True Leadership, SD County DA Summer Stephan
San Diego District Attorney Summer Stephan made her video remarks this week on behalf of half a million school children in San Diego County. We are so grateful for her honest and clear description of the irreparable harm being done to students from long term school closures. These facts are not being shared widely enough in the media. DA Stephan’s leadership is a rare example among our elected leaders who are advocating for our children.
“The pandemic of the health and safety of our kids needs to come back to being a priority.
We can not talk keep talking about kids being our future and then not giving them every chance that they deserve to have that future
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has had a 90% uptick since schools and sports and other safety nets for kids have been shut down. In one month normally you’d get one million reports. There are now 4 million reports monthly. Kids harmed. Kids missing.
In San Diego county we have an Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force - numbers have doubled, tripled or quadrupled in some months. In December we normally have 197 reports. We had 601 reports this year. In April normally 287, this April 854 reports. these are reports of children being exploited and harmed.
Our human trafficking task force has seen an increase in sex trafficking of young girls. Our gang unit is seeing a double number of homicides. We are the safest urban county in America because of in combination with our community, our schools are always fighting to keep our kids safe.
Rady’s Children’s Hospital - suicide ideations are skyrocketing, child abuse reports, depression is skyrocketing.
This is another pandemic that is going to last generations if we don’t focus on this second pandemic, which is what is happening to our children. We know from study after study that adverse childhood experiences last a lifetime.
Governments job is to do no harm.
We need to weigh the harm of the coronavirus pandemic against the other harm that is being done to our children. When you look at two credible reports from the CDC in January of this year that transmissions from schools and school based activities are actually 37% lower than those from other transmissions in the community and when you read the medical report from JAMA that also says and cooperates these facts, this needs to be a priority. to come to the table and look at how we reduce this harm to our kids.
We talk about educational Equity. Well I have news for you, the the kids who don’t have parents sit next to them, the kids whose parents have to work on the front lines, the kids who can’t afford tutors, they are being lost. We cannot in all honesty talk about educational equity or racial justice when we are not paying attention to our kids.”