001Good evening and welcome to tonight's meeting of the board of education. The meeting is called to order at 400 pm in open session. Roll call, please. Student board member OSE, Miss Armstrong, present. Miss Centron, Mr. Critchfield, present. Mrs. Garza, Miss Stewart, present. Tonight, we do not have requests addressing close session agenda items. At this time, the board will recess to close session. Open session will resume at approximately 6 pm. Welcome back everyone. Tonight's meeting of the board of education was called to order at 400 p.m. in open session. The board then adjourned to close session at 4:01 p.m. and we will now reconvene the meeting in open session at 6:02 p.m. Board Clerk Critzfield will update us on close session topics. The topics discussed in close session were student matters, anticipated litigation, and labor negotiations.
002The board took no action in closed session. Thank you. All right. Tonight for our pledge of allegiance, we are going to call up and have executive director of classified personnel, Dr. Frankos, do our pledge of allegiance. Thank you so much and welcome. Good evening. Please stand. Face the flag. Place your hand right over your heart. Ready? Begin. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you so much. Um, do we have any replacement pages? Yes, we have a replacement page for item 16.1 and we are making one correction. We are pulling item 14.7 from the consent and that would be the amendments to the agenda. That is correct. Okay, awesome. All
003right, Miss Sedo, also do we have any recognitions tonight? I see we do. Welcome everybody. Yes, we do have recognition. So, if I can ask the board to come down from the dis and join us. I'm going to turn over our recognitions to Mrs. Carter. Good evening. The board of education is pleased to recognize the teams from our district for their outstanding achievement during their winter sports season. As I call your names, staff, students, please come forward and stay for a picture. First representing Mayfair Girls and Boys Wrestling, we welcome coaches Ibatala, Tony Nuin, and Juan Praau, along with the following students from the girls team: Hayden Yana Gasawa, Alyssa Parado, Carrington Mendes, Aaliyah Ash, and Raina Chavez. This season, many school records were broken. As I call your name, please step forward. Aaliyah Ash.
004She is league champ and sixth place at [Applause] CIF. Hayden Yanagasawa is league champ and second place at CIF. [Applause] Carrington Menddees, League Champ and second place at [Applause] CIF. Raina Chavez, League Champ, CIF champ, second place at Masters, and eighth place at state's national qualifier, Reno, Nevada. [Applause] Alyssa Praau, League Champ, CIF champ, Mast's champ, the first ever in school history for girls, and seventh place at state's national qualifier, Reno, [Applause] Nevada. We'd like to congratulate all of the girls for their incredible achievements. Great job. And coaches, great job as well. So go ahead. Let's give them another round of applause. Is there anyone in the audience that you'd like to recognize or anything you'd like to say? Thank you. Next, we're going to recognize Mayfair Boys Wrestling coaches for this team. Mayfair Boys
005Wrestling, Cadence Herell, Hawk Oliveres, Isaac Raman, Edgar Mora, Leo Guerrero, Turner Jana Gasawa, and Kaden Carti. [Applause] Mayfair Boys Wrestling had a phenomenal season, earning the title of Gateway League Champions and CIF Division One runnerup at St. John Bosow. This accomplishment makes Mayfair the top public school wrestling program in the CIF Southern Section. [Applause] As I call your name, they need to get their certificates. As I call your name, um, please step forward. Leo Guerrero, League Champ. Cadence Herrell, League Champ and sixth place at CIF. Hawk Alvarez, League Champ and fourth place at CIF. Isaac Roman, League Champ and fourth place at CIF. Edgar Mora, League Champ and third place at CIF. Turner Yanagasawa, League Champ, third place at CIF, fourth place at Masters. There's more. And state qualifier Kaden Carti, League Champ, third time
006CIF champ, Mast's champ, and fourth place at state national qualifier at Reno, Nevada. Congratulations to all of our boys wrestlers. Gentlemen, is there anything that you would like to say to the audience or anyone you'd like to recognize? [Applause] On uh behalf of the board, we are incredibly proud of all of our student athletes and coaches for their hard work, their commitment, and their excellence this season. Thank you for making our school community proud. Congratulations, Give it a second. Okay, moving along to our employee representative reports. Um, BTA does not have a report tonight. CSCA, will Anthony Ramirez, the communications officer, please come to the podium? Good timing, Anthony. You're up. Thank you for being here. Thank you for that. Sorry, we were solving a technical issue back there with the translator, but it's fixed.
007Uh, so board president Stewart, board members, interim superintendent, Asavdo, cabinet, BTA, and PTA leadership, and members of the community. Good evening. I'm Anthony Ramirez. I'm the CSEA Belf Chapter 32 communications officer. Thank you for the opportunity to share this our report with you this month. This past month, CSEA chapter president Michelle Quailar and chapter executive board members have attended the district alliance committee and the dis the district safety committee meetings. She has met in person with interim superintendent aso and separately with both deputy superintendent Smith and assistant superintendenta on several issues. Michelle along with CSEA labor rep Doadales um met with board president Stewart and will continue to do so on a regular basis. So thank you for that along with several of you here. Um I'm not going to name everybody but Michelle was
008also part of the district team who traveled to San Diego for the learner centered inspirational visits. I understand it was very productive. Um CSEA has also been making good progress in our current negotiations with Dr. Smith and we appreciate his good faith bargaining efforts. So, thank you for that. Uh, there is an agenda item that I want to address if I can take the time to do so. Uh, first of all, I want to thank the district for including and engaging CSEA in the ongoing discussions around overall district security. Thank you board clerk Critfield and board member Marina Citroen for meeting with Michelle Dou and one of our campus supervisors, Woody Grayson, to talk about this overall security issue. We appreciate that. In our view, there are two distinct areas of security to be recognized.
