SECTION 1.
The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:(a) All pupils in public primary, elementary, middle, junior high, and senior high schools have the inalienable right to attend school at school campuses that are safe, secure, and peaceful.
(b) Pursuant to subdivision (b) of Section 201 of the Education Code, public schools in California have an affirmative obligation to combat racism, sexism, and other forms of bias, and a responsibility to provide equal educational opportunity.
(c) The California Student Safety and Violence Prevention Act of 2000 reaffirmed the right of all pupils to a safe school
environment by prohibiting a person from being subjected to discrimination on the basis of sex, ethnic group identification, race, national origin, religion, color, mental or physical disability, or an actual or perceived characteristic that is contained in the definition of hate crimes set forth in Section 422.55 of the Penal Code in a program or activity conducted by an educational institution that receives, or benefits from, state financial assistance or enrolls pupils who receive state student financial aid.
(d) Hate-motivated incidents jeopardize the safety and well-being of all pupils because they target not only the individual victim, but everyone who shares the identity that motivated the particular incident. Unfortunately, there have been increasing reports of hate-motivated incidents and crimes in California schools.
(e) (1) Numerous studies point
to an ongoing problem of discrimination, harassment, and violence in schools that has severe consequences for pupils. For example, the 2004–06 California Healthy Kids Survey results found that between 27 to 30 percent of California middle and high school pupils reported experiencing bias-related harassment at school related to their race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or disability.
(2) Many school districts are not effectively addressing discrimination and harassment on campus. Less than half of grade 9 pupils express feeling safe at school, while 46 percent of pupils said their schools were not safe for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) pupils.
(3) Many teachers have not received training to prevent or respond to illegal discrimination and harassment. A majority of
school districts do not require training on how to address discrimination and harassment based on sexual orientation for their elementary, middle, or high school teachers.
(4) Many pupils and parents are unaware of nondiscrimination policies, with 23 percent of pupils and 29 percent of parents not being informed of the policies.
(f) In a public hearing conducted on October 3, 2002, by the California Senate Select Committee on School Safety, pupils, teachers, parents, researchers, and advocates from all over the state testified about incidents of ongoing discrimination and harassment and an inadequate response from school authorities.
(g) Bias‑related discrimination and harassment have negative consequences for pupil health, well‑being, and academic success. For example, the Safe Place to
Learn report issued by the California Safe Schools Coalition and the 4‑H Center for Youth Development at the Davis campus of the University of California found that pupils who are harassed based on actual or perceived sexual orientation are at least three times more likely to carry a weapon to school, to seriously consider suicide, to make a plan for attempting suicide, or to miss at least one day of school per 30 schooldays because they do not feel safe. In addition, a survey of San Francisco Asian American youth found that 36 percent cited racial tension as the primary cause for fights on campus.
(h) A number of school districts have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages to settle lawsuits by pupils claiming their schools failed to protect them from harassment, intimidation, and violence, including a June 2005 jury award of three hundred thousand dollars ($300,000) in San Diego to two former high school pupils for the harassment
they received at school based on their actual or perceived sexual orientation and a January 2007 settlement of forty-five thousand dollars ($45,000) in a Contra Costa County lawsuit alleging that school officials failed to protect a pupil from repeated attacks motivated by racial and ethnic prejudice.