Pencils, Paper & Pepper Spray

Yesterday when I picked Justice & Chuli up from school, we walked passed the uniformed Police Officer who is assigned to their school. I have been seeing him around campus in the afternoons and Chuli came home with those SFPD stickers the cops always give out to little kids so I have had the suspicion that Officer Brooks (whose name I learned when Justice high-fived & called him by name as we were leaving) is a permanent fixture at the girl's school. I know that the SFUSD has full fledged SFPD officers assigned to and present in schools (including some of those I attended), but I have only witnessed them inside of high schools and wasn't fully prepared for my own kids to experience this phenomenon as a Kindergartner and 5th grader. Now that their school (Buena Vista) has merged with Horace Mann Middle School to form a K-8 school, there are definitely older kids around and I guess that means tougher security is necessary (???). Now, just to be clear, this is an actual uniformed SFPD Police Officer with a gun, a badge, a baton and some pepper spray, not just a school security guard who are armed only with a walkie-talkie and their street-smarts. The police department calls them SROs (school resource officers) and this is how they are described on the SFPD website:

School Resource Officers of the SFPD are dedicated to working with the SFUSD to ensure a safer learning environment, provide valuable resources to school staff, teachers and youth to prevent and solve problems within the school and community and foster positive relationships between youth and police officers. 

SRO's are community police officers within specific schools who work to build trusting relationships with youth, school staff and the community to create safer schools.

 SRO Benefits include: Improved relationships with youth, parents, staff and community, Safer schools, Better collaboration and communication among law enforcement, students and staff, Positive access to youth in the role of a mentor, Enhanced learning environment, using law related educational curriculum

They go on to state that: "SROs have a profound impact on youth and their schools" because they: Provide home visits, Provide truancy prevention & intervention, Provide classroom safety education presentation, Provide support to students, Provide substance abuse and violence prevention education, Provide school site security survey, Refer students and families to community resources, Conduct professional development presentations for faculty and staff, Counsel students and facilitate conflict mediation, Participate in Student Assistance Program (SAP) meetings, Support counseling staff, Attend field trips

And they even provide this nifty little image to show how nice it is to have police around our kids:

Now, this all sounds nice & sweet and I'm all for having police officers take a pro-active involvement in their communities BUT I can't get pass the fact that there is a man with a gun and pepper spray walking around my daughters' school!!! 

Maybe I am being naive, but what danger is threatening my daughters as they sit in their brightly decorated classrooms learning el alphabeto and square roots? I know that our public school system is down and out but has it really gotten this bad? I don't even understand if his gun & pepper spray is supposed to keep the students protected from the neighborhood or the neighborhood protected from the students??? 

I realize that the reality of Officer Brooks' day does not consist of pulling out his weapon and handcuffing 3rd graders in the hallways and that he mostly spends his time shooing cars out of the school bus loading zone and making sure the 8th graders aren't trying to cut class, but his mere presence, dressed in that blue uniform with his holster around his waist, sends a very powerful message. I can't even imagine how Chuli's 5 year old little brain processes the site of him in her school. She knows enough to know that guns are used to shoot people and that police arrest people and send them to jail so, does she interpret his presence as meaning that there are people at her school that might need to be shot or go to jail? Is she now going to feel like her school is a dangerous place and if so, how can she feel comfortable learning, trying new things and especially making mistakes in such an environment?  I guess having an Officer patrolling my kids' school is supposed to make me feel safer but I think it is beginning to have the exact opposite effect.

I'm pretty sure that I am not ignorant to the dangers in our city and in our neighborhood and I know that my kids will probably experience a few of their own hard knocks as they grow up here but I cannot yet resign myself to believing that my kids need armored protection to be able to receive their education.  Police are a vital part of our society but not our schools.  If I am truly wrong about that then we are all in a much hotter mess than I can pretend to know what to do with...

First Day of School

Today was the first day of school for the SFUSD.  For our family that means that Justice starts 5th grade, Chuli starts Kinder (yay!) and Papa goes back to work with his high schoolers.  Obviously there are a lot of emotions that arise on a first day of school especially since it is Chuli's very first day ever in "real school".  Now, I have had to do this whole 1st day of kinder once before and have since had loads (5 years) of practice with the first day of school thanks to Justice and the fact that I still have one squishy baby at home with me whose favorite place on earth is still in my arms, so I will admit that it's probably not as emotional for me as it is for first time parents.  But it is still a milestone and definitely a day for reflections.
It is always a little scary for me to witness the transition my girls make from the warm fuzzy, protective, nurturing bubble that is their amazing Pre-School (Buen Dia Family School) to the mean, institutional, spirit crushing CA public school system but, for me the pride I have in my girls helps sqaush all the fear.  Not just the basic pride mama's get when their kids grow up and become more independent but for me there is another special pride for the fact that my girls are diving head first into the CA Public education system and being the Tough Little Cookies they are, they are going to come out better on the other end.
My girls are city kids, to the core, just like their mama and papa were, and there are certain things that whether we like it or not, come with being a city kid and never is that more apparent then in our schools.  My girls are going to have to experience  over-worked, stressed out teachers, old buildings that are at times falling apart, there won't be enough paper and pencils for them, they will get about 1 hour a week of art instruction and maybe some PE (if they are lucky) and they will grow up thinking police inside of schools is a normal thing.  Yes, it sucks and you may be asking why I would ever allow my precious babies to experience such a thing.  My answer to that is 2 part:

