By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO –Shana Hazan says her experiences working for Jewish Family Service, such as devising and shaping a program to feed the hungry that was staffed largely by teen volunteers, helped inform the decisions she now makes as one of the five trustees of the San Diego Unified School District.
Having worked in a variety of capacities at JFS between 2008 and her election to the school board in November 2022, Hazan said she “came to understand the interconnected things that children and families need to survive. It’s not just one thing. If you are struggling with, say, food, that is probably not the only problem that you are struggling with. There may be issues with employment. There may be a variety of other things that are getting in the way of a child’s or a family’s success.”
As a school board member, she said, she must keep in mind that “most of our children exist within families with working parents. For parents to be able to work, they need to have access to high-quality after-school programs.”
During her watch, San Diego Unified inaugurated a free “Prime Time” supplemental school program for students in kindergarten through 8th grade. The program became so popular that it quickly had a waiting list of 5,000 children. That list has been whittled down to 1,000 for the upcoming school year, and “we are working hard to eliminate that wait list altogether,” according to Hazan.
Last year, there were 117 schools participating in the program, serving 8,329 students. This year 125 schools will serve 9,799 students. Hazan said. Not only are there more schools participating, but the number of slots per school has been increased.
Activities in the “Prime Time” hours include homework tutoring; English language arts; social emotional learning programs; opportunities in science, technology, English, art, and math (STEAM); yoga and soccer; and youth leadership programming.
When children can spend safe, productive time before and after school, “it means more families can work, more families can become economically self-sufficient,” Hazan said. “So, it really is a win-win for kids and our families. For me, that is one of the big successes of these last six months. I think we are going to see the results in terms of student success academically but also socially-emotionally.”
Hazan said “when you think about the fact that we had 5,000 students on the wait list, what were they doing instead? Likely they were playing at home, without access to the supervision or activities that they needed. Now these 5,000 students have a much better alternative. I’m really excited about that.”
“One of the other successes I am excited about is increasing early learning by increasing access to full-day school for 4-year-olds,” Hazan said. “San Diego Unified has really led the state in making universal transitional kindergarten available to all 4-year-olds.” In the school year beginning on Monday, August 21, “we will have close to 5,000 4-year-olds who we are educating and providing with full-day instruction and access to after-school care.”
Prior to being on the school board, Hazan served on California’s First Five Commission, which focuses on the needs of children from birth through 5 years old. “We know that learning readiness and providing access to high-quality, early-learning opportunities can be really transformative in terms of long-term outcomes for students,” she said.
Her former employer, JFS, operates a “Hand Up” food pantry which is available to people of all faiths who are experiencing hunger. While at JFS, Hazan said, she “recognized that there was an opportunity to engage high school students volunteering in the food pantry, but even more, really understanding the issue of hunger, teaching the students about the value of giving back and contributing to their community – the idea of tikkun olam. Because I believe in the power of public policy, I engaged students in advocacy work, taking students to Sacramento, and grew those programs from one just focused on anti-hunger work to a program specifically designed for young women and other programs as well.”
“I learned a lot about the needs of high school students by working with that population, but really more than that, learned about the fact that teenagers are ready to lead,” Hazan said. “Often, we describe them as the ‘leaders of tomorrow,’ and what I saw in that role is that they can lead today. That was an important lesson for me, and it was something that I brought with me to this role on the school board.”
“One of the things we measured in that program at JFS was self-efficacy,” Hazan added. “As a result of that program, the students who participate have an increased sense of what it takes to create change in their world. That is something all these years later, while I’m on the school board, that we are thinking about. What are the student outcomes that we want to measure? Of course, we want to make sure that students can read and write and do math but what else do we want to know? What else do we want for them? One of the things that I hear about is self-advocacy, the ability to problem solve, and to have the confidence to know that they can solve hard problems that may come their way.”
Hazan said that “as I grew through my work at JFS, I ended up as the chief philanthropy officer there, overseeing individual and institutional giving, government contracts and partnerships.”
