Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the School Safety topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
District outlines expanded student support services and violence-prevention plans
Summary
SFUSD presented an overview of student support services and violence-prevention initiatives, citing improved incident-reporting, new data on reported assaults and plans to scale counselors and support staff with Prop H and other funds.
The San Francisco Unified School District on March 13 presented an expanded, district-wide plan for student support services and violence prevention that emphasizes data collection, partnerships and scaling services.
Associate Superintendent for Student Support Services Trish Baskin told the board the department compiled a program matrix, incident-report databases and a truancy module in the student information system so staff can track trends and provide targeted interventions. "We have incident reports being compiled on databases so that we can actually see the type of incident, the frequency, and which schools seem to be having more," she said.
Baskin said improved reporting may account for some of the increases seen in the data. Commissioners noted reported assaults rose from about 400 to over 800 in a five-year comparison of incident reports; Baskin cautioned these are reported incidents and said the rise may reflect both actual changes and increased reporting.
District staff described steps to respond when a school shows rising incident reports: deploy support-services staff to the site; institute professional development and technical assistance for teachers; assess whether particular classrooms or teachers need help; and design a composite intervention plan that may include counselors, peer resources and community-based organizations. "When we begin to see that a school is experiencing more challenges, there's a whole composite that we'll do," she said.
Board members pressed for measurable thresholds to trigger escalated support and for evaluations of program effectiveness. Baskin said the district is compiling baseline data and will emphasize research-validated programs and consistent implementation practices across sites so it can compare outcomes over time.
The presentation also noted partnerships with city initiatives, UCSF and a Safe School Task Force, and that Prop H funding will expand counselors and peer-resource programs. The board asked staff to return with police/SRO data to the curriculum committee and to provide further detail on evaluation metrics and thresholds for intervention.
Next steps: Staff will provide committee-level follow-up with police data and a program-evaluation plan; district offices will continue to deploy support services and report back on implementation and outcomes.
