Three experts on the topic of school safety shared their expertise with community members, police officers and school officials on Tuesday at the Western Justice Center in Pasadena.

The Western Justice Center, a nonprofit organization that promotes peaceful conflict resolution, decided to host a training session because Pasadena residents consistently say they are concerned about school safety, said Executive Director Najeeba Syeed-Miller.

What happens on a school campus affects the surrounding neighborhoods and vice versa. 

The training session is part of a series called PeaceBuilding BrownBags: School Safety and Youth Collaboratives. The goal of the sessions is to bring the different groups that serve youth together to learn how to address issues in the community, Syeed-Miller said.
 

“Often times, we are operating in our own silos . . . but at these meetings we can learn what happens elsewhere, and how we can connect the dots with each other,” she said.

Cherylynn Hoff, an intergroup relations specialist, talked about her work with Zerohour Anti-Discrimination Campaign through the Los Angeles Commission on Human Relations. The goal of the campaign is to improve relations between different student populations on campus.

As part of the campaign, students learn to resolve conflicts that arise between different groups on campus. The students are on Campus Action Teams, and they represent all the different subgroups of the school.  They often work with the administration on solving issues.

“We have to get them invested in their campus,” Hoff said, adding that it’s the only way for the campus climate to change.

The Commission also provides teachers with a history curriculum that describes the differences and similarities between different identity groups, so students can learn to respect and accept others.

Aisha Martin-Walton, chief of the California Community Relations Services (CCRS), discussed her role in the Safe Passage Program. The CCRS teamed with LAUSD, law enforcement and first responders to find ways to keep gang members from victimizing students who traveled to and from school.

The CCRS, a conflict resolution service through the California Attorney General’s Office, and school officials asked students to show them areas around the campus where they were afraid to walk. They met with police to compile crime statistics around the campus area to determine the most dangerous locations.  As a response, the areas deemed most dangerous are flooded with more police and first responders one hour before and after school, Martin-Walton said.

“If we can keep one more student feeling safe, we have done our job,” she said.

Michael Hopwood, coordinator of operations and safety for LAUSD, shared how LAUSD responded to violence on campus. The district developed a Safe Passages Subcommittee chaired by the Los Angeles Police Department and the school’s police department to work with CCRS. The district also formed a Human Relations Subcommittee chaired by a school official and a member of the California Commission on Human Relations. The goal of the committee is to encourage acceptance of different identity groups. A steering committee oversees the subcommittees’ progress.

As a result of the collaboration, students are involved in peer mediation, crime was reduced around the campus area and bus stops in unsafe areas were relocated.

“I think it’s educational to find out how to keep children safe,” said Pasadena Police Department officer Carolyn Gordon, who is a part of the Safe Schools Team at Pasadena Unified School District. 

Gordon said she would like to discuss some of the ideas shared at the meeting with her fellow officers. The team may decide to implement some of the methods, she said.

George McKenna, PUSD assistant superintendent, said he believes it’s the district’s responsibility to keep students safe. He wants to prevent an incident from occurring rather than waiting until one does happen.

“As a school district, we need to talk about violence prevention,” McKenna said.

The next training session will be from noon to 2 p.m., Sept. 11, and the topic will be hate crimes and hate speech. For more information or to RSVP to the event, contact Emily Linnemeier at emily@westernjustice.org or 626-584-7494.