1.) I am a product of the SFUSD (minus the one year spent at an all girls catholic school which my mom's thought would help re-introduce me to the wonders of academics) and the bottom line is that I turned out pretty good.  My knowledge of geography and world history might be lacking but I can safely say that I am (as are most of my peers) a positive, intelligent member of society who on some level, makes our world a better place.  I would argue that the not-so-nice parts of going to a public school were what helped me become this positive, productive member of society.  I remember making the decision to become a classroom teacher because of all crappy teachers I had as a student and wanting something better for our own children.  And there is no better way to learn about capitalism, racism, classism, imperialism and colonialism then spending a few years in a public school classroom.  I probably wouldn't care nearly as much about changing the world or being a good person (and raising my girls to be good people who change the world) if I wasn't exposed first hand to all the things that need fixing in this world.  Additionally, being surrounded by teachers, staff, families and students who were working their butts off to make lemon-aid out of half a rotting old lemon was nothing short of immensely inspiring and motivating.  I know that as SFUSD students, my girls will go out into life with their eyes WIDE open about the state of our world and (if I do my job right) a fire in their bellies to do something about it.

2.) The reality is, any conversation about our public schools is filled with complaints, whining and sad stories but although there is much to complain, whine and be sad about in our schools, I believe there is just as much to appreciate, celebrate and smile about.  Shoot, our school's motto is "La Escuela Mas Chevere" so there must be some celebrating going on, right?
What about the fact that I just dropped my 2 daughters off at a school and a building that I attended as a child? And that at that school, there is a security guard who watched over me when I was a knuckle-headed middle schooler, and is now looking over my own babies! Where else but in the SFUSD could you find that? And there are countless examples of that sense of community, from the school secretary who worked with Papa at summer school this year, to the Kindergarten teacher whose daughter dances with us in Carnaval every year, the vice-principal who taught with our Nono (grandpa),  the support staff who I tutored/mentored, the afterschool program run by the same woman who was in charge when I went there, the 5th grade teacher whose son takes capoeira with Chuli, etc, etc, need I go on???  The fact is my girls are going to be taken care of.  There will be eyes watching their every move who have Mama's and Papa's cell phone number on speed dial and can post on my FB wall about their activities.  While the "making sure my kids are not up to no good" factor is great, the benefit of having a real life connection with the teachers, staff & families that are in charge of my girls education, is a much deeper one.  That is a true definition of COMMUNITY.  We all know it takes a village but it is truly a beautiful thing to see it in action.

And how about the amazing diversity of our public schools? Yea, yea I am fully aware about the state of diversity in San Francisco but compared to most of the world my girl's classrooms are still on the forefront.  My girls will grow up with kids of all different colors, languages, families, $, countries and sexualities.  They will never be able to draw a picture of what a San Franciscan looks like because there is no one image that could represent all of the folks they know.  They will be able to travel the world without fear of things or people being different then they are and they will learn to seek out and celebrate new and unfamiliar things.

Besides all of the big, important life lessons, my girls will also get the simple pleasures that come from being an SFUSD student.  Such as:  they will be damn good kick ball players, they will enjoy many a paleta afterschool, they will have a blast in the back of a laidlaw bus, they will get to WALK to school everyday, they will have classmates that have been at the same school with them from pre-school to college, they will get school holidays to celebrate MLK, Indigenous people and Cesar Chavez (not to mention the extra 4 furlough days, wink wink), they will fall asleep at a boring symphony concert or ballet performance, there will be more afterschool programs for them then they know what to do with, they will dance in the Carnaval parade and lastly they will have earned the street-cred that comes with surviving the SFUSD!

Today is an exciting day for sure.  My babies are growing up and will have new challenges to overcome this year but they will also discover new talents and powers and become even more amazing human beings.
They will be fine, they will be fine, they will be fine....and in the meantime I will just hug Rio a little longer today

Besides the emotional, spiritual, intellectual parts of the first day of school, it is always important for my girls to look good!

 Chuli is rocking her new outfit from H&M kids (my favorite store for kids clothes!!!)

Justice picked out a polka dot skirt (I can hardly believe it, a skirt???) with a super cute black vest over a favorite t-shirt and her silver chucks