LA Unified’s BSAP: A Tide to Lift All Boats
Resource Fair at Dana Middle School to Feature Jobs Training, Mental Health
On April 2, there will be a resource fair hosted at Richard Henry Dana Middle School, hosted by that campus’ Black Student Union Center which houses the Black Student Achievement Plan program. The fair is intended to connect students and their families to needed resources addressing job training and food insecurity, but primarily mental health services. Essentially, this fair is intended to address issues affecting the student’s home life, and not just the student.
“We want to get the parents something, we want to get the kids something, and at the same time,” explained Gregory Sims, the school climate advisor. He creates a rapport with students, helping inspire them to reach academic and personal goals.
To Sims, the objective of the resource fair was to help the students’ home life. He noted that a lot of resources and money are directed at the student via school and after-school programs, but if the students’ family struggles are front and center every time they go home, those resources are rendered ineffective.
“If the parents at home are still struggling, it’s kind of hard to really change the environment for the student because he has to go back to that,” Sims said. “So we have resources for the student, [and] we have resources for the parents.”
Sims was particularly happy with the Port of Los Angeles which will have a booth at the fair, especially after announcing this past January it was building a Goods Movement Training Campus. In a released statement, Port Executive Director Gene Seroka said the campus will train those with the aptitude to work in a fully automated goods movement future and retrain the current workforce by seniority.
Assistant Principal Jewel Brown says this will be the first time the nearly century-old middle school has hosted a fair of this kind.
Brown explained that the resource fair is intended to shed light on mental health, which she believes is impacting students more than it’s credited for.
“We’re not having enough conversations about the mental health of kids and we’re addressing it,” Brown said. “Like in the Olympics with Simone Biles and other athletes coming out and being honest about [their struggles].”
Brown, who is in her sixth year as one of Dana Middle School’s assistant principals, explained that the fair is also intended to open its doors to the community to be more
effective in serving students.
“Some of the things like fights or issues of racial transgressions or homelessness or whatever it is, we have to partner with our community,” Brown said. “If we [are] ever really going to address it, eradicate it, or fix it now, so many people have to be involved.”
After two years, Los Angeles Unified School District has had to find ways to educate students outside of the classroom while adjusting to changing realities following the 2020 racial justice demonstrations, this resource fair represents a coming-out party of policies directed at longstanding education deficits.
Since Brown v. Board of Education, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared that segregated schools were unconstitutional, Black students as a demographic have lagged behind nearly every demographic, while being the leading demographic in school absenteeism, dropout rates and suspensions.
In the summer of 2020, Los Angeles Unified cut its police budget by $25 million and redirected that money toward the $36.5 million BSAP program.
The investment appears to be paying off dividends. ABC News ran a story about the successes at Dana this past December, even though at the time it was anecdotal.
BSAP at Dana
This marks the fourth year of Sims’ tenure at Dana Middle School. He started as an assistant teacher in the Special Education Department at Dana and assisted teachers in his department and classes in the rest of the school with class control. He served in the capacity of teacher/authority figure, at times counselor, or big brother as the situation required.
When the school district created BSAP, Sims became the school climate advocate — a role in which his job is to create rapport with students, while helping inspire them to reach academic and personal goals — a role he was already fulfilling but now given the space and resources to go further in this capacity.
Sims, in this capacity, provides socialemotional support for students, and the advocate’s training in conflict resolution helps stop disagreements early, thus reducing the frequency of traditional forms of discipline.
Sims began working at Dana during a period he says the middle school was regularly racked by student fights that are exacerbated by Black and Latino racial tensions.
“With me being the SCA, the school climate advocate, I actually can get with these students before they have these fights between friends, that kind of escalate,” Sims said. “The BSAP actually gave me [the time and space to build] more relationships and build more rapport with the students. So once I’ve done that, I could speak to both parties. So now on, you can talk to the Latino kids. You can talk to the Black kids and you can actually find that common ground. It has stopped the majority of our fights.”
Sims estimates that there were fights at least once a week, or three times a month when he first started working at Dana. Now, there are about two in a semester.
“The discipline rate has gone down. A lot of our kids are struggling with just reading and that’s some of the reasons why they were ditching. Getting to know them through the BSAP program, they can tell me that now. They feel comfortable saying, ‘Mr. Sims I don’t like doing this because I can’t really read,’ so we can give that student extra tutoring. So now they feel a little more comfortable and they’re trying.
