Analyze

“SAUSD is committed to providing each of its students with a high-quality education, rigorous and advanced programs, and a nurturing, safe environment with state-of-the-art facilities, 21st century learning and technology, and a direct pathway to college upon graduation. Our district proudly boasts one of the highest graduation rates in the state of California.”

Vision Statement

We will work collaboratively and comprehensively with staff, parents, and the community to strengthen a learning environment focused on raising the achievement of all students and preparing them for success in college and career.

Mission Statement

We assure well-rounded learning experiences, which prepare our students for success in college and career. We engage, inspire, and challenge all of our students to become productive citizens, ethical leaders, and positive contributors to our community, country and a global society.

The majority of recent articles (as of February 2022) are about the impact of the Omicron surge on teacher and student absences and instruction. In general, I think it’s hard to tell how a school district is perceived through news coverage–I don’t think they reflect community opinion very well.

Article about the district missing paychecks at the beginning of this school year: https://abc7.com/santa-ana-missing-paychecks-sausd-stalled/11036323/

Potential changes to governance structure, including term limits:

https://voiceofoc.org/2021/10/ocs-second-largest-school-district-moves-to-reshape-voter-representation/

Various unions, including but not limited to:

• Santa Ana Educators Association
• California Teachers Association
• California Federation of Teachers
• Association of California School Administrators
• American FEderation of School Administrators

Community organizations:

• Santa Ana Public Schools Foundation

The annual operating budget for the district is about $710 million, plus $177 million in "other funds." This needs to be double-checked by someone who has a better understanding of budgets than I do--the 2021-22 budget also has a table that says that total expenditures are just over $1 billion.

California state funding makes up 79% of the budget and likely comes with less strings attached than in a more conservative state. California has a complicated Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) that makes it harder to separate state/local funding than in many other states--this is another thing I need to do more research on, I currently don't fully understand it. 85% of the district is low-income, so most (if not all) of the schools receive Title 1 funding from the federal government.

Enrollment has declined for the past 18 years and is projected to continue to decline, so funding is declining. COVID-19 has exacerbated the enrollment decline--the district has lost more than 5,000 students in two years. However, this was compensated for by increased federal funding. The last of that funding must be spent by 2024.

The school board is elected, so they are at least somewhat accountable to residents of Santa Ana (although the boundaries of SAUSD are not coterminous with the boundaries of the city of Santa Ana--need to look into how ballots are organized). School board meetings are televised and minutes are posted online, but only in English (45% of students are English language learners and far more than that do not speak English at home).

There are two resolutions posted on the district website stating that they do not assist immigration officials or allow them on SAUSD campuses.

The district emphasizes Family and Community Engagement as a practice, not a program. Part of this is the provision of Wellness Centers, which provide family events, classes on physical/mental health and academic support, and connections to other resources. There are also supposed to be FACE staff at every school, but many of the positions are empty. The website also has a resource newsletter, list of food resources, and a "resource support line" that seems to be available in both English and Spanish.

From the website:

Who is invited to engage with the Wellness Centers?

All families are invited to participate in the Wellness Centers. If you have a child in SAUSD, you are invited. And, if you do not have a child and are a community member, you are invited to participate, too! Remember, it takes a village.

This was representative of a general trend of making school facilities and resources available to all community members, not just students and families.

SAUSD has 5,000 total employees, including but not limited to: teachers, school administrators (principals), school staff (counselors, librarians, nurses, paraprofessionals, janitors, lunch attendants, etc.), and central administrative employees.

The district is led by a superintendent, an executive cabinet made up of deputy/assistant superintendents, and the school board. The district is also subject to some control by the Orange County Board of Education.

There is an assistant superintendent for Facilities and Governmental Relations who is likely one of the most relevant officials for environmental governance. The Facilities and Governmental Relations division is "responsible for the planning, construction, and maintenance of all schools and ancillary facilities within the Santa Ana Unified School District." They're responsible for the condition of school buildings and school grounds, but it's unclear if they have any control over environmental hazards outside of school grounds that affect the school. It's also unclear what the "governmental relations" part of the division does.

Schools are a key organization for environmental justice because they (can/should) provide students with the skills necessary to recognize and challenge environmental injustice when they see it. They can also serve as community hubs, contributing indirectly to environmental justice through the development of community social capital and political capacity.

According to this article by Nicole Westmen (2020), police violence has been tied to the development of numerous underlying conditions that increase the risk of complications from COVID-19. Furthermore, experiences of police brutality have been shown to foment distrust with other institutions, including medical institutions. As a result, contact tracers are experiencing resistance to divulging such important information as whether or not COVID-19 patients attended a protest and who they might have encountered there, for fear of retaliation.

From Roberto: I took the liberty of reaching out to the disaster research and practitioner community via the RADIX listserv to see what their thoughts are on the inclusion of war and terrorist attacks within the category of disasters. In my query, I specified that my interest was in the ways academics, and particularly anthropologists, thought about this issue in theoretical/analytical terms. I was hoping to make a clear distinction between the inclusion of war and attacks in policy, as that may follow more a vital systems security type of governmental justification, but it is interesting that, in their responses, the respondents moved back and forth between academic and governmental definitions of disasters. One comment was particularly insightful, bringing up alternative concepts other than disaster that may be more inclusive. People like Katiana Lementec, for example, has used the term "upheavals" to bring disaster scholarship and development induced disaster/displacement like the building of the Three Gorges Dam. One respondent brought up "complex emergencies," and we could also include "crisis" as one of the more inclusive terms, but these terms also bring with them the baggage of ignoring the historical political ecology or longue durée of catastrophes and reducing our focus to the immediate emergency. I asked those who replied if I could share their thoughts with the Disaster STS group and they agreed, so I copied and pasted their responses in the word document that is attached.

• Disaster governance -- and legitimation of particular modes of governance -- has been different in different historical periods and settings. Historian Michele Landis Dauber (year?), for example, describes how New Dealers had to frame the Great Depression as a disaster -- “afflicting citizens through no fault of their own” - in order to secure and legitimate federal aid to those in need. Focusing on more recent developments, John Hannigan, describes how “a humanitarian aid model for dealing with disasters became widely accepted in international affairs during the 1970s and 1980s; faltered in the 1990s; and is currently being challenged by a new approach to disaster management wherein risk management and insurance logic replace humanitarian concern as guiding principles” (2013, 1)" (quoted in Fortun et al. 2016) 

• While organized to address immediate needs, disaster response often lays ground for enduring structures of different kinds. A literally concrete example is how temporary housing for disaster survivors often becomes permanent housing, though under-designed for this. A more general examples is given by MIchale Landis Dauber in her description of the way federal aid to people in need during the Great Depression in the United States laid ground for a truncated and compromised form of the welfare state that we still live in -- turning on “suspicion that those in need are reasonable for their own deprivation.”