009One is district facility security, the sites and the buildings themselves, and the other is campus supervision, which manages the safety of people, students, staff, and campus visitors. While CSEA supports the district's continued efforts in addressing the overall security of our district, I want to share and emphasize our concern regarding the need for standardized training and proper consistent supervision of our current campus supervisor personnel. CSAA security staff are committed to the mission of BSD and are a reliable resource that can offer insights on the day-to-day operations as well as seeing any gaps in overall district security. They are dedicated to meeting our mutual goal to provide safety. Our current campus security staff are only nine-month permanent employees, which means they are not present in the weeks preceding each school year. This makes it challenging for them
010to prepare and train on the areas of concern. We hope that with the inclusion of additional security resources, the district will also consider aiding, supporting, uplifting, and increasing our current security staff with trained and targeted resources to further development, further develop them in their vital role here at BUD school sites. Thank you for allowing me to report on behalf of CSEA Chapter 32 and all of our classified workers. Thank you so much. We appreciate you guys. All right. Um, is Linda here? Okay. So, next up we have PTA Communications and we will have Linda Morgan, our PTA president, present. Welcome. Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me and appreciate the introduction. Um, okay. So, no slides this evening. Um, but I would like to share some of our upcoming council events. Um,
011but before I do that, um, quick membership update. Um, I was informed that now nine out of 10 elementary PTAs, um, have 100% teachers participation, um, the last one that was added, um, is Lindstöm. So, they now, too. So, I wanted to make sure I recognize them. Um, before I forget, um, on to our upcoming events. Uh next week, uh Tuesday, April 1st at 6 PM here in the boardroom. We'll be hosting our reflection celebration. Um I know you all received invitations, so I'm hoping you can join us in recognizing and celebrating our very creative and talented students. Um we will have their artwork on display for everybody to see and um should be handing out awards to close to like 30 students um from at least nine of our schools. Um, so good representation
012and um, yeah, the artwork will be up for everybody to see. So, should be fun. Um, then in May we have what we call our annual historian mixer. That would be on Tuesday, May 6th at 6 PM also here in the boardroom. Um, this is where all of our PTAs come together to share all the events, programs, and activities they've provided this year. Um, they usually do a great job with their presentations. Um, again, it's a sharing opportunity and maybe get ideas from each other for the upcoming year. Um, and then that same week, closing out the year with our honorary service awards. Um, that is on Friday, May 9th from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. Um, and that would be actually be held in the family center at the Calvary Baptist Church. Um it's an
013event where we honor some very dedicated individuals who've gone above and beyond for our students. Um honores from all of our PTAs and community will come together for a dinner and a fun evening. Um this year's theme is u rooted in service growing in gratitude. Um kind of symbolizing how service and dedication can help a community flourish and the formal invitations with more details will be sent out next week. Um and then wanted to briefly share um that um I too was part of the team that went on the learner centered orientation the tour to San Diego. Um definitely very educational and inspirational experience and I appreciate the opportunity. Um it was uh well organized, well led and kind of a good example of the learner centered experience for especially for me but um and
014I'm sure board member Critfield will share as well. Um I'll keep it brief but um some of the key words for me um obviously were collaboration and then providing the spaces and opportunities to collaborate um definitely student centered um ownership and with that then comes pride um trust kindness and respect and equity um enjoyed seeing the innovative and flexible classroom designs um learning a lot more um the learner port uh learner portrait as well as the adult and system portraits, then creating that structure and having systems of support in place for everyone to come together. Um, appreciated ideas like um their celebrations of learning events and eighth grade student resumes. Um, definitely saw a lot, recognize some of the great things that we're already doing. Um, and of course, lots of ideas on how we
015can improve. Um, I think B has a ton of potential and I'm hopeful and excited to see where all this will lead us. looking forward to seeing the next steps and continuing the partnership with all our community stakeholders. Thank you again for this opportunity and for having our students best interest at heart. Appreciate it and have a good evening. Thank you so much. All right, next we have our superintendence report. Mrs. Oavo, do you have anything to report tonight? Yes. Good evening to everyone and I can't believe that I'm actually going to be talking about this at the moment. So last week we officially turned to spring. The year is just going by very quickly and um between now and our next board meeting, our students are going to be starting their formal assessments and
016we're going to be going to spring break. So I have just a very quick message about that. Um, I know how hard our staff and our students have been working to prepare uh for these annual assessments that they um are focused and they're dedicated and we encourage our kids to be um to persevere and be focused on those assessments. We want them to do their best. Um we're going to encourage them to get some good night's sleep and to have a good breakfast and to have a positive mindset. But our spring break, believe it or not, is coming up April 14th through the 18th. We won't have any school during that time. I encourage everyone to take this moment to relax, uh to recharge, spend some quality time with family and friends, and we'll be
017back on the 21st. I really look forward to our students coming back and our staff refreshed and ready to start the rest of the year. It's going to go by very quick. So, wishing you all um an upcoming safe, healthy, and enjoyable spring break. The next time we're all together, it will be after that spring break. So, that is my message for this evening. Thank you. Okay, moving on to committee updates. Um I'm just going to go through the committees. We did not have an alliance meeting. We have one scheduled for next week. I think next week. Um and I don't believe we had a sped committee, correct? Okay. Um, Clerk Critzfield, do you want to update at all on foundation? Sure. Uh, foundation committee next meeting is on April 2nd and that's when we'll
018move forward with the uh, application process and hopefully bring it to the board in the upcoming meeting and then you want to keep going with our declining enrollment facility subcommittee. Sure. Uh so that one uh as mentioned uh by Miss Linda is we had our uh learner centered San Diego trip. So my my takeways and I'll keep it brief because it was a basically a two full day uh tour. We went we went to different school districts in San Diego and to bring back a bunch and we had a group of I don't know Ryan how many was it 12 of us? 14 17 17 um so it was really good very that my biggest takeaways were the collaboration uh from the different school sites and you know I was really expecting to see different
019uh different facilities than we did there was one school that had amazing new facilities uh #bond2026 um but a lot of the schools it was the learning going on inside the walls and they my big takeaway there was the amount of targeted PD that they had in the collaboration between uh the teachers was very enthusiastic and there was just a bunch of buyin from the teachers at those sites and one of the things I think was uh was driving that is they had a lot of afterchool enrichment led by teachers on the site so teachers that already have a connection with the students uh teaching something that they're authentically interested in I think is a recipe for success so really supporting those those uh those ideas on our sites of where you know for instance
020there was a film one uh the and they had a whole broadcast channel and a podcast and it's a teacher that just loves to do that stuff and they're getting paid to teach that. I just feel like that's the synergy between the the site and the teachers. Um but overall that she mentioned the flexible seating was very impressive uh investments in flexible seating and really a lot of them we have better bones uh out of mo a lot of our school sites uh but there was just a bunch of buying and I definitely took a lot from it and making a little video of the the trip too. So I'll share that once it's done. Thank you. Um so we had our safety standing committee. I know we're going to go through some of the
021things, but board member Centron or Clerk Crushville, do you guys want to comment on the safety committee? Sure. Thank you, Madam President. Uh, so I know we're going to get into safety, but just as a recap, we had on March 19th, we had, uh, presentations from, uh, four different vendors. Uh, we're able to unanimously recommend two to move forward and the board will hear them, uh, this evening. Member Son, do you have anything to add? No, thank you. Okay. All right. So, athletic subcommittee, we do have our athletic uh subcommittee. We're meeting on April 2nd. We're basically analyzing the athletic code of conduct, and we really want to look at middle school sports. Um, when I went to school here, we had a a flourishing middle school sports program, and we don't anymore. So, I
022know that, um, one of our APs at Mayfair, he's working really hard to look at different schools to see if we can get some type of league going on. So, those are things that we're going to be looking at in that committee. Um, culture and climate, we have a subcommittee. We're meeting on March 31st, so that will be coming up. Legislative action committee. Do we have any dates on that yet? Our standing committee for that? We do have it scheduled. I'll have to look on the calendar really quick. It's okay. Okay. It's So, we have that upcoming. Um, again, we're trying to prepare for going to our coast to coast conference and just things that are coming up legislatively. Um, Cal Apps Board, President Critzfield, president of Cal Appsboard. Critzfield, do you have something on
023that? Thank you, Madam President of Belf Unified. Uh, uh, we had our Cal Apps meeting on March 16th. Um, yeah, always great stuff happening. Uh, Cal Apps. One of the things, uh, we're working on over there is, uh, the the AI, which we're going to talk a little bit about that tonight. But, uh, always exciting things happening at Calabs. And then, uh, and then we'll have our next meeting in April. One thing also is we had 13 of our students qualify for the skills USA and that's April 10th to 12th. So we're really excited for our both our Mayfair and our partnership with our other schools for them to go and compete. So that's pretty awesome. Do you have a Laxa update board member Armstrong? No. Okay. All right. So that is committees. Um okay.
024So moving on to discussion. Oh, I'm sorry. Tonight we do not have any requests um for public uh comments in open session tonight. So we're going to move along to our first discussion item which is 12.1 and that is board policy um student use of emerging technologies including generative artificial intelligence. Correct. So that is your discussion item for this evening. If there are any board members that happen to have any questions or comments um please feel free Dr. Smith will assist with any questions that may come up. All right, colleagues, does anybody have any questions or comments? Clerk, definitely do, but would you like to give a little I'm wondering, President Stir, would you like him to give a very quick interview or a little description? I'm sorry. Not an interview of the item. Okay.
