Plumas County Grand Jury • 2010-2011

Plumas County Grand Jury Repc)rt*

17 pages
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Findings 10 findings

F1
2. Out-of-County/Low Risk – minimal supervision, may report by mail or phone, some supervised by other jurisdictions.
F2
State funding available for drug and alcohol programs in the County currently not being used.
F3
Intensive Drug Supervision – at a minimum, defendants must have both drug testing and search and seizure as conditions of probation.
F4
Drug Court – all defendants that have been placed in a Drug Court program. The Probation Department's responsibilities include: a. Home visits and/or searches. b. Creating pre-trial reports. c. Pre-sentencing reports. d. Drug testing. The department also works with at-risk juveniles and has created a Girls Circle program. It is currently developing a program for boys. The department has approximately 380 individuals on court-ordered probation at any given time. Drugs and/or alcohol abuse account for 80% to 85% of the people on probation. Federal and State funding reserves for Plumas County consist of $509,467 to fund drug and alcohol programs. At the time of this report, the County was not taking advantage of this funding. (On March 15, 2011, the Board of Supervisors initiated discussions on how to acquire these funds. They have until June 30, 2011 to decide.)
F5
The pupil was active in school activities, held a good grade point average, and had a high SAT score for college acceptance. According to several letters from teachers, the pupil was well liked and a good student. There were no actions taken against the student by the Plumas County authorities. This was the student's This was a first-time violation by the student. senior year. The California Education Code 48911 recommendation for expulsion is as
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follows: a. That other means of correction are not feasible or have repeatedly failed to bring about proper conduct. b. That due to the nature of the violation, the presence of the pupil causes a continuing danger to the physical safety of the pupil or others. Unfortunately, this was not an isolated incident of improper expulsions.
F7
According to public school board records, other expulsions were addressed at closed school board sessions, and according to concerned community members, were not in the time frame set down by the PCUSD and the State of California.
F8
Formed Crisis Response Teams.
F9
At Quincy Elementary School, the school secretary and administrative designee (teacher in charge) have been trained to implement a lockdown using the lockdown bell signal whenever a report involving a gun is received on days when the principal is not on campus. The schedule of the office staff has also been rearranged so that there is always
F10
someone at the switchboard during the lunch hour. Conclusion School officials have acted in a responsible manner to improve school safety. Specific Issue #4 – An atmosphere of intolerance exists at the District level. Purpose Statement Examples of intolerance were directly observed by Grand Jury members from interviews, local media, and testimony at public school board meetings. Findings 1) In the fall of 2010, students were exposed to a vehicle with hate language on school property. The vehicle is still, as of spring 2011, present near a local elementary school. It is now on the street but off school property. Even if the truck was present one time instead of many, once showed poor judgment by the school employee. During the December board meeting it was decided to place the issue on the January School Board meeting agenda, but it never was put on any school agenda. Little else was done except that a memo from the school employee was sent to District employees with a response from the Superintendent as well. The Superintendent's initial response was slow and inadequate. 2) Some of the teaching staff feel they are working in an environment of intimidation, harassment, and retribution if there is any questioning or dissent. 3) They also feel that concerns about students are not being addressed by the Administration. They report instances of intimidation of principals to be quiet when parents show up at meetings, and to discourage parents from attending meetings. There were also several reports from witnesses of the intimidation of teachers who speak out. These teachers received poor reviews when not warranted. They were evaluated two-three times a week. They were put into positions which made them uncomfortable. They were given assignments or demands that were excessive. No guidelines were set for what exactly is a "bad teacher". 3) Students' needs are not met equally. For example, students with behavioral problems were denied behavioral consultations because they were too expensive. As required by Article 7 of the Federal law, if a student's behavior affects the learning of other students as well as themselves to a marked degree and over a period of time, the student is required to be tested. Conclusion: The public perception of the school District Board and its policies is controversial and needs to be addressed.

Recommendations 6

Conclusions 2

* This report's PDF did not contain easily extractable text and required Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for analysis. There may be minor errors in the extracted findings and recommendations due to OCR limitations with scanned documents.