Parents press Salem-Keizer school board director on bullying, missing data and SRO removal; Keizer committee asks city council to advocate

Satya Chandiguri, introduced at the meeting as a Salem-Keizer School Board director representing Zone 4, gave the Keizer Community Diversity Engagement Committee an extended briefing on bullying reporting, district policy and the district's finances.

Chandiguri walked committee members through reporting options and policies for bullying and harassment: district webpages with a "Safe and Welcoming Schools" tab, a district bullying policy referenced in the presentation (identified in materials as a bullying policy code), and the Safe Oregon app. She said the district allows reports from students, staff, parents and community members, and that investigations are typically led by school principals who decide whether an incident is handled disciplinarily or escalated as a criminal matter. Chandiguri urged families to include translators or trusted advocates when reporting and said parents can also contact the district's complaint-resolution process or Safe Oregon.

Chandiguri told the committee the district is also facing fiscal pressure: "we're going to be having close to $25,000,000 gap between our revenues and what it costs to educate" and described district-scale payroll and budget complexity that constrain options. She described a drafting exercise to close a larger $33,000,000 reduction, with district-level adjustments (about $9,000,000) and school-based adjustments (about $14,000,000), and said those school-based cuts could affect roughly 60 staff positions.

Committee members and parents pressed for concrete follow-up when reports are filed. Multiple attendees described children who continued to be bullied despite parental reports; one parent recounted a child who returned home with two concussions and said a school resource officer intervened directly and produced options that halted the behavior. Board members and parents said such cases sometimes escalate to law enforcement or to appeals to the board when school-level responses are perceived as insufficient.

A repeated concern was data transparency. Chandiguri said state-level and public reporting of bullying and exclusionary discipline data largely stopped being accessible in 2021; she said the board had previously pushed to receive multi-year trend data but has not consistently received it. She characterized the absence of transparent data as a civil-rights and accountability gap and urged families and the committee to press the district leadership and individual board members to restore regular reporting.

The panel also discussed the district decision to remove 13 school resource officers (SROs) around 2020. Chandiguri said the removal was an operational decision by the superintendent made during that period and that board members pushed back; she and other speakers linked the change in SRO staffing to changes in youth-violence and discipline outcomes as reported in local briefings.

After the discussion, a committee member moved that the city council advocate on the committee's behalf and write a letter to the school board about bullying, data transparency and related concerns. The motion was seconded and approved by voice vote.

Committee members asked school board representatives to return for a follow-up meeting (suggested for April) to dive deeper into unanswered questions and to include district safety staff for a more detailed explanation of investigative processes and data. The committee also discussed other agenda items including a city survey and event planning before adjourning.