025Okay, we can do that. We can start with that. Okay, Dr. Smith. Thank you, President Stewart and members of the board. Tonight we are presenting board policy 6163.41 which outlines how our district might approach the use of emerging technologies especially generative artificial intelligence in our schools. This is a topic that we've all been thinking about for quite some time. Uh when I first arrived in Belfflower I had some conversations and have had quite a few conversations actually with board clerkfield about the impact that AI will have on education and the importance of getting ahead of it. uh going back to when he served as board president. The work towards this draft policy actually began last summer, drawing on examples from other districts and recommendations from state and local agencies working to guide schools in this
026space. Most recently, board president Stewart brought this back to the forefront, emphasizing the need for a policy at our last meeting, which is why it's being presented tonight. The policy is built around a few key priorities. protecting student data and privacy, promoting ethical and responsible use, ensuring equitable access for all students, and providing professional development and AI literacy for staff and students. It also includes guard rails on what's prohibited, such as plagiarism, harassment, and entering personal data into AI tools, and outlines ways to engage families in the community through transparency, opt out options, and regular updates. Lastly, it calls for an advisory committee to help monitor how these technologies are being used and recommended adjustments as needed. Overall, this policy is about preparing our students for the future while staying true to our values around
027safe responsibility. I'm excited this evening to hear the board's feedback on our draft policy. Um, Cler, thank you, Madam President. Um, first of all, thank you for doing the work on this, uh, Ryan. Um, I know we we've had uh a few robust conversations about uh the policy. I do have some things I I'm hoping the board will consider uh to add to the policy um and for the for the second draft. Uh so I'll just kind of go through the five things and I wrote them down too uh just in case at the end. So there's so you have that. Um, so the first addition under uh the purpose and framework I'd like to add the governing board directs that all instructional use of AI technologies by staff be aligned with district approved instructional
028guidelines which define appropriate use cases, ethical considerations and instructional objectives. Uh the reason is uh number one I think that the term gen uh uh gen AI is a little restrictive to what the policy could uh could cover. Uh being that artifici G gen AI is just one subset of artificial intelligence and we want to make sure that's like clearly laid out in here. Sorry, can you explain what Gen AI is? Yeah, so when we talk artificial intelligence, it's going to be that's like the big umbrella term. um gen AIS anything that generates say like a chat GPT like photos uh writing material uh video that's going to be gen AI and that's all under machine learning right um but there's a lot of different types of uh AIs under that and our policy kind
029of just talks about gen AI but when you go through like the different types of like so natural language processing uh robotics automation things that could actually help us from an administrative level that's technically AI. It's not necessarily generative AI. It's different things. So using the term artificial intelligence uh will capture some of those concepts rather than limiting it to just photos and writing. So you want to add that on top of this first paragraph that we already have. Was that in addition to Yeah, so it's an addition. Okay. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Um so that's that's the the first one and it also makes it clear in our policy that uh what we're saying uh is consistent across uh district policies and protects the instructional integrity while still allowing allowing teachers autonomy within the
030clear ethical boundaries. So describing what those boundaries are is important rather than just saying that. Um the second one, okay, is the district shall identify a list of permissible district approved Gen AI tools. Wait, hold on. Can you tell us what page you're on so we can follow too? So this is this is page one under purpose and framework. It's an addition. Okay. Uh the district shall identify a list of permissible district approved Gen AI tools for students and staff to use and pursue investing in district level licensing where feasible to ensure equitable access for students regardless of social economic status. Now my rational there is Gen AI just like the internet can be uh a contributor to the digital divide when it comes to technology. if we're saying that students can use Gen AI
031and a lot of these are paid um and some students can afford it and while some can't but they're still working on the same assignments uh it's going to create inqu in inequity um so I think it's very important that we uh explore what a permissible gen AI tool would be and look into district licensing also gives us more control over the quality of AI that our students are being exposed to. Any comments on that one? I I think I think after I I visualize the entire document, I could better I I could better um uh frame my thoughts. Okay. So with all the corrections that he's wanting to add, uh I I'd like to see it all together. That'll be our second read. Correct. That is correct. Um but but if there are conversations
032on any of these, uh feel free. Um I hold on. Did you have anything for me? Um please finish and then I'll add to Yeah, for sure. Um yeah, I mean if there are convers I've put a lot of thought into this. Um but I I think it's important that we're on the same page as far as what this policy can be. What I don't want this policy to be is just on how we discipline uh students when they use it wrong um or uh restricting the learning. Uh, I want it to be a policy that that pushes us towards embracing AI and technology in general. Um, so that's kind of the goal. I think I well so far what I've heard um I really like the edits that you're asking for and this is
033why so far, right? because I know you have a few more, three more. Um, but especially the socio uh the economic one because I think if we're thinking about it in a bigger picture, in a bigger light, I think based on 2020, all of our students had to go remote. The world went on remote and uh we had to then sprint into action when it came to making sure that all of our students had laptops and Wi-Fi and access and things like that. So if we make our policy of this technology robust enough, it helps us moving forward and also it gives us more um direction in the way that we would like to see our school district go with AI instead of having to it's more of a what is the word I'm looking
034for? because we always go into action after but not before. Proactive. Thank you. Lord help me. Um so yeah, I want it to be more proactive than um reactive. Reactive at the end. Thank you so much, Brad. Um so the third would be under accountability. Uh I believe it's page two maybe. Um so this addition, this would be another addition. be the board requires that all emerging technology related violations be classified into clearly defined categories aligned with existing student conduct policies that approp that appropriate appropriate consequences be communicated to students and family. And the rationale there is uh the language is pretty broad. Um, and when if a student uses AI to say, you know, post a a AI deep fake nude of another student, that's a different level of violation than using it to
035uh, you know, complete an assignment when they shouldn't have. So, we need to make sure that our AI discipline is aligned with uh, we have to scaffold it to where it's appropriate. I just didn't see that in the policy. So, I'd like to point to what that appropriate discipline would be. Uh, the fourth one, um, is under still under accountability. Um, oh, I think I already that one. I did that one. Okay. Uh, the next one's under student education and literacy. And this one uh might be more of a conversation, but I think it's really important as we talk about not just a policy on uh the discipline aspect of AI, but how we actually lean into it and educate. So the addition would be uh the district shall establish grades span AI literacy benchmarks
036K through 5, 6 through 8, 9 through 12 to ensure consistent and de developmentally appropriate instruction in digital ethics, data awareness, critical thinking about AI generated content. What I would like there to be is age appropriate uh education for our students to learn digital citizenship and actually learn how to use these tools uh as they go through our our schools. Sorry, do you mind reading that one more time? Just a little bit slower. Just that one. No problem. Uh the district shall establish grades span AI literacy benchmarks to ensure consistent and developmentally appropriate instruction in digital ethics, data awareness and critical thinking about AI generated content. So for this one, are you thinking about adding curriculum to the grade levels? Is it all grade levels or what are you thinking with this one? So when
037so like when it comes to like which tools we use. We don't necessarily need our kindergarters using using chat GPT, but identifying like what it is about AI that we want them to learn in those grade spans and working working that into our curriculum. Yeah. So, whatever grade levels they have their own benchmarks based on the needs and the standards. Like I I think if someone kids going into say middle school, they should have we should have made sure that they're exposed to what prompt engineering is to a certain degree and develop those uh like within our curriculum uh because they're going to be using the tools. So they're using um question for staff. You might not know this and if you don't that's okay. Are there already standards for AI for the state of
038California? And if not, who would develop these grade level benchmarks? Obviously staff would there aren't specific California standards for AI or AI literacy. There are resources that provide guidelines and recommendations. Um, I think to board clerk Pritchel's point, this would be some exciting work that would lie ahead perhaps with um, what's also called for in the policy around an AI type of uh, committee, an AI type of team to go through and map out together with our teachers, together with other staff, what would benchmarks kind of look like? So, at the end of your example, uh, Mr. Critzfield was perfect. I mean it was you know at what point should we have prompt engineering or students be fairly proficient in that? Um those would be examples of I think the work that would lie ahead.