“So those same problems where we were having them ditching, and fighting and escaping the work, now, they actually sit and try. So, discipline rates have gone down, grades and attendance have shot up. Referrals have [went] down.”
Sims was there when Dana Middle School still had a school police officer. The popular educator called the officer an “amazing and great guy,” but noted the officer had no rapport with the students. “As a matter of fact, when students see him, they automatically think, ‘Cop ... trouble ... get away,’” Sims said.
It was while reporters were interviewing students Sims saw the regard in which they held him.
“I heard kids say like they were giving an honest opinion on this, and it was my first time hearing it, ‘He’s like a father figure ... We can talk to him ...’” Sims said.
“It could be the uniform. It could be that I’m privy to do more and build that rapport. But it’s been a drastic change here at Dana.”
A Child of the LAUSD
Assistant principal Brown explained that the funding of BSAP was the result of the school district shifting funding from school policing to alternative methods of addressing classroom control, truancy, and on-campus fights. She explained that it was because of this shifting of resources that a budget was created to establish programs like BSAP.
“In light of like what had happened with George Floyd and what had happened with Breonna Taylor at some point, we have to stop saying that there wasn’t a problem and you have to start saying that one existed,” Brown explained.
But beyond identifying the problem, Brown explained, we also have to act on the problem.
Brown wasn’t simply referring to the racism in policing that contributed to the deaths of the abovementioned. She was also referring to the very real conditions related to Black underachievement in education — conditions caused by a variety of factors, including systemic racism, poverty, under-investment, and simply lack of specific data-driven targeting of areas of concern.
Brown explained that the district identified Black student populations where they exist in the district and scrutinized those populations through the district’s Whole Child Integrated Data system, which captures data on all student populations in the school district.
“In this particular area of San Pedro, we had more students of color at our school than the neighboring Middle School, Dodson,” Brown said. “That’s how the [school district] began to design this tier level of support. BSAP aimed to answer the question, ‘How do we reach that population of students?’”
Dana Middle School is identified as a Tier 1, with a total Black student population numbered 153 in a school of 1,500.
Brown, a product of the LAUSD, said she never had a place to belong as a student while growing up.
“You identify the individual teachers that you could connect with, but I never had a full staff that was dedicated to my success,” Brown said. “We’re here for the long haul and you have students.”
Referring to a student she encountered and provided a mask to on her way to the interview with Random Lengths, she discussed the encounter, explaining that if he had gone into class without a mask, he would have been sent to the administration’s office and his parents called to retrieve him, causing him to miss an entire day of school.
“I think our BSU and our BSAP program has allowed us to just develop relationships that were very different than probably the ones we were having before everything was on the surface. And now when you go through the BSAP process, I get to ask all those questions underneath that surface,” Brown explained.
The important part of the efforts of educators like Brown and Sims is that they look to collaborate with potential partners in the surrounding community like Robert Daniels, the founder of The Do Good Daniels Family Foundation. The nonprofit addresses food and housing insecurity by providing shelter for those in need.
“We brought in Mr. Daniels onto our team,” Brown said. “With each piece, we add to our group. It always elevates us and I think that that’s powerful and each member becomes a seamless component to our entire fabric.”
Daniels recently published a book, Breaking the Chains, a guide intended to help parents, parental figures, educators and teens build stronger bonds and lines of communication.
Daniels said he was impressed by the goals of the BSAP program and the work Sims and Brown have done so far. One of his four sons attends Dana.
“I wanted to know how my kid felt it. So when I talk to him, I learned that Mr. Sims was his world and Miss Brown was his world,” Daniels said. “For my kid to come back and tell me that, I’m just totally thankful for this program.”
From that day forward, Daniels aimed to engage other parents and see to it that the BSAP program has what it needs to be successful.
A part of that effort is programming like the April 2 resource fair.
“We want the community to come out,” Brown explained. “We always are looking at what has not been done and what ways of outreach or parent engagement have we not tapped into.”
Brown explained the fair began with a Donuts and Coffee With the Dads session as a way to engage fathers of students attending Dana. Like a squirrel to a nut, Brown says she aims to chase down any idea that will further parental involvement.
Sims noted that KJLH radio station and other guests will be in attendance at the fair.
Time: 9 a.m. to 1p.m., April 2
Location: Dana Middle School, 1501 S. Cabrillo Ave., San Pedro