Sonoma Valley schools lock classroom doors, boost police presence

In the wake of two violent incidents in Sonoma County classrooms, the Sonoma Valley Unified School has temporarily boosted its police presence on campus and is encouraging teachers to lock the classroom doors.

“We need to balance the need for safety and the need to feel free and comfortable,” said Dr. Elizabeth Kaufman, acting superintendent of the district, during an online “listening circle” on March 6, one of many held on campuses around the county. “We want to be protective and proactive, so one of the things we’re recommending right now is that folks keep their doors locked. We also believe that having some police presence is going to be helpful for deterrence and peace of mind.”

The session did not cover whether local schools have seen any rise in violent or disruptive incidents, leading some parents to question the scope of the problem in Sonoma Valley.

Kaufman was joined in the online event by Jillian Beale, the district’s director of educational services for wellness and instruction, and Sonoma Police Chief Brandon Cutting. The district held a similar event just for high school students.

They organized the event to inform parents about the safety measures the district has put in place, as well as to hear community members’ concerns after two high-profile county incidents. Two students in ski masks barged into a classroom and attacked a student at Casa Grande High School in Petaluma on Feb. 17. Twelve days later, on March 1, a 16-year-old student was fatally stabbed at Montgomery High School in Santa Rosa.

“We were hearing that a number of things were happening in other districts where students were not feeling heard and parents were not feeling informed,” Kaufman said. “We don’t want that to be the case here.”

Drawing from the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System, part of the California Department of Education, Kaufman said that based on 2021-22 suspension data, Sonoma Valley Unified School District is “by and large, very safe.”

“When we look at the overall behavior, we see that our kids are generally very well behaved, very engaged in school and of those students who have been suspended, very few were suspended more than once,” she said. Disciplinary action is one indicator of potential problems on campus.

The data shows that of the district’s 3,458 students, 95% had never been suspended. Of the 163 students that had been suspended, 20% were suspended twice, 3% a third time and 4% five or more times.

Cutting suggested that to understand student safety issues, it’s important to look beyond the numbers.

“We met with Dr. Kaufman and other district staff at the high school last week, and decided that statistics and numbers are all very good and help us to understand overall safety concerns,” he said. “However, the unspoken and the unreported does not get counted in that.”

During the public comments portion of the meeting, most of the conversation centered around whether or not the school district should attempt to bring back the School Resource Officer (SRO) program, which assigned a police officer to the Sonoma Valley High campus, was discontinued in 2021 when the city of Sonoma ended its funding amid protest from students.

Dmitra Smith, the parent of a student who attended Sonoma Valley schools, says that SROs have disproportionately harmed students of color.

“We need to stop responding to harm with punishment and isolation, and offer support, safety, healing and connection, even when it’s hard,” she said. “We need to build our collective skills and capacity to prevent harm and to foster everyday accountability and reparation.”

Other parents were supportive of an added police presence on campus.

“I’ve spoken to many people about what an SRO actually does and what the officer can add to Sonoma High School and all of our other schools,” said Sharon Armitage, the mother of a Sonoma Valley High School student. “Some people think an SRO just hunts people down to get them in trouble, when actually this officer is really serving the community, the school community, and the kids who may need a little extra help, who may be struggling, who may need a friend.”

Kaufmann said that the SVUSD Board of Trustees will be discussing school safety tools, such as SROs, at its March 25 study session and that further discussion of SROs has been requested as an agenda item for an upcoming regular board meeting.

Besides beefing up police presence, Kaufman discussed ways that the Sonoma Police Department and the school district are teaming up to boost safety on campuses.

This spring, Cutting and his staff will be doing site assessments to make sure that each school has the best possible tactical plans in place in dealing with safety issues. They also have reviewed active shooter protocols with district staff.

School safety plans are reviewed and updated each year with first responders, as well as with school site councils.

“Next year, we probably will move to a broader kind of district forum for creating our safety plans rather than have each individual school site do them,” Kaufman said.

The annual August Professional Learning Day, the day teachers return for the new school year, focuses on school safety issues. During Pupil Planning Day, usually held the first Friday before classes begin, police department officers will come to school campuses to walk through the sites with principals and staff members.

Students will participate in safety drills regularly throughout the school year.

“Also, the district will be scheduling ‘table-top drills’ for staff members, in which they process a variety of scenarios and surprising situations,” Kaufman said. “We’re going to try to schedule them quarterly in 2023-24, hopefully with law enforcement personnel.”

The district also is urging increased reporting of safety issues to the police department.

“We have had opportunities to call law enforcement whenever we have safety issues,” Kaufman said. “They’re responsive to us, and they’ll be responsive to you. One of the things we’ve seen in the past is that when school violence happens, somebody has known about it, but didn’t tell anyone. We want to normalize reaching out to law enforcement.”

Reach the reporter, Dan Johnson, at daniel.johnson@sonomanews.com.