039So we would use staff and committee of leadership or teach. Okay. Yes. And there's also opportunity for some partnerships here and that's also mentioned in the policy as well. So for example um LEO has done quite a bit of work in on the AI front. Um, I also think there's some room for our college partners to be part of this work and be part of this conversation to really make sure that we get it right as we go. That sounds amazing. Okay. Thank you. And to that point, I know a lot of the the colleges are are starting to have AI coursework and uh I think those partnerships would be great. And also had a great uh talk with Arlene Whitney today about pathway on AI and we actually just received a grant recently that
040involved uh the one of the requirements of it is to embed AI literacy into all of our coursework. So that's something that you know uh our partners are doing as well. Do you guys have anything to add or questions on that particular part that he wants to add? Well, I'm just glad we do have it in here because there are uh school districts, one in um in specifically on the across the across the country in New York, they're already implementing um curriculum uh in the high school to really show the students how to use it within their classrooms. So, I do have communications that I could share with you. That's what I was looking at looking at removing having east coast data or at least insight is cool. I think um there's some school districts
041that surround us that also have implemented some sort of a like age appropriate, grade appropriate um programs within their curriculum. So I think we have we h as long as it's placed I think appropriately I think we would have good footing into having a committee to develop these standards for our school district and having the input that is necessary especially from you know partners and the teachers that are going to be doing this work in the classroom and probably some of them already use it just you know to make it easier for not only them but for the students to get the work done and get them excited about technology. So I think this is great. All right go ahead clerk. The next one is under monitoring and evaluation and it's an addition. It's uh
042prior to adoption, all AI tools shall undergo a bias and equity impact review process led by the super superintendent or designate in consultation with the the committee. Um so the rationale there is uh not all AI tools are equal. Uh and if we're using um tools there there can be a a element of bias and a lot of them are not monitored. So whatever we provide our students should be something that we can put our stamp on. It's safe. it's going to give them uh correct and balanced information and I think uh just making sure we have that mechanism of oversight and evaluation of these tools is going to be really important. So uh with that committee I think would be very important. So would that be creating a new committee or would you think
043about doing that like in a culture and climate committee a special AI committee or where would you kind of put that? So I I think it would be either the uh the culture and climate committee that that could be one but I I think Ryan you mentioned um a committee for AI correct yes so it would be something that we would look at the whole plan got okay and I just had a question about the committee would it be necessarily like I think my concern especially would be is this going to be an ongo going committee or is it like a one and done because I feel like this is ever changing. I think it would be ongoing just because it yeah ongoing I would assume I would assume if we were going to make
044it a standing committee then we wouldn't call it an AI committee. it would be something different where we could discuss all different type of technology because it's not just AI right um yeah so I mean it could it could be culture and climate because it does add to the culture and climate it could be that um but I think honestly a technology type committee I don't you know that'd be for you uh I think is a a good thing I I know we've talked about having a our district technology plan could use some love too um I I think the more focused thought uh collaboration on that in general is great and I think this fits into what that could be. Okay. Um um there are um there have been some um educational workshops developed
045so that um let's say for instance a company can come out or an organization whoever they can come out and actually educate all of us on on artificial intelligence and answer a lot of of questions that we may have especially if we're going to task our teachers with trying to implement minute uh you know and integrated with what they're already doing. So there's it's it's so much to it. It's so much to it. So I think education for all of us needs to happen first before we start talking about what we're going to do because we we we have to understand it first. So I have a contact um that I can give you guys so you guys can look into that. I mean it's just another source. Thank you for that. But I know
046I know we're talking policy. So So the policy and and us trying to bring make sure our kids are uh are are getting this information because they're going to have to learn this and they're going to have to learn how to use it in the future because that's going to make the difference. And and and there's an option to add it to our CTE course. So, you know, for our high schoolers, because that's where, you know, it I'm just saying it's a lot here. So, thank you for that, Miss uh Miss Armstrong. That's always helpful. The more resources that we have and the more contacts that we have to help with our work is um always appreciated and super helpful. Uh I would also like to say that this is these are some things that
047our team has started to explore and so we're building on a foundation that's there to that's already established to a degree. For example, I know services sent a team recently to the Anaheim Union High School District, I believe it is, um for a conference that was very AI and technology oriented. I would like to point out that the um language in the policy because it is a policy. It's not an AR um because if the board desires, we could always produce an accompanying AR. Generally, we try to keep policy not um and I kept that in mind, too. Yeah. And I can tell as your with your comments as nuanced as they've been. Um but so an AR eventually could follow this and really bring home some of the specifics. Um but to the letter
048of the um policy and the committee the committee is somewhat open-ended. So the committee could very well be a district ed tech committee that takes on AI is you know AI things or other emerging technology platforms. It can be any kind of those vehicles. The other piece that I would also just like to share is that we do have some expertise inhouse that I really know we should tap into. For example, we have teachers right now that are very proficient in this and that are using these tools. And so should we should ask our folks, you know, hey, who out there is really comfortable with this kind of thing and start tapping into them as resources for everybody? Even here at the district level, um I've done quite a bit of work with with AI.
049Our new executive director of the personnel commission has kind of a thought leader on AI. So, we have a number of people that have some really great experience. And I think collectively between what we have and bringing some other people to be a part of our team, we could have a real powerful opportunity here to do some neat things in this area. Okay, that sounds awesome. I know LEO does something too. when I was at the women's conference, they had a really good presentation that I attended. So, um, Superintendent Oavdo and I will kind of talk about committees and how we want this to work after we kind of talk about this policy. Is that okay? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Okay. Go ahead, Clerkfield. Thank you. Um the last one uh is addition under transparency and
050reporting and my recommendation is to add the superintendent shall present an annual AI transparency and innovation report to the governing board and the public summarizing AI tool usage instructional outcomes incidents and stakeholder feedback. Um I think and again Ryan I know a lot of the work is done and I know you we we we spoke uh Mr. Almost and I talked AI for a while we have expertise in the in in our district right now and we we we've we've spoken about we want to lean into it and our kids deserve us uh deserve it. Um, but I think with this policy, what what I what I was missing in this policy was uh saying like the actionables like this is what we're going to do in this policy. AR completely said I tried to
051keep it as plain as I I could in this just to make sure like we're saying like this is what we are going to do. There was just uh some language that was just a little loose. Um but at least with you know annual reporting to just see what we're what we're doing what we're investing in and how it's working and uh adding in like uh incidents because incidents will happen as you as you implement AI there's if there's a mess up but we have to know about them. So the transparency and reporting I think is really important of it. Sorry can you say it one more time? I got the gist of it. I'm more interested in the stakeholder part. uh instructional just the last part the so the whole thing is the superintendent
052shall present an annual AI transparency uh and innovation report to the governing board and the public summarizing AI tool usage instructional outcomes incidents and stakeholder feedback. So what do you mean by by incidents? So like so if we are allowing students to use AI and there are say disciplinary uh things or or misuses of um AI uh if there is you know cheating or just a lot of the things that kids can create and it it results into disciplinary action like those types. so we can see uh where you know which tools are being problematic or how to address them. I think I understand that part of it. I guess maybe my question might be for Andrew is if there were incidents and we couldn't put those out for our stakeholders, should we include that
053in the policy? Do you know what I'm saying? Like I understand the annual report, all of that, but if we're saying including stakeholders and there's things that we cannot let people know about, should that be listed in that policy in that manner? If I because I I I want to make sure I don't I don't mean like the actual incidents like you know like closed session like this is exactly happened but you can count like the number of incidences where the problem areas are. I yeah I wouldn't want to get too specific but yeah so you can include categories for example um cheating during tests uh misuse of uh AI things like that you can include the amount of incidents that took place and just give numerical values to them okay so it's just a
054general word that can be very broad correct okay thank you okay and there's just one more hold on does anybody have any comments or questions on that little part no okay go ahead Um, there's just one more and I just want to be clear when I don't mean to get stuck on the language, but I think for the policy it's really important. And Ryan, I know you know this, but I feel like in the policy when we talk about emerging technologies, there's going to be a bunch of different labels for these different AIS. Uh, and there already are. So, I would like to recommend a change in the policy title. Um and especially because I I think the third point's really important about the equitable access and the investment of uh AI technology. So I
055I would my recommendation would be policy 6163.41 would be uh instead of so strike through student use of emerging technologies including generative AI intelligence um I would recommend it would be policy 6163.41 41 equitable access and instructional use of artificial intelligence and emerging technologies. Sorry, one more time. Can you say it? Sure. Equitable access and instructional use of artificial intelligence and emerging technologies. Colleagues, any questions, comments? I like that. I think it's fine. Anybody else? And la last thing I'd say is I know this policy a lot of it's centered around uh instructional use um and scaffolding and access but I think it's really important uh when we talk AI um and machine learning in general how effective and helpful it can be administratively as well and I think that that's something that uh in
056the policy um you know it it pushes us towards that because I I think there's a lot of like useful things just a few of them like early warning systems predicting students that uh may be at risk of failing or dropping out. You know, there's AI tools for that. Predictive attendance monitoring when it comes to scheduling our calendar, behavior tracking, grading pattern analysis. Um there's so many ways that we could utilize AI to make our district um more data driven uh and more efficient. Um that would be really helpful. Uh, so I want to say thank you, Ryan, for bringing this uh to the board and uh I hope we continue down the path uh as a as a district uh to refining it uh for the second read and really pushing forward on that.