That experience influenced her view that “if we want to transform outcomes for students, San Diego Unified can’t do it alone. We have to collaborate with communities, with partners, with outside organizations both public and private to empower our students to be the leaders of today and tomorrow to really succeed.”
In our interview, we also covered such topics as school security, bullying, and ethnic studies.
“For me, as a mom of two students (in kindergarten and fifth grade) in the district, security is a top priority and for our entire board,” Hazan said. “If we can’t keep students safe nothing else that we do matters. … Thanks to the support of voters on our recent bond measures, we have been able to invest in improving the physical security of our campuses. San Diego Unified spends about $1 million per day in construction, retrofitting campuses and building new ones. It is through that work we are able to build perimeter fencing, single points of entry, and install cameras at all schools. … We also ensure that all schools have emergency plans and that educators and parents are trained. We have our own police department that heads up the effort to make sure that each of our sites has the information they need to be able to respond.”
Additionally, she said, “we take seriously our responsibility in educating parents about locking up firearms if they have them, and the importance of gun safety. We do that by sending out information to all of our families on a regular basis.” Safety drills on campuses are carefully constructed so as not “to inadvertently traumatize students when the point is to keep them safe,” she said. “The reality is that we are coming at this from all angles by making sure that our campuses, our physical spaces, are safe and that the parents, students, and educators are trained and empowered with information that should something happen, they know what to do.”
Concerning bullying, “this is something that as a mom, I am very attuned to,” Hazan said. “Bullies affect all students. Irrespective of a student’s background, or gender identity, or age, we see that bullying does happen in many schools.” Before Hazan was elected, the school board adopted a policy of “restorative practices” by which schools don’t simply punish bullies or disruptive students but seek to counsel the offenders and find out the reasons why they are acting out. Hazan said, “while the intentions of the policy are very good, and the theory behind the policy is very good, implementation has been inconsistent because it requires a lot of support and training of educators and principals to make sure that these practices in building a supportive, inclusive type of culture happens across our entire district. That requires a lot of work and resources that we haven’t yet invested. I and others are worried because we all believe it is important, and we stand behind this policy that we adopted, but it is clear that we have fallen short on implementation.”
Addressing specifically the possible bullying of Jewish students, Hazan noted that she introduced a Jewish American Heritage Month resolution that was adopted unanimously by the trustees. She described the resolution as a “first step” toward recognizing “the experiences of our Jewish community and the contributions of our Jewish community so that students and families don’t think it is okay to minimize those experiences.”
Our conversation turned to California’s requirement that prior to high school graduation, students take an ethnic studies course. Groups like the AMCHA Initiative have expressed concern that some school districts up and down the state are adopting an anti-Israel, even antisemitic version of ethnic studies being pushed by pro-Palestinian groups.
“The state requires students to meet ethnic studies requirements and to take a course that counts toward ethnic studies,” Hazan responded. The students can either take a course specifically titled ethnic studies or “it may be a history, social studies, or English class that meets an ethnic studies requirement. We do all those things. We are continuing to develop new ethnic studies courses and I don’t have concerns about any of those courses being antisemitic in nature. They raise awareness about the community, really recognizing communities that have been marginalized. … I feel good about the work that we are doing in San Diego Unified.”
Up the road in Temecula, in Riverside County, the school board has been fighting over whether the name of Jewish gay rights leader Harvey Milk should be mentioned in textbooks. In other school districts, there are angry meetings about which bathrooms transsexual students should use. “These things are distractions from what we are elected to do, which is to educate students,” Hazan declared. “I haven’t seen it at San Diego Unified. The decisions and values of our community inform the work we do, and our community values inclusion and diversity. So, we are able to concentrate on increasing education for 4-year-olds, or expanding “Prime Time” after-school hours, or focusing on meaningful graduation requirements.”
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Donald H. Harrison is editor emeritus of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com
Inspiring read on the power of community and education. Thank you for sharing it!