Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. It's Julia Rose Polk, licensed marriage and family therapist, trauma trainer, educator, specialist, and here supporting and working with all of you in bringing trauma-informed care practices into your schools and into your learning environments. Today, I want to talk about setting precedent as a trauma-informed institution, what that really means. And to start this conversation off, I'm actually going to
take us back to 2015. In this year, there was actually a first of its kind class action lawsuit. That occurred. It was brought by students and teachers of the Compton Unified School District. And this class action lawsuit was called Peter P versus Compton Unified. And this class action was essentially arguing that the effects of trauma on the brain and the body fell under the qualification of a disability in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act idea, as most. you would know it.
And so they were arguing that because trauma fell under this definition of a disability, it required the same level of support and protections under the law within educational and learning environments. My sister-in-law at the time, Annie Hudson-Price, she's a lawyer herself, and she was working for public counsel who brought this suit with the plaintiffs. I always have to make
sure I'm saying the right language. No matter how many episodes of Law and Order or any legal dramas I watch, I'm always like, is it the plaintiff or to the defendant?Anyway, so public counsel helped the plaintiffs bring this class action suit. And public counsel is actually known for what's called impact litigation, meaning they are strategically working on cases that they are utilizing to have an impact, really kind of like make
a statement. I don't know if they would describe it this way, but from the outset looking in. Really looking at litigation that can push communities and the public forward. And so as you can see by the nature of Peter PV Compton Unified, which is what this was called, they're really pushing the boundaries of what is defined as disability under the law and how we can creatively use the law to meet the needs of students who've experienced trauma. So and often what they're doing because they're
pushing the. boundary, because they're kind of testing the limits of what is publicly and communally accepted under the law, they often find themselves setting what's called a precedent, a legal precedent. So if you've ever watched any of these crime or legal dramas, setting a precedent means that, like like you'll see in those shows or films,How they reference other cases historically to support whatever argument they're bringing in court that day.
You'll see this when you watch any of the Supreme Court arguments, or if you're ever this is just what is done is like, well, in Peter P V Compton Unified, this was established as the law. This is how the law was interpreted. So setting precedent really means you're creating a standard that can be used over and over and over again as an example of how the law can be interpreted and utilized. So it's a really big deal. And what this case did is the plaintiffs bringing the case and public
counsel bringing the case. Again, my sister-in-law, Annie, shout out to her. She was working on this case at the time and what they were arguing as part of this case was essentially that. Under the law, students were entitled to very certain protections and services under the law, and so there were three tiers to what they were arguing that students deserved. Tier one was students who had been traumatized were entitled to receive their education in a school where the staff was trained in
trauma-informed care. Tier one was that a school would have ongoing staff training around trauma-informed care at their school as a way of supporting these students. Tier 2 was that. the school would provide consistent mental health supports to meet their students' needs. And so, this could be a counselor on site. This could be creating a partnership with a local agency that provided low or no cost mental health services to the
community. I've actually worked with schools who found different ways of kind of fulfilling that particular tier. And Tier 3 would be creating school discipline practices that focus both on Prevention and also accountability a lot of times schools. disciplinary approaches kind of just use and utilize punitive tactics, which actually don't focus on prevention or accountability necessarily. You can punish someone and not help them be
accountable in any way whatsoever. So what I love about Tier 3-2 is the idea of both working on prevention, so both working on the front end, and then because we're human and because humans, you know, mess up, and that includes Teachers and children and all involved and administrators and families. I love how they incorporated also focusing on accountability as a way of supporting trauma-informed care because that's accountability is fundamentally A
relational tool. It says when I understand that I have harmed you, when I have harmed you, I show up however I can to making that better. And that goes not just from child to adult. but adult to child. And that is one of the really beautiful practices that comes
through trauma-informed care. So these are the three pillars that they argued were three, yeah, three tiers, three pillars, three prongs of what they argued that the students and teachers deserved as members of a school district wereI think it was about like 25% of Compton Unified students had experienced at least two what they were calling severe traumas. The language we use to describe trauma is that's a whole
other thing. But they were communicating that this was like a very high acuity population of students that were exposed to acute and chronic stressors. And they, the way this ended up playing out is that the Compton Unified versus Peter P case, they ended up settling out of court, but not before
they actually set precedent. So what that means is that class action suits can be brought like this around the country, and now they can refer to Peter P versus Compton Unified to argue their case and say, like, look at this precedent. So it's really interesting. I
think it's a powerfulImportant start. So if we did nothing but these three tiers, we would have a huge undertaking in and of itself, providing ongoing trauma informed training, providing consistent mental health support to meet student needs. And creating school discipline practices that focus on prevention as well as accountability. That in and of itself is such an important undertaking that to really integrate
into schools. Is very much a multi year process and when I work with the schools that is something I try to be really clear about. This isn't a great. We took that training, we're trauma informed now, great. We understand the correlation to the school to prison pipeline and early dropout rates and low test scores and behavioral. We understand that, OK, we're
done. No, it takes. It takes a while to both take in the information about trauma in general, but then to allow that information to evolve how the school operates. So what I want to know for all of you who are listening is. Where are you in terms of setting your own precedent with your school in trauma-informed care?Have you established any of these tiers?Have you experienced or brought forth ongoing trauma-informed care training for your
staff?Have you established core and consistent mental health supports to meet your students needs? um Have you developed these disciplinary practices that, again, focus on prevention and accountability? What does that look like?And if if you have any of these, what I would love you to do is head on over to Instagram. You can find me at Trauma Camp for Teachers. And I would love you to send me a DM. It can be either a written, this is me writing on Instagram.
If you could see, it looks like I'm playing a video game, but this is how we text. You can either send me a written text, you can send me a voice note, you can send me a little video, but I would love to hear where are you in your schools in terms of school or district, in terms of integrating all of these three tiers. And because I want to be hearing from you, I know there are so many of you who are just like hardcoreWe are so deeply committed to this. It's not a question.
And so you might be further along than, say, the folks who are just kind of getting the memo about how important this is, what the bigger integration process looks like. So I'd love to hear from you where you're at. And yeah, that's it for this episode. Thanks for tuning in and I will see you next week. Bye for now.