Report 2012-108 Recommendation 4 Responses

Report 2012-108: School Safety and Nondiscrimination Laws: Most Local Educational Agencies Do Not Evaluate the Effectiveness of Their Programs, and the State Should Exercise Stronger Leadership (Release Date: August 2013)

Recommendation #4 To: Los Angeles Unified School District

To ensure that it is effectively preventing and addressing incidents of discrimination, harassment, intimidation, and bullying in its schools, Los Angeles Unified should measure the effectiveness of its school safety programs at both the district and school site levels.

Annual Follow-Up Agency Response From November 2014

- The District submits Exhibit 3, the revised Bullying and Hazing Policy, to denote 30-day requirements for updates and 90-day requirements for determination of resolution.

- The District submits Exhibit 4, the completed analysis of the bullying prompts on the 2013/14 School Experience Survey. The School Experience Survey queries staff, students, and parents on numerous measures associated with school satisfaction and safety. The 2013/14 version added nine prompts related to bullying. A cluster analysis identifies the prompts that, when grouped, provide a score for a given variable. The data can be disaggregated to the individual school site to inform site administrators, ESC and central office as to the stakeholders' rating of the efficacy of their school's bullying prevention and intervention practices.

- The District submits Exhibit 5, signed copies of Administrators Certification Form of the Safe School Plan for the 2014/15 school year. School administrators electronically certify that they analyze and monitor the efficacy of their Safe School Programs.

- The District submits Exhibit 6, samples of the Bullying Complaint Log. The log is completed by the school site's Bullying Complaint Manager to monitor critical information (dates of report, closure, monitoring, notification to complainant).

- The District submits Exhibit 7, sample iSTAR incident reports, illustrating school compliance with investigating, documenting and resolving incidents of bullying.

California State Auditor's Assessment of Annual Follow-Up Status: Fully Implemented

1-Year Agency Response

- Has revised the Safe School Plan, Volume 1 for the 2014/15 school year to require that all reports of bullying are investigated and documented, and that appropriate interventions are implemented and monitored in a timely manner (Exhibits 2O and 2Ar).

- Has revised the Administrators Certification form of the Safe School Plan for the 2014/15 school year to require that school administrators certify that they analyze and monitor the efficacy of their Safe School Programs (Exhibit 2Br).

- Has drafted a revision of the Bullying and Hazing Policy to require that schools analyze and monitor the efficacy of their bullying prevention and intervention efforts (Exhibit 2Jr).

- The bullying section of the School Experience Survey of students, staff and parents was expanded to ten prompts (evidence provided at the 6-month submission). The analysis of the Survey will be released early Fall.

- Is continuing to use the bullying complaint log by the Bullying Complaint manager to maintain critical information (dates of report, closure, monitoring, notification to complainant) (provided at the 6-month submission).

- Has launched the MiSiS student data base which will provided greater detail about student-related behaviors. (Exhibit 2N).

California State Auditor's Assessment of 1-Year Status: Partially Implemented

Although Los Angeles Unified created tools to assist in measuring the effectiveness of its school safety programs at both the district and school site levels, it still needs to evaluate the information it obtains. Also, Los Angeles Unified did not respond to our request for additional information to substantiate its status of "fully implemented."

6-Month Agency Response

Is revising the Safe School Plan, Volume 1 for the 2014/15 school year to require a more comprehensive accounting of the schools efforts to monitor the effectiveness of their programs (Exhibit 2A).

Is revising the Administrators Certification form of the Safe School Plan for the 2014/15 school year to require that schools analyze and monitor the efficacy of their Safe School Programs (Exhibit 2B).

Has analyzed the 2012/13 School Experience Survey to gain baseline data for the effectiveness of bullying prevention and response programs (Exhibit 2C, School Experience Survey, School Climate Analysis 2012/13).

Has added seven (7) items to the 2013/14 School Experience Survey to gain a deeper understanding of how students, staff and parents view the extent of and their schools responsiveness to bullying. The survey is open for responses for approximately 6 weeks in the spring. We anticipate that this will give important assessment data to schools (Exhibit 2L, Revised Prompts for School Experience Survey, 2013/14).

Is revising the Bullying and Hazing Policy (Exhibit 2J) to

Provide specific guidance on monitoring and evaluation

Align with the revised Discipline Foundation Policys requirements for monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of the school safety programs (Exhibit 2I)

Create a bullying complaint log for the use by the Bullying Complaint Manager to maintain critical information (dates of report, closure, monitoring, and notification to complainant) (Exhibit 2K)

Require that incidents of bullying be dually entered into the appropriate searchable data bases (iSTAR or LAUSDMAX) (Exhibit 2J Bullying Complaint Log and Exhibit 2L Bullying Complaint Form)

California State Auditor's Assessment of 6-Month Status: Pending

60-Day Agency Response

Analyze the 2012/13 School Experience Survey to gain a baseline data for the effectiveness of bullying prevention and response programs

Revise the Bullying Complaint protocol to require that incidents of bullying are entered into searchable data bases (e.g., Excel, iSTAR, LAUSDMAX). The data will be reviewed regularly to determine the effectiveness of school safety programs to prevent and address bullying.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 60-Day Status: Pending

All Recommendations in 2012-108

Agency responses received are posted verbatim.