057Thank you, Clutchfield. I know this is your thing, so and you're really good at it, so I appreciate your knowledge and what you brought to us. You did a lot of work for us, so thank you so much. Any other questions or comments? No. Okay. Um before we move on to major action, um we are going to take a 10 minute break and we will be right back. All right, welcome back. We will reconvene into open session at 7:08 p.m. All right, moving along. We're going to our major action. Our first and only major action is 13.1 District Security Services. Mrs. Oavdo. Yes. We have two presentations this evening for the board. Uh we are going to start with Black Knight Patrol. So Black Knight, welcome. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you.
058First of all, I want to thank everybody for allotting us opportunity to be here. Um want to start with go Dodgers. They won tonight. Do you have a Oh, they won. Good. Good call. Thank you. So uh again, my name is Manny Jimenez. I'm the chief executive officer for Black Knight Patrol. We're a veteran own um operate security company here in the South Bay. We're based out of uh the Port of LA, but we service five different um five different major cities, city of Ontario. Next slide. Sorry. Um we were funded in 2015. Uh we're again veteranowned with over 350 employees. Uh we're based here in the South Bay. Um I personally live here in Lakewood. Um so well, uh the city adjacent to Bellflower. Um so we ser our headquarters are in the port
059of LA. We have an office in Ontario, an office in San Francisco, and our newest office in Atlanta, Georgia. Um we've were funded with the vision of setting a new standard for private security using innovative technology and training. Um in 2020 uh we actually launched our security uh school called um Harvard area security training where we catered to um the security industry and other companies getting people uh getting uh officer certified with the guard cards, baton permits, um pepper spray certification and also firearms qualification. Um we are uh we are have an SPE and a DBE through LA Metro. Um we were a vendor for LA Metro subcontractor to the primary uh contractor um and our they changed uh pro service providers. Um so we're no longer the subcontractor but it gave us our certification
060uh which we are very thankful for. Uh wanted to start with um with our key leadership. Um uh we have uh our retire our retired army colonel that serves as our deputy CEO. uh he runs our Atlanta office. He used to be here in California, but after 35 years in the army um and um he wanted to move back home and he ended up uh perfect opportunity. We ended up opening up in Georgia. Uh so he runs our Georgia operation. Christopher Payne, who's here with me today, is our chief operating officer. Um deals with our day-to-day operations, working with our operation managers and account managers. Um Dr. Brian Jucket is our training director. Um he is a retired police SWAT sergeant from Gardina. Um he came to us to run our training division. He's responsible
061for our ongoing training weapons uh qualification and um just ensuring that we're up to date with all of our um state required training. Uh Mr. Larry Holmes, Larry Holmes is our regional operations manager with me here today. captain over would be the gentleman um overseeing the day-to-day operations for the uh for the district if granted the opportunity to provide the services. Um just a little bit uh just wanted to um showcase our vehicles. Um we use I know um uh one of the requests was um wanted to see our vehicles. These are our vehicles very similar to law enforcement. We're not we don't have red or blue lights. All of our lights are amber and white. Um, uh, visibly clearly marked Black Knight Patrol, name of our company, in compliance with the state of California.
062Uh, BSASS. BSAS is who regulates, uh, the security industry here in California. The cool part about this is that we can brand these vehicles to we can't change the name Black Knight Patrol, but we can definitely add uh the Bellflower Unified School District logo um on onto the vehicle. Um, and again, we would work with uh with the district and uh with anybody who is responsible for the contract to see what you guys would want to see on the vehicles. Um, uniforms. Uh, we have a variety of uniforms. Um, I just wanted to bring these two uniforms here today. Um, our first uniform on the left is um, our event uniform, which is kind of what we use for our special events, concerts, festivals, high visibility, black and blue. Um, and you can see the
063traditional it, no duty belt, kind of like your normal security guard working event. On the right is our traditional uniform, which I did bring uh, staff with me today. If you guys want to stand up, um, we have a black and green uniform. Um, we everything from our body warn cameras that'll be speaking a little bit more um sidearm and um your basic uh handcuffs, tasers, radio, flashlight, um fully marked and totally customizable. So, we can um California law requires us to have a company patch, company uh badge, two patches, but we are able to add anything on. What I think was really cool, if you don't mind turning around for me, on the back it says black knight patrol. You can always put um we can always change the wording on the back or
064add a small little patch underneath proudly serving Belfflower Unified School District. Some of our other um clients have uh decided to change that. We'd like to keep our branding the same um as far as the back, but again uh we can always add and take off whatever you guys want as long as we have those patches. Colors are ever changing. Um we have the option of all black. Um, and again, uh, we love, um, interior vests for school. Uh, we do wear outer vests. Our patrol division does wear an outer vest. I feel like it's a little too, um, too intimidating, especially for school setting. We don't want to come off as, um, uh, we want to be as open and as resourceful to both staff and students. Um, so we have we could provide
065you guys with some samples of those outer vests, but my personal opinion, I like wearing the inside vest. looks less intimidating, not as militaristic in my uh personal opinion. Um, student comfort is just as important as our safety. So, our, you know, we want to make sure that the students are comfortable, we're approachable, and we're able to have open conversations with the students and staff. Um, we're not law enforcement, so we try not to look like law enforcement. Um even though we are still we still have to wear a uniform and we have to be easily um uh law enforcement has to be able to tell that we are security. Thank you guys. So some of our experience I wanted to highlight um we are again we are a fullervice private security company uh everything
066from detections concerts homeless shelters um you anything that needs security we're we we can do. But some of the key highlights here that I want to highlight is the Los Angeles Unified School District. We do a lot of special events for the school district. everything from sports games, football games, graduations, any extracurricular stuff um activities that are required after school. Our officers are unarmed um and again work closely with school administration, school police to ensure um a great um experience for any guests on the campus. Uh the Port of Los Angeles High School, uh we do have unarmed security officers assigned to campus. more of like a front desk reception kind of style. Um checking um anybody coming in and out of the door. Um not really again we we we taper our needs to
067the client. Uh they wanted just kind of a front desk kind of reception style. Chadwick school uh we do offer uh it's a private charter school in uh Ranch Paulies. We do offer unarmed security and armed security. Uh both the the cool part about the campus is that we did offer uni um undercover um staff. They look like teachers. They look like um the aids to school because they didn't want it to be too intimidating. Um which we thought look worked great. But again, it is uh something we had to communicate with local law enforcement to ensure that hey we have armed officers that are on the campus provide their picture so if there was an incident they they knew that we had um assets on the property. uh Holy Innocence Catholic Church. Uh we
068have armed vehicles uh patrols. Um those are private school um in Long Beach. Our responsibility is to ensure that we have uh a presence in the morning and in the afternoon. Um Long Beach PD couldn't be there all the time. They will respond if need be, but um the parents felt a little bit more comfortable having um armed security as their students were entering the campus, leaving the campus. The campus is uh very secure during the day. So they decided not not to um have a standing officer. Um one of our big clients is Stanford University uh where we have eight unarmed security officers um assigned to uh department of public safety um which we were 24 hours a day. Uh we work handinhand with their in-house security department which is their public safety department
