The alleged police brutality toward high school students on the SF State campus has raised many questions as to the nature and students of June Jordan School for Equity (JJSE).

The school began when four teachers from Balboa High School in San Francisco’s Excelsior District, after teaching in overcrowded schools for so long, decided to create their own smaller high school. After three years of planning and organization, the JJSE began and is currently finishing its first and last school year here at SF State.

The high school uses six rooms in Burk Hall for its office and classrooms. Not only does SF State house the school, but the JJSE also has a partnership with the SF State College of Education.

The JJSE is the first high school to open in partnership with the California State University. Although they are working with the CSU, the school is still supported, managed and funded by the San Francisco Unified School District

This CSU partnership permits the students to use campus resources such as the library and labs. Once students are seniors, they will have the option of enrolling in university classes. All students will be guaranteed admission to SF State upon graduation.

“The partnership with SF State is wonderful,” said JJSE co-founder Kate Goka. “Students get to find out what a university is all about.”

The high school’s presence on campus has caused tension between the high school and campus police. In addition to 16 complaints against the JJSE students since the beginning of the year, on April 26, a physical altercation between an SF State policeman and a JJSE male student ended in turmoil, stirring much debate. The student was cited on suspicion of resisting arrest and battery against a police officer, though the charges have since been dropped. The officer is currently being investigated for misconduct.

The incident sparked a protest against police brutality organized by the Afrikan Black Historical Commemoration Committee. The JJSE also held a speak-out at Jack Adams Hall in which students, staff and parents voiced their opinions.

According to the SF State Department of Public Safety, a majority of the 16 other complaints resulted from fights between students, noise disturbances and possible theft. Students were also reprimanded for throwing a chair down a stairwell and playing “wheelchair basketball” with an SF State faculty member’s wheelchair.

While these events may seem out of place on a college campus, the June Jordan teaching staff stressed in a recent letter to Xpress that these “students are ninth graders and like all adolescents, occasionally struggle with bad behavior.”

“If you show this list to any high school principal, I’m sure they will say this is typical behavior for teenagers. Because this is a college campus, their actions get magnified,” said Christina Holmes, interim director of public affairs at SF State.

Next year, the June Jordan School will be moving off the SF State campus to a San Francisco middle school. This move has no relation to the conflict between students and police and SF State staff. It is simply a matter of space, said Goka.

Other than the relocation, SF State’s agreement with JJSE will remain the same. “We’ll still keep the partnership we have with SF State,” said Maricela Medina, the office manager at JJSE.

As this is the first year of the JJSE there are currently only ninth graders enrolled. Next year, a new group of freshman will begin -- and so on, until there are ninth through twelfth graders.

Although the JJSE is open to any ninth grader in the San Francisco area, most of the students enrolled this year are from Excelsior, Hunters Point, Bay View and other southeast districts of San Francisco.

“We (JJSE) did do recruitment in what we felt were under-performing middle schools. We felt that the children deserve a chance at a good education but our student body is very diverse. We bring a lot of different students together,” said Matt Alexander, another JJSE co-founder and teacher.

With only 94 students and seven teachers, JJSE is a small school, but size is not the only aspect setting it apart from other public high schools.

JJSE teachers take an interactive approach to learning. If you step into Goka’s Japanese language class, you may see the books closed while students throw a “sqwoosh ball” to one another asking the question, “Who do you love?” in Japanese.

Although Goka will admit that there has been “a lot of negative interaction between students and SF State students and staff, ” she still emphasizes the importance of community to her students.

“We teach community values. We want our students to feel that they are a part of a community and a part of the larger community,” said Goka.

The students have a lot of initiative and are eager to learn, said Yang.

“They (the students) decided that they need a yearbook, so they created a yearbook club. The students have also created anime and journalism clubs. In fact, they organized and put together a talent show because they wanted it,” said Yang.

The JJSE is one of many new “small schools” popping up around the United States, located on college campuses, in community buildings and in high schools broken into smaller schools.

“In larger schools it is easy for kids to fall through the cracks. I saw so many incredibly brilliant students that had not been prepared to go to college drop out of high school,” said Goka.

The main goal of JJSE is to prepare their students for college. According to Goka, almost 90 percent of small school students make it to college.

“We have a close-knit small environment designed to push kids to do well and to get into college,” said Goka.

Each class in the JJSE has about 20 students compared to the 30 or more students that fill an average public high school classroom.

Research has shown that in schools where teachers know their students, the number of discipline problems goes down and attendance goes up, according to the www.smallschoolsproject.org.

Sharon Gamble, a JJSE parent, enrolled her child at June Jordan because the small class size was attractive to her.

“I like how much attention the teachers are able to give the students,” said Gamble.

If Yang could say anything to the SF State community, it would be to not write off the kids because of the recent turmoil surrounding them.

“We have a lot of incredible students, but they are misunderstood sometimes. All they ask is for a chance to show what they’ve got,” she said.