolled in magnet schools, particularly the 16 percent of magnet students who attend highly gifted academic programs. But it behooves school districts to provide equal resources for all students, not just a lucky or gifted subset.

“LAUSD must invest in all of its students. The quality of education a student receives should not be determined by chance,” said Victor Leung, staff attorney at ACLU SoCal.

ACLU SoCal contends that all students are entitled to a quality education.

Lida Dianti is communications intern at the ACLU of Southern California.
 

LAUSD Superintendent Michelle King. IMAGE: KTLA

 

By Benjamin Grush

Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Michelle King is expected this month to present a plan designed to help students who may be affected by stepped-up immigration enforcement actions.

The proposal comes nearly three months after the nation’s second largest school district adopted a resolution that aims to limit federal immigration agents’ access to school grounds.

The resolution calls for agents to obtain explicit approval from the superintendent and LAUSD’s lawyers before stepping onto a campus, and instructs school officials to refrain from questioning students about the immigration status of students and their families.

The resolution, together with the plan, is intended to quell growing fear among students who worry that the current anti-immigrant rhetoric will lead to raids in and around LAUSD schools.
Such fears aren’t baseless, despite public statements from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that schools are generally off limits.

Consider that in 2011, ICE agents surrounded a Detroit-area school while parents dropped off their kids. The incident sparked outrage and an internal ICE investigation. More recently, the ACLU of Southern California (ACLU SoCal) received reports that officials in the Compton Unified School District threatened to call immigration officials on parents in that community.

That’s why LAUSD’s push to protect students is so important. Los Angeles is a diverse city where an estimated 10 percent of residents are undocumented, and far more belong to mixed-status families, where one or more family members lack permission to be in the U.S.

By adopting a resolution, and presenting a clear plan to help students whose families may be affected by immigration enforcement, the district is sending a strong message that may help keep students in school at a time when many kids face unprecedented trouble accessing a public education.

A recent report by Georgetown University Law Center found schools in several states have blocked immigrant children from registering for classes because they lacked legal status, despite federal requirements that all children, regardless of immigration status, be allowed to attend school.

No doubt, some critics will insist that such restrictions exceed the LAUSD’s authority to limit ICE agents.

Such arguments ignore that similar policies already exist for other law enforcement agencies. The Los Angeles County Office of Education, for example, generally requires that police officers obtain a court order or a warrant before speaking with a student.

While LAUSD is among the largest districts to adopt such protections, it may well serve as a good blueprint for other districts hoping to ensure the classroom remains an immigration enforcement-free zone where kids can learn.

Benjamin Grush is communications intern at the ACLU of Southern California. 

A federal jury needed little time last week to convict two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies for beating an inmate with mental illness and filing false reports to cover up the assault. Convictions stemming from the scandalous abuse in the jails have become commonplace – 21 current or former L.A. County Sheriff’s Department members have now been convicted.

This case stemmed from a 2010 incident in which deputies kicked, punched and pepper sprayed the inmate in a locked hallway, out of sight of surveillance cameras, as punishment for having been disrespectful. The deputies then cooked up a story to justify the beating, claiming the inmate left his cell without permission, ignored orders to return to it and instead walked into the hallway, where he tried to punch a deputy and violently resisted being restrained. The deputies even went so far as to leave certain deputies out of their reports because they had been involved in too many other force incidents.

Now, police lying shouldn’t be news to anyone. A poll last year found that one in three Americans believe police routinely lie. Residents of Los Angeles don’t have to look too far for evidence of police dishonesty. Disgraced former L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca pled guilty to lying to federal agents investigating civil rights abuses in the jails, and a federal jury convicted Baca’s second-in-command – former Undersheriff Paul Tanaka – of obstruction of justice for interfering with that investigation.

In jail settings we should be particularly wary about the potential for police dishonesty. The ACLU of Southern California (ACLU SoCal) published reports over several years compiling inmate complaints of brutal violence at the hands of L.A. County sheriff’s deputies. Baca reflexively responded to these complaints with the refrain that inmates lie and exaggerate—and it unsurprisingly worked.

We as society are told, over and over, that those imprisoned are the worst of the worst and cannot be trusted. As a result, many in the public don’t care what happens to inmates or feel they deserve whatever they get. And for others the jails are simply an instance of out of sight, out of mind. Despite our long-term societal addiction to incarceration, relatively few of us will ever see the inside of a jail, and fewer still will think very long about what happens there.

For these reasons we should be on the lookout for police officials and agencies that whitewash inmate allegations of abuse. A key tell-tale sign is the investigation that relies exclusively on statements made by the officers involved and fails to include available civilian witnesses. In many instances documented by ACLU SoCal, chaplains and volunteers who witnessed inmate abuse made themselves available to investigators, but were never questioned.

The deputies who beat inmates and lied about it acted with impunity because they knew just how cursory the investigation into the beating would be and that no one in the department would ever believe the victim. It’s why officers lie – because they know they can get away with it.

Police know that in a typical swearing match, where it is their word against someone else’s, they will likely win. Notwithstanding the percentage of the people who believe police lie regularly, police still receive high honesty ratings, with 56% of Americans giving them a very high or high score. A deputy’s odds of winning a swearing match only improve when he squares off against, say, an inmate in the jails – the deputy knows full well how little weight the inmate’s testimony will carry. What little doubt remains can be practically eliminated when multiple deputies give corroborating testimony.

It’s why officers lie – because they know they can get away with it.

Who are prosecutors, judges and jurors going to believe? That’s the tempting question that leads down the rabbit hole where officers end up brazenly and coolly beating an inmate and lying about his being the aggressor.

Before anyone concludes that this is just a case of a few bad apples, remember that these were training officers who were trying both to teach an inmate a lesson and educate a young recruit in how things get done in the jails. They were trying to perpetuate a culture that the leadership either encouraged or condoned.

Human nature and history should have taught us by now that if power can be abused, it will be abused. We must put specific checks and balances in place to test the veracity of police – not because they are less trustworthy than others, but because they have been deemed credible and therefore given the power to lie.

Hector Villagra is executive director of the ACLU of Southern California. Follow @OHectorV.