069and our goal is to be additional eyes and ears um to the campus working alongside with the local law enforcement. uh Ro uh Roland Unified School District again special events. Um we we cater um any concerts or football games that they have on the campus and my favorite one is going to be Cerritos College. I don't think we added on there. So we actually worked with the local college here which is Cerritos College. Cerritos um the chief of police uh retained our services um to help with um the void in security uh law enforcement. So, we're not law enforcement. We're not ever going to replace law enforcement, but we are we we believe in great public part uh private public partnerships. And um when I I'll give you an example. When they we have they
070have a call off or they have um uh very minimal staffing. They still have to protect their assets being their schools after hours. So, we will come in uh with the mark vehicle fully geared um and basic work side by side with their dispatch and um law enforcement. Um, again, we have some great references we can provide. I did we didn't bring any today. Um, but again, from our local elected officials that we've helped with, uh, community events, again, more uh, LUSD and, uh, multiple chiefs of police. Um, my next presentation is going to be on this uh, school security officer training. So, I myself being a board member for uh Kalaga, which is the California Association of Licensed Security Guards, I sit on the board for uh California. We are the association for security
071companies. So, I take this very personal and very um close to me as far as our training goes. So, we represent over 20 there's uh there's 2900 licensed security companies in the state of California, of which we represent 480. uh everything from our Fortune 500 companies, Allied Secur Guarda world to our mom and pop startups. Um so for us training is super important and I'm a firm believer with the proper training and experience we are able to deliver worldclass security service. Um so uh on the slide we kind of highlighted some of the the um the the additional training that is required by the state of California to have us deployed on a campus. So, this is on top of the annual 40 hours that uh our security officers have to go through on a
072on an annual basis to ensure that they're up to code with uh BSIS. And BSIS is who regulates uh the security industry in California. It's the Bureau of Investigative Services. Um and um and again, we pride ourselves BKP. Also, we constantly receive ongoing training in report writing, deescalation, um uh use of force, public relations, and um sexual harassment. And all of our officers must qualify with their sidearm that the uh their duty sidearm uh and it's each quarter. On the next slide, we're going to talk about our weapons qualification. The Bureau of uh security requires us to qualify every six months. So, in order to maintain your state um your state permit, uh first of all, in order to carry a weapon, you have to have a state permit. Uh in order to maintain your
073state permit, every two years, uh they you do a re-qualification, but every every six months, you must qualify. At Black Knight Patrol, we pride ourselves in being setting um our training a little bit above the standard. So, we qualify every three months, every quarter. Um very similar to what um the state requires. we just go a little notch up and add a little bit of stress to ensure that our officers are able to um properly deploy their their their tools and um address any situation that may arise. Um I would love to welcome anybody who wants to come to the range uh next time. Um we would love to show you guys what we do on a day-to-day basis and you know if you guys feel comfortable our range staff will allow you guys to
074uh to shoot our our our duty weapons. So, um, that's what our, uh, we use a standard Glock 22 with a TLR1, uh, light. Um, our holsters are level three, meaning that it's the same exact holster the sheriff's department uses. Um, uh, it's going to be u, it's the security mechanism. So, there's a level one, level two, level three. The level three, um, there's two locks on it. Um, it's not people think you could just flip the hood. You actually have to flip the hood and do another compartment in order to, um, deploy the weapon. Um so again we pride ourselves in uh ensuring we have top um equipment for our officers when deployed. Um some of the course highlights um that uh dealing with difficult people in challenging situations is two hours. Um so
075the two-hour clo uh two-hour class consists of several modules each dealing with a different and often challenging issue that private security officers may encounter in the course of their daily activity. By using uh strategies in the class, you can effectively and safely manage difficult individuals and situations. The modules in the class are security officers responsibilities, interacting with difficult individuals and people in crisis, interacting with people with behavioral health issues, interacting with homeless people and transients, interacting with people and physical and mental disabilities. Um, again, it's a very standard uh training, but we pride ourselves in being able to taper that to our client. Our client being the uh Belfflower Unified School District. With that being said, we have an amazing online portal. Uh, this online portal is called BKP online. It is uh online university.
076So within this um platform, we're able to with whoever the administrator would be of the contract or our staff would be able to pull and do um uh surgeon training, everything from customer service, deescalation um and we would work with you guys to ensure that um you know we fill a a curriculum that meets your needs. Uh the next the next topic that I want to talk about is our body warn cameras. we currently have on deployed is our Axon 3 body warn cameras. As you can see on the on the um on the screen, these cameras are the same exact cameras that the sheriff department and LAPD uses. Again, priding ourselves in having the proper equipment to properly um be successful in our um security operations. So, these cameras are they record one minute
077before um an interaction. our policy and again we can taper that to the school district anytime we make come uh make a contact with a parent a student that uh it's a simple two tap activation the camera will start rolling it will record one minute without um audio um prior to the tap once we do the tap it will start recording uh until it is um turned off by the officer which would require another tap um it's a high definitionition video again the one minute buffer um and the cool thing about the these cameras being that it's the same cameras that a lot of our local law enforcement agencies deploy. We have evidence.com. Evidence.com is the platform where when we dock the camera, everything goes to the cloud. If we need to share anything with
078our local law enforcement, they will get a link since they use evidence.com with the um we would be able to go in um identify the incident, label the incident and share that obviously at the direction of the school district if we are allowed to. you guys being the client, we won't release anything without prior uh permission from the board or the administration. Oh, one last uh one last topic on that. The cool part about those cameras is we can live stream. So, if you guys have a dispatch center or you guys um or from our headquarter dispatch, as soon if we know there's an incident, we can actually go on our iPads or our computer and see exactly uh what's going on, how the officer is dealing with, and if we need to uh deploy
079additional resources and it's a great training tool um as lessons learned uh after the incident for a debrief. Our next slide is going to be dealing with community relations. Black Knight Patrol is one of the few, if not only, if not only uh one of the few companies that has an outreach uh team. Uh we constantly uh sponsor and attend community events in the areas we service. Um we're not trying to bribe you guys, but if we uh are allotted the opportunity, our outreach um marketing team, very similar to law enforcement, it's our community relations team. they will come out to not just school functions, community events because again we want to make sure that people know who we are within the community. Um something that is very successful we have our ice cream patrol.
