'I just want to amplify it’: Santa Rosa teachers back student calls for more support

Teachers who spoke up at a Tuesday community forum organized by the Santa Rosa City Schools district – where one quickly noted, “We were told not to say too much.” – pleaded for more support for their students as a bulwark against the sort of violence that led to the March 1 stabbing death of a student on the Montgomery High School campus.

“I just want to amplify it,” Montgomery teacher Simone Harris said, referring to resources her students had called for at Tuesday’s meeting, “because what I heard was loud and clear. We need to deal with mental health on our campuses. We need more supervision, but we definitely need more mental health support.”

Another Montgomery teacher, speaking softly in the large hall, said, “The students that I have are the ones that are struggling the most, the refugees, the immigrants.” Her students need support, the teacher said.

“They’re super stressed and they don’t know what to do,” she added.

Another speaker echoed calls for the reinstatement of the school resources officer program.

”I’m a teacher,“ she said. ”Teachers are not trained in this and should not be expected to break up fights, to have to chase gang members from other schools off our campus before they jump somebody. Staff has been assaulted and we need to protect them, as well. The saying: ‘Throwing the baby out with the bathwater,’ sums it all up on what the school board has done with canceling the SRO program.”

Referring to the school board’s current vice president, who in 2020 was a leading advocate for removing school resource officers from campuses, the teacher closed her remarks by saying, “Also, recall Omar Medina.”

Audience members offered loud hoots, hollers and applause in agreement.

One Montgomery teacher, Margaret Buhn, said that at times specific graduation requirements geared toward college admissions drive her students’ morale down.

“How would you feel if you came to school and were failing your classes and being told you're not on a path to success in life because you're not on track to go to college?” said Buhn.

Downtrodden and neglected school facilities make things worse, she said.

“Add to that you don't have access to a safe and clean bathroom. Your classrooms have mold and there's duct tape holding the ramps together. There's water damage on the ceilings and no heat – when there's snow on the mountains.

“How can you sit and do a restorative circle when everything about your school is a negative for you and everything is telling you you're not part of this community? Your experience is not valued,” said Buhn.

In citing restorative circles, she was referring to an approach to resolving conflicts that calls for students to take responsibility for their roles in conflict or inflicting harm as part of a process of establishing accountability and repairing relationships.

To raucous applause, Buhn said, “We have these amazing kids who are trying to tell you that they're mad, and scared and demanding change. And I hope that you're really listening and respecting their voices because it's their lives that we're affecting.”

Harris, when she spoke, said there were things teachers could do immediately to start to ease students’ burdens.

“We also need to understand that humanizing our classrooms is something that all of us teachers can do. I mean, I work with some amazing colleagues, but I want to spread this message to all teachers,” she said. “We can humanize our classrooms. That means we think about our grading policies.

“That means we think about homework policies and that means we talked to our students like human beings, and to see their humanity — because it is not just a race of achievement and a cutthroat competition. This is supposed to be a place where we come to feel heard,” she said.

Harris, too, received prolonged applause.

You can reach Staff Writer Jeremy Hay at 707-387-2960 or jeremy.hay@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jeremyhay