I am posting this review to make families aware of what happened to my sister at George Washington…read moreHigh School.
My sister who is African American was suspended for two days after a verbal incident involving profanity. I am not excusing the language she used. What I am challenging is that the school broke California education law, violated SFUSD's mandatory suspension procedures, and violated her constitutional due-process rights by falsely escalating the incident into "Battery" and "Threats" and immediately suspending her.
The school's report did not describe her hitting, pushing, grabbing, striking, kicking, spitting on, or physically touching the principal. She did not touch him. Yet the school marked Battery.
California Education Code §48900(a)(2) concerns willful force or violence against another person. That did not happen. The school also marked Threats, but §48900(a)(1) concerns causing, attempting to cause, or threatening to cause physical injury. The report did not include a threat by my sister to physically injure the principal.
SFUSD's discipline rules say suspension is generally a last resort. Outside limited serious first-offense situations, the school must exhaust and document mandatory interventions before suspending a student. SFUSD also requires additional review before suspending an African American student to confirm required interventions were exhausted.
Those intervention steps were not exhausted before my sister was immediately suspended. The school violated its mandatory disciplinary procedures by suspending her without that required intervention process.
During my mother's meeting with the school, she asked why Battery and Threats were marked. A staff member responded that "this is what she had to mark it as in Synergy."
Battery, threats of physical injury, profanity, and defiance are separate categories. A school database does not justify entering a more serious offense than what occurred.
We were also told that during the incident the principal repeatedly spoke to my sister in an escalating tone, saying "I'm going to write that down" and "I'm going to write that down too," instead of de-escalating the situation.
This was not the first concerning interaction with school staff. Earlier in the school year, Paulina Revero removed my sister from the school and told her she did not attend there. That was false. She did this without checking the enrollment system, and the principal later confirmed that my sister was enrolled.
There is also a serious racial-discrimination concern. During the meeting about my sister's suspension, my mother heard an Asian student in the school office say "fuck that shit," and that student remained on school grounds. Meanwhile, my sister, who is African American, had already been immediately suspended after profanity was escalated into unsupported Battery and Threat classifications.
We are alleging racially disparate discipline and asking SFUSD to investigate whether race influenced the harsher treatment.
The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits intentional race-based unequal treatment by government officials. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. §2000d, prohibits race, color, or national-origin discrimination in federally funded educational programs.
Her constitutional due-process rights were also violated. In Goss v. Lopez, 419 U.S. 565 (1975), the U.S. Supreme Court held that public-school students facing suspension are protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Students must receive notice of the charges, an explanation of the evidence when charges are disputed, and an opportunity to present their side.
In my sister's case, the school created a record accusing her of physical violence and threats that its own written narrative did not establish, bypassed the mandatory intervention process, and removed her from school. We are formally challenging this as an unlawful suspension and a violation of her Fourteenth Amendment due-process rights.
We are demanding that SFUSD remove the suspension and false Battery/Threat classifications, preserve and review camera footage and the Synergy audit history, investigate why interventions were skipped, and investigate whether she was targeted or disciplined more harshly because she is African American.
Parents should check the exact Education Code, compare it with the written narrative, ask who entered the codes into Synergy, ask what interventions were completed, and request preservation of camera footage.
A student can be held accountable for inappropriate language without school officials falsely turning profanity into Battery, bypassing California-mandated discipline procedures, and violating that student's constitutional rights.
This is a serious matter involving California Education Code, SFUSD's mandatory discipline rules, the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses, and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
