The Oracle- Early March 2017

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Palo Alto Unified School District Henry M. Gunn High School 780 Arastradero Rd Palo Alto, CA 94306

Teachers share past athletic and sport experiences

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THEORACLE Henry M. Gunn High School

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Friday, March 3, 2017 Volume 54, Issue 6

780 Arastradero Road, Palo Alto, CA 94306

AB 165: STATE ASSEMBLY BILL PROPOSES WARRANTLESS SEARCHES OF STUDENTS Evalyn Li and Andrew Zhao Reporters Proposed by Assistant Majority Leader Jim Cooper of District 9, California State Assembly Bill 165 (AB 165) would exempt local educational agencies from the two-year-old California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (CalECPA). CalECPA says government entities must have a search warrant to access information from electronic devices. AB 165 would allow school districts to access students’ electronics without search warrants; the school could tap into a student’s phone calls and web browsing without warning. According to Palo Alto Unified School District’s (PAUSD) Communications and Community Engagement Officer Jorge Quintana, the school district adheres to state law and also protects the privacy of its students, parents and employees. “The school district would exercise the power under this law for the safety of its students,” Quintana wrote in an email. “PAUSD administrators can and will search an electronic device during an investigation when there is reasonable belief that a student is not safe in cases such as bullying, cyberbullying, inappropriate content, harassment, etc.” Gunn’s School Resource Officer Brad Young believes that this legislation is meant to protect students from threats such as cyberbullying. “Admin search[es] students and their property to prevent incidents,” he said. Young also noted that without ability to intercept a student’s communications, perpetrators of these threats can slip away undetected. “If we can’t stop them now, there’s nothing that prevents them from starting all over again,” he said. To facilitate this change, Young suggests that people ask questions and have open discussion about these proposed rules. Cooper’s legislative aide Tempestt Edward framed AB 165 as a return to the time before the CalECPA in which teachers and administers could more easily discipline students without involving law enforcement. “Before CalECPA, if there

was some issue going on at school, say, cyberbullying, if a teacher had reasonable suspicion, they were able to take the phone to see what was going on,” she said. “Since CalECPA was passed into law two years ago, it [became] unclear if schools are able to obtain a student’s phone for discipline purposes.” Edward says teachers and administrators act in loco parentis, or in the place of the parent on school grounds. “Teachers can’t get search warrants so that’s why they’d have the reasonable suspicion standard in order to take the phone,” she said. “There are instances in which the crimes are not criminal, like school cheating.” The bill was proposed in January, and its expected time in the legislative process, including going through the Committee of Privacy and Consumer Protection, will last until September 2017. “There’s still talks about amendments,” Edward said. “We haven’t decided anything yet, but that has been raised and we’ll definitely get into that to make it clear what school administrators can and can’t do.” Assembly Member Marc Berman of District 24, which includes Palo Alto, says that due to over 1,000 bills having been introduced in the last three weeks, he has yet to carefully look into AB 165, but has read the fact sheet provided by Cooper’s office. “I don’t jump to conclusions quickly about a lot of these bills because a lot of the times there needs to be conversation, and the details are not necessarily all available up front about what is the

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Graphics by Cheryl Kao and Elizabeth Zu

Santa Clara County sues federal government over funding Grace Ding and Jennifer Gao Sports Editor and Reporter

On Friday, Feb. 3, Santa Clara County filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump and his administration for his executive order that withholds funding from “sanctuary jurisdictions” that fail to comply with the deportation of immigrants. According to Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors member Joe Simitian, the county could lose anywhere from $300 million to $1.5 billion in federal funds, depending on how the order is implemented. Executive Order 13768, “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior United States,” was released on Jan. 25 and requires states, cities, counties and local governments to cooperate with the administration, federal security agencies and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials or

otherwise be stripped of all federal funds. On Jan. 31, the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to bring suit against the administration. The lawsuit is consequently being filed by the Office of the County Counsel with pro-bono help from the law firm Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP located in San Francisco. According to County Counsel James Williams, one of the grounds of the challenge is an improper assertion of presidential power. “The issue which threatens to strip all federal funding from local governments is an improper attempt by the president to use Congress spending authority,” Williams said. “Under the U.S. Constitution, even Congress can’t withhold all federal funding to try and coerce local governments to sign up for certain federal programs. Certainly the president, who doesn’t even have spending power, most definitely doesn’t have that authority.”

The county asserts that it is illegal for the federal government to withhold funds to which residents are entitled to. “The question is whether or not it’s appropriate for the Trump administration to withhold federal funds as a way to punish individual counties or cities for declining to cooperate with the administration on immigration matters,” Simitian wrote in an email. “Our position is that the withholding of federal funds, which are taxpayer dollars, in wholly unrelated areas, is not permitted by law.” Another cause of action, according to Williams, relates to the vagueness of the order and the lack of clarity surrounding the definition of sanctuary jurisdictions; it is unclear how they would be recognized and how federal funds would be revoked. “The executive order doesn’t follow any of the normal protocols related to administrative FUNDING—p.2


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