080So on the far right um every summer um since the since the inception of this program which was in 2020 our goal is to give out 5,000 pieces of ice cream for free. So we come out to community events, school events um and we just give out ice cream. The local vendors hate us um because they never get to sell any ice cream, but you know, we love seeing the happy kids and again engaging with the parents and uh our the stakeholders. Um on the far left, we have a huge trick uh trunk or treat event on the um battleship Iowa in San Pedro where we see over every year it's growing. So I used to say it's 500 kids. I think last year we saw close to 3,000 kids. Um in the middle we
081we team up with the pink patch project. Every year our patches go pink. Um and we have ongoing fundraisers and we raise money for um the uh law enforcement pink patch project. Um last year I think we raised 2500 with clients and our ongoing supporters. So again we uh we believe in giving back to the the communities and clients that believe in u supporting us. My next slide is our town hall meeting. Um, prior to starting the contract, Black Knight Patrol would make our management team available for a town hall meeting style where um, we can invite parents, community members, uh, faculty um, uh, come out. Uh, we would definitely love to host something and, uh, just have open dialogue. Uh, any questions that you may have, any concerns, anything that they want to see
082or, um, any questions with our management team, we will be there to answer. Our ultimate goal is to make this if a lot of the opportunities to make this a very smooth transition um and you know protect protect uh I don't want to say assets but protect this the the school students faculties and assets of uh the Belfi school district. Um again going back to our community outreach we're huge on our uh we believe in private public partnerships. By no means will we ever replace law enforcement and by no means will we ever be law enforcement. We are in the private sector and um you know my our I personally we love establishing um relationships with the local law enforcement because we're only as successful as we are with our local law enforcement um and
083uh community uh personnel as far also teachers and students. Um, so again, with that being said, we actually met with the uh Lakewood Sheriff's Station yesterday, and we kind of um we were informing them of the opportunity we were granted to present a um a um a proposal to the district, and they were very excited. we, you know, again, we informed them, we're we're not getting, we don't know who they're selecting, but if we were to be selected, we definitely want to ensure that we have an evergoing um partnership, a private public partnership, because again, it you know, they voiced their concerns of um uh I I I think one of their biggest issues was realigned communication. So, being able to communicate to staff or security personnel on campus. uh they were very excited when
084you know we were kind of just having casual conversations about potentially if granted the opportunity we want to make sure that they have uh open communication again and this is all at the direction of the district we will never step on anybody's toes if you guys tell us don't don't uh share we won't share but again we work we would be working for the school district but in order to be successful I am a firm believer that private public partnerships are super important um So takes me to our next slide is our reporting software. So we use a software called Destiny. Um Destiny is our catchall. Um so it's basically a pretty awesome software where um the officer um he or she would be able to do their daily report. Um any critical incident will
085be um uh documented on there and it's on the cloud. It's in our servers forever as long as he has our client. So if we had an incident where we had to make an arrest of an individual on the campus, a trespasser, an unwanted guest asked to leave, we did the arrest, we would um you know, type it up, take pictures um and then when law enforcement shows up, we would provide them with the reports or email them and again that would stay in the cloud or if we had any type of um specific reporting that the district wanted us to do, this would be the platform we would use. Um, it's easily accessible on an iPad, an iPhone, and special events team. I know there was a um an interest in our special events
086team. We pride ourselves in being able to rapidly deploy and um be successful when it comes to our special events. Um we have a mark patrol vehicles, bicycle patrol teams, mobile uh pretty fancy mobile command center on the top right that we would bring out. It's not just a visual deterrent, but it's also a great asset for us to have deployed um wherever we bring um a a a huge deployment of officers. Uh we do offer explosive detection, Kines, uh mobile camera trailers, golf carts, off-road vehicles, metal detectors, and guest screening. Um so that's something that if you guys are interested, we would be able to help coordinate. Um and uh yeah uh our again our priority is customer satisfaction. We're an extension of our clients. So we want to make sure that we are
087representing our clients accordingly. So my next slide is the security assessment. Um, unfortunately, we didn't after careful consideration, we didn't want we didn't visit the site. So, we can't give you guys an actual assessment. Um, because we didn't get to visit the site, see where you guys are vulnerable. So, if granted the opportunity, we would love to walk with both the sheriff department and whoever's walking the contract to be able to identify hot spots or in or issues. But again, we will definitely come out, see where the C great camera coverage, you know, what can we do to better security, lighting at night. Um, that's kind of where where our expertise come in play. Um, again, deployments are ever changing. We want I we understand this is a pilot program and we want to work
088with the district to ensure that, you know, uh, ensure it works. Um, so again, we want to we want the input of the school, um, before we make any formal recommendations. Um, that's pretty much all I have. Again, I just want to thank everybody for allowing us the opportunity to bid um and supporting a local security company. Thank you. Thank you so much. We're going to move to questions. I have one question really quickly. Can you go to the slide um experience in schools, please? Um my question is what is the difference between armed officers and armed vehicle patrols? So, an armed officer is um uh an armed officer, a no vehicle uh versus a patrol vehicle is an officer in the vehicle. So, I think what we and again I I don't have the
089proposal in front of me. I think we quoted you guys for an armed patrol vehicle officer, meaning the there's be a vehicle and an officer assigned to the school at all times. Um there's some schools that due to budget restraints or um you know after hours if you guys wanted patrol service we would we can deploy um vehicles to do site visits they're not assigned to the school. They're kind of like they show up they leave 15 20 minutes. Um and again um they're not a fixed um asset to the school. Got it. Okay. Thank you so much. Um colleagues questions comments um member. Clerk Crystal, thank you, Madam President. Wrong pipe. Uh, thank you for the presentation. Um, the I know you've given the presentation in the the safety committee. Uh, so I just
090kind of want to again with the committee there was I think uh over the course of I think three meetings about for 12 to 14 hours of actual discussion on this. Um, so for the the benefit of the public and and my fellow colleagues, uh, one of the things that we really emphasized and you know, you don't got to go through the whole thing, but we we talked about, uh, liability, liability insurance, um, where that lies. Can you just touch on a few of those things like as quick as possible because I want to hit a few of them. Yeah. Um, so we have uh, we we do carry insurance. It's approximately an $7 million in total. Um, it is a 1 million general liability. uh two million additional and a five million uh umbrella.
091Again, we can that is basic that's a little bit more than what a lot of our municipalities require. So, we do work with other cities um and we want to make sure that we um surpass what they've asked. Um we can always revisit um if the district needs more. Great. Thank you. And uh the other and one of the other things was uh the we are a majority Hispanic serving uh district. Um and so having bilingual uh security would be of benefit and interest. I believe um how what percentage uh is bilingual and then could we uh guarantee bilingual guards? I can definitely guarantee one bilingual guard um if that is a requirement. Um, as far as statistics of our company, there's 350 officers. I wouldn't know the exact number, but we pride ourselves in
092being able to deploy bilingual officers. Um, and our biggest push is also having a female officer. So, I wouldn't be able to promise a female officer every day or, you know, if we find the great, we want to make sure it's a good fit for the district, but um, I think, uh, in my personal opinion, a female, uh, bilingual officer is a is a would be a great fit for the district. And when it comes to selecting uh the officer, there is a u a not vetting like a a courting process. So there there would be some type of interview to make sure that whoever you're assigning is somebody that aligns with the district. 100%. We would make sure that we have uh input from the district and actually after speaking to the sheriff's department,
093they kind of wanted to have um they wanted to be present for the pre the they're like they understand that they don't have to be selections, but they also want to get to meet the individual. Um so yeah definitely we would we 100% you guys would be helping with the selection. We would what we do with other clients is we pick a total of four to five candidates if um and we would uh schedule them like a job interview. Obviously they've vetted they've been vetted through us. We think they're a good fit and it would be up to staff and the board or whoever selected to um administer the contract. Great. And one of the the biggest uh conversations in the committee was obvious safety of our our students and staff is the most important.
