Parents move to recall Santa Rosa City Schools Trustee Omar Medina over campus safety issues

Parents who are frustrated with what they see as a lack of progress on school safety issues have filed a notice of intent to recall Santa Rosa City Schools board president Omar Medina.

An uptick in school violence over the last year has fueled calls for the return of school resource officers to campuses, which Medina opposes.

Medina, who was elected in 2018, led the charge to reexamine the role of police on campus, which effectively ended the program.

Medina has argued that police on campus have historically been detrimental to students of color, citing well-documented inequities in treatment as well as his personal experience with law enforcement.

But some parents, frustrated with the trustee’s leadership regarding campus safety, say his ideology is standing in the way of keeping their children safe.

A parent group called the Safe Campus Alliance collected the required signatures of 30 people registered to vote in the district Medina serves: Trustee Area 4. The area includes much of southwest Santa Rosa.

The form with their signatures was filed to the Sonoma County Registrar of Voters Office on Friday along with proof of service, according to Registrar of Voters Deva Marie Proto. Medina has seven days to respond to the notice.

Medina, in an interview with The Press Democrat, said he wasn’t surprised when he was served with the papers. He’s well aware of discontent over his stances and of the many public comments calling for his removal from the board.

But he did say their rationale is misinformed, and he worries that if proponents don’t meet deadlines for the November election, a special election would be costly for taxpayers and the district.

According to Proto, there have been five failed efforts to recall Sonoma County school board members in the past three years, including the 2023 effort to recall Sonoma Valley Unified School District Trustee John Kelley, Cloverdale Unified Trustee Preston Addison in 2022, and West County Union High School board members Kellie Noe, Jeanne Fernandes, and Laurie Fadave in 2021. None of them made it on a ballot.

Stephanie Taylor, one of the Safe Campus group’s parent leaders, said they feel Trustee Alegría De La Cruz is preventing the change they want, but because she is up for reelection in November and Medina is not, the group wanted to give voters the opportunity to vote both of them out of office in November.

“In the last year, we've really tried to speak up and work with the board on ways that we can improve safety on our campuses overall,” Taylor said. “It's become really apparent that Omar in particular, is not open to collaborating or being a leader that the school district needs to implement change to keep the students safe.”

Medina strongly disagreed.

“To imply that I don't care about safety, that I'm not meeting my responsibility — I think that's absurd,” Medina said. “I care about safety a lot. And that's just reality. Maybe people don't interpret my actions in that way, but safety and security are different things, and what safety means to me, might not be exactly what it means to others. And how we address safety, we may have different opinions. ButI do care about it very much.”

In June, 2020, after George Floyd’s death led to a national reckoning with police brutality and systemic racism, Medina led the petition to reexamine the district’s SRO program in partnership with the Santa Rosa Police Department. The board voted at the time to pause the program, which has yet to return.

On March 1, 2023, the on-campus fatal stabbing of 16-year-old Jayden Pienta at Montgomery High School spurred community pleas for improved safety including violence prevention, mental health resources and the return of SROs.

Many parents had hope for police to return to campuses after they successfully rallied trustees to approve an SRO pilot program in December 2023. But there’s been no visible forward progression on implementing the program and proponents of the recall accuse Medina of attempting to “hijack” an agenda item to approve the new program.

“I think the rationale that they put forward isn’t very well-written or well-argued, and I think completely inaccurate, talking about me hijacking an agenda item,” he said. Medina argues that he was simply trying to make sure the way the agenda item was worded was legal.

The notice also cites Medina’s lack of meaningful action to end school violence and dismissal of student traumatic experiences; they accuse him of representing a small group of students and allowing his “personal biases to cloud judgment regarding safety and law enforcement.”

“A big motivation for me to run for office from the get-go has been to make sure that voice that hasn't been historically represented on the board is heard,” he said. “To have everybody reflect every voice, I think is inaccurate.”

“Do I want SROs on our campuses right now? No. But if that's where the board goes, I'm going to do my best to make sure those protocols and measures of accountability are built in,” he said.

Taylor, the parent leader, said for her, it comes down to a lack of solutions presented by Medina.

“It'd be different if as a leader and somebody who was elected to the board, if they were able to come up with solutions or present ideas on ways to improve,” Taylor said. “But I do not think I have seen any solutions or ideas on ways that we can (improve) coming from Omar in particular.”

Medina, who pointed out that the SRO pilot program was approved without his vote, asks his proponents one question: "What does getting rid of me actually accomplish?“

You can reach Staff Writer Alana Minkler at 707-526-8531 or alana.minkler@pressdemocrat.com. On X (Twitter) @alana_minkler.