‘Comparison of June 2019 Parent Recommendations to the School Safety Act and City Leader Responses to Date June 26, 2019 Key Dates: ‘© School Safety Act effective date is April 2019 ‘© Springboard/CHMIL sexual abuse case was begun to be made public June 8, 2019 ‘© Under the School Safety Act implementation timeline: ‘© Schools must adopt and make public policies and protocols for responding and communicating about student sexual abuse by staff by sometime in the 19-20 school year {could be end of. © Schools shall provide training for staf, at time of hiring and every 2 years after, on sexual misconduct, student sexual abuse and child abuse sometime in the 20-21 school year (a vear or more after the re in plat (© OSSE shall create model policies and training resources to help inform the development the above-mentioned policies for the 19-20 school year and the trainings for the 20-21 school year (but not necessarily before schools/LEAs act) © DCPS sent a communication on Friday June 21 that left out key information on deadlines and transparency (see attached markup attached): ‘© How will they report and share the information to the public? When? ‘© When will new policies take effect? © Where and by when can parents sign up for a citywide task force on these issues (the letter gave no information on how to sign up)? Establish a framework for regular communication to share updates with the public. Recommend update provided ‘to public every two weeks from June 21, 2019 email Overarching questions remain: ‘© What is the detailed timeline of every decision and communication by city leadership on the Springboard case? © How will OSSE work with the LEAs to ensure swift, timely, efficient and transparent implementation of the new law? ‘* How will DCPS provide transparency on their implementation of thelr new policies? What are their deadlines? Parent Recommendations June 2019 ‘Addressed in | DCPS Response to Date | Mayor/OSSE Response to ‘School | Date ___| safety act Require Full Review and Verification of All Providers NO | Yes=but no transparency Before Summer School and Next School year on when they wil share results publicly _ Set Hearing Dates ASAP to Demand Answers and WA N/A N/A ‘Accountability for Lack of Enforcement Affecting 21 Schoo! Sites* Hold Agencies and Leaders Accountable for Any NO NO NO ‘Wrong-Doing or Lack of Enforcement/Oversight/Following Procedures and Protocols Improve and Expand Data Collection and Reporting NO. _ NO Centralize Reporting, Monitoring and Compliance of | NO NO) Policies and Data Collection Require and Fund a SWOT/Risk/Vellow-Book Audit NO NO NO Analysis of Our System by an Expert in Gold Standard | Systems for Preventing, Reporting, Communicating and Addressing Sexual Misconduct in Schools | not addressed Additional Provisions To Consider to Avament the School Safety Act and Improve City-Wide Polic Insert 0 Strong LEA role. The LEA role is critical, but absent: The LEA should have @ role — like they do in all other matters of data collection regarding students to ensure that schools comply, to collect the data, keep records of all ofthe required protections, and make sure staff and contractors are aware of upcoming renewal dates. This makes common sense ~ the LEAS hire the staff, not the schools. LEAs develop and maintain the contracts, not the schools.Recommendations to the Mayor and DC Council on Urgent Next Steps to Strengthen Our System to Protect Children in Schools We parents are not experts in the details ofthe laws, policies and procedures that attempt to provide forthe sofety of our children. There may be laws or other policies in place that are well-meaning and address some of these issues. What our ‘research ond experience shows i whatever lin place now is not enough, not being Implemented ond enforced well, ard the systems broken. We wont to work with city leadership on common-sense solutions that can help guide the city toa system that will better ensure the safety of ol children Immediate Next Steps Require Full Review and Verification of All Providers in Schools, ‘The CHML/Springboard case revealed that a provider of 21 programs across multiple school districts was rot in compliance with basic safety policies and procedures. This puts into question the compliance of every provider in every school district across DC. Before summer programs begin and the next schoo! year starts, every provider of services in every school must be fully reviewed and verified that all safety procedures and policies have been followed and verification records are on fle. OSSE and all schoo! districts must make that verification publicly available before programs may operate. Set Hearing Dates ASAP to Demand Answers and Accountability for Lack of Enforcement The CHML/Springboard case does not stand alone. The School Safety Act implemented in April is clearly not doing enough, or being implemented well enough, to improve our systems. Hold hearings inviting public testimony as well as agency testimony of all parties involved: the Mayor and DME who oversee all of the involved agencies; OSSE; DCPS; PCSB; and charter districts. Ask them to provide, in writing, ahead of the hearing, answers to all of the questions in the two timelines parents created and the parent sign- on letter. Ahead of the hearing, ask them to provide every MOA/contract with every provider in every LEA (including updates and extensions) and the documentation that they are in full compliance with the MOAs/contracts especially regarding safety of students and background checks. Make all of that documentation public. Ask them for updates on how they are implementing and enforcing the School Safety Act. Help parents get the answers to the questions we need to understand where and how the system failed in order to develop o path forward that will better protect all of our children in every school, in every district. Hold Agencies and Leaders Accountability for Any Wrong-Doing or Lack of Enforcement/Oversight/Following Procedures and Protocols. Demand resignations of any leaders that have not followed the policies and procedures regarding the proper and timely reporting, suspension of suspects and providers, notification to communities, and other actions and processes required. Require that reporting and sexual misconduct (including harassment, assault, abuse, etc) be one of the performance measures for every agency. Require that every agency report on these key performance measures and the related data (see below) at every agency performance oversight hearing. ‘Recommendations to the Moyor and DC Council an Urgent Next Steps to Strengthen Our System to Protect Children In Schools June 2019 Contact: Danica Petroshus, dpetrashius yahoo.comLegislotive and Budget Swift Action This Summer Improve and Expand Data Collection and Reporting Require annual collection and reporting of data by school, by LEA and overall on all school-related sexual misconduct and require the data be publicly available on OSSE and every LEA website: * Data on sexual misconduct reports including: First Degree Sex Abuse, Second Degree Sex Abuse, Attempted First Degree Sex Abuse and Assault with Intent to Commit First Degree Sex Abuse against adults or children; ‘© Data on time gap between when mandated reporting happened and affected communities were notified of an allegation and actions taken to secure safety of all children on the school site; ‘© Data on arrests made post allegations; ‘+ Data on prosecutorial results; and ‘© Data on the payment of damages by incident reported. Centralize Reporting and Monitoring on Current Safety Policies and Data Collection With 67 LEAs that have to follow the same laws and policies to protect students, each have to run their ‘own monitoring and compliance. Capacity and expertise are spread too thinly to make full compliance efficient and sustainable. Support a central office to monitor, enforce, communicate and train all LEAs on all safety policies and laws. Require and Fund a “SWOT” /Risk/Yellow-Book Audit-Type Analysis of Our System By Independent Expert in Developing Gold Standard Systems for Preventing, Reporting, Communicating and ‘Addressing Sexual Misconduct in Schools Its clear that our system is broken. There are laws, policies and procedures in place, but they are not. being enforced or implemented effectively. We don’t know what the root causes are: do we have the right/enough laws policies and procedures to ensure the safety of our children to our best abilities? Do we have the training, knowledge and systems to implement it well? Do we have the right leadership and capacity to enforce and oversee safeguards for our children, especially in our unique system of 67 different school districts that engage in contracts and MOAs that must follow all safety policies? How can we develop, implement and enforce the gold standard of safety for our children? Engage an independent expert in a “SWOT"/Risk/Yellow-Book Audit-Type Analysis of our system to ask these ‘questions, make recommendations on ways that we can strengthen our system to best protect our students by the beginning of the new school year; make the analysis publicly available. Fall Action Take Policy, L islative, Implementation, or Budget Actions Based on the “S.W. Hold Follow Up Hearings on Agencies/Districts Progress with Strengthening Our System to Protect Children Recommendotions to the Mayor ond DC Council on Urgent Next Steps to Strengthen Our System to Protect Children in Schools June 2089 Contact: Danica Petroshus, dpetroshius@yahoo.com