094Uh and there's uh conversations about policies on breaking up fights and where we heard some uh some companies are completely not going to go near it. They're hands off uh completely. Uh you had a slightly different answer. Can you explain? Yes. So, um, it goes back to our training. Uh, we're firm believers with the proper training and understanding of the law, we're going to be able to be successful. Um, and again, we are by no means, um, not going to go hands-on. Um, so if there is a fight, an altercation, um, parent versus student, our priority is going to be the student that separate the parent. Um, or if it's student on student, again, it it's also at the discretion of the district. If the district has a hands-on policy or a hands-off policy, we're
095again, we taper our operations to the district. And that's one of the the things I appreciated from the committee was it actually spurred a lot of uh other conversations about you know it it really makes us focus on those policies so we we give those clear directions. Um one more one more thing um the and I already said that one sorry I have one question um I know you said that we would be having the same officers every day at our sites. So if an officer is out, do you have like a subsystem? Can you explain how we would keep, you know, the same officers there? Yes. So once the officers are identified to the campus, those are the officers. We understand life happens um personal life or they get sick. Our goal would be
096to integrate our patrol division. Those are the officers that are daytoday they're in their vehicles patrolling other sites. We would want to bring them up to speed, get them trained, and also get them certified so if that ever happens, we're able to rapidly deploy and never um leave a void in uh on the campus. Okay. Um Barbrong, um thank you for your presentation. I just just have a few just clarifying um questions. Uh you say you have you're going to uh we agreed on four officers. Is that what we agreed on? No, we haven't agreed on anything. Okay. We're just picking the company and then they will be doing the assessments and letting us know what their recommendations are. Okay. And then that way after we do that we'll know how many cars cars they'll
097All of the specifics will be done afterwards. Yes. Okay. And um how long uh and the pilot will determine how long the pilot is going to be also? That would be the contract we would decide. Okay. Okay. Okay. Um Okay. And um you did mention uh students that have uh disabilities. So you guys are very sensitive to to students with invisible disabilities. Like we have students that that look like nothing's going on with them. So you do have experience with with invisible disabilities. Yes, ma'am. We again we pride ourselves in being able to adapt to our um our clientele and being the in this instance the students and it would this would be all be covered on our ongoing training if allowed the opportunity. We would love to welcome any staff or administration to come
098in and we would set up a curriculum to ensure that you know everything is communicated. Okay. I really appreciate the um your presentation. I I really did like what I I heard. Um and with your documentation, you say you you everything goes to the cloud. You have a system. Um but I I know for a fact I would be interested in both critical and non-critical calls. So you could I mean every every call you get, every dispatch you get actually I would I myself would be interested in every call. Yeah. No. And what the cool thing about our software is um and again I'm gonna have to refer to my team. Um I want to say that we could add up to 20 emails uh up to 15 20 emails and those would be distributed
099to whoever um you guys want to see and that would be an ongoing um uh daily report and then obviously any critical incident um that would be immediate and uh again it would go to this the administrator of the contract and we would be more than happy to uh share any any type of uh reports. Okay. Thank you so much for your presentation. I understand we have a lot to discuss and decide. Vice President Garcia, thank you um Madame President. Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for the presentation as well. Um I have my question is who has access to the archive video other than um it just says that the emails will go to the client but who specifically would you send them to? It's whoever you guys identify as um having access. So if
100the entire board wants to see them, we can do that. If only the superintendent wants to see them, we can uh we can always isolate them um to whoever once the once you guys identify an administrator. Thank you. And on your end, who's the point of contact? So our point of contact would be Mr. Larry Holmes uh sitting here and uh and Christopher Payne. So both of them would be available to speak to our staff. Yes. And to the board as well? Yes. Um on our end um um Miss Aso, who would be our point of contact? Would it just be you? No, I suggest we work out a team of individuals. You would probably want um our security management team contacted as well as probably site principles. We'd have to work that out on
101what that tree would look like for communication. Okay. Um I'm just thinking of like worst case scenario we need to get someone down there communicating with um their agency just making sure that one person is giving directions to you know um one set of directions and not being confusing at that point. Um so then I also have a question just for clarification. you mentioned that um the Lakewood Sheriff's Department wanted to um partner with you or talk to you or uh Yes. So we again our goal our what we do every time we come into well it's not liquid share well liquid station but they're over Bellflower. So I I think they operate out of Lakewood but they it's the individual over um the schools of Bellflower. um they want they believe in they strongly
102believe in the private public partnership and again we're going to we're going to be relying heavily on that if and when um if we are granted the opportunity to provide the service if we have somebody across the street a little suspicious we our authority would stop at the at where the the school ends right so we're going to need their assistance and why it's important to create those relationships with them okay I agree um so then just again to clarify They didn't want to be part of the process of choosing the people that come onto our campuses. They just wanted to partner with them and get to know them. Correct. Okay. Um, so also you talk about special events team. Is this part of the contracted services or would we have to, you know, contract
103out for that service as an add-on? Um, so if that's something you guys are interested, it's just a simple add-on on the service agreement. Um, it's on call basis. Uh, we asked for 72 hours notice. Um, I know we have some campuses that'll call us 3 hours before an event and they forgot about security. We will try to make our best um to make it happen, but we always ask for at least 72 hours to ensure that we have proper staffing. Okay. And um, I think those were all my questions. Thank you so much board member cent. Thank you. Um thank you again. Um so just uh just to make sure that is it's understood to all board members, what is the experience or can you speak to the experience of um your guards, your
104security um with their experience on campus? uh like how much prior experience would they have prior to coming to our campuses? Um so it's we wouldn't put somebody on here that we wouldn't feel comfortable deploying and passing our requirements. It kind of varies. Um you know we our companies I like to say is a stepping stone also for law enforcement. So we lose a lot of our cream of the crop officers to law enforcement. Um so we have staff with us that have been five plus years. We have staff that have been with us six years and it just kind of all depends because we have individuals that are retired officers that end up coming to us looking for um you know postretirement work and their experience. Right now, we actually have a candidate um
105that we're looking at that's retiring um from Garden Grove Police Department, and he has done 22 years as um uh school safety officer, and he's a full sworn officer, and we were actually once we we let him know about the opportunity, he was very excited. Um so that like that's a candidate that's not even hired with us yet. And again, Bud has 20 years law enforcement, working on a school campus, now he's retiring. That's that's kind of the talent we're seeking. Okay. And also just a point of clarification just in case people in the back didn't hear this part. Um so your agency, your company is not is not an company that goes onto campuses to take over the guards. It's in collaboration and in partnership with the existing staff that is there. Correct. Correct.
106So we are not we're by no means again we're not here to take over and u replace uh it's my understanding you guys have your own security force. Um we one of our our our clients at Stanford University, we came in um and again worked with the with the school to see what they needed, how we can augment um because ultimately, you know, our priority is in a perfect world. Um we would love to have 40 officers to protect this campus, but we know that realistically that's not going to happen. So we rely heavily with um partnerships, not just the sheriff department, but our the internal security staff. Um so again, by no means are we here to try to take away um uh the security operations from whatever you guys have. Obviously, it's working.
107Um and we just want to come in and help augment and um potentially help standardize um the the security guard training. Thank you, Cler. Thank you, Madam President. Um the so kind of piggybacking on that, one of the the big things that we've identified in committee and it'll be ongoing conversation is we really don't want just extra bodies on campus doing something that uh our current staff could be doing. What we really want to do is bring uh you know I think at least for myself the goal would be to bring expertise onto our campus to support um not only safety of the whole campus but also support our current staff. Uh can you speak to a little bit about and I and I understand you wouldn't be you wouldn't be uh supervising or or
108really interacting with that but from a collaborative standpoint you mentioned you have your own training facility. Would there be opportunities for training staff uh and engaging? I'm sure that'd be something in addition to um but could you speak on that? Yeah. No. Um so again uh we have the ability to give state certification um and being part of the association we pride ourselves. I think I would love to welcome anybody on the management team of the school security to come out to one of our conferences which is hosted every year with a plethora of knowledge on the security operations. It might be a little different because it's not you guys aren't a security company. We are the PO which is PO stands for private patrol operator. That's what gives us the authority to be a
109security company. But the district is exempt just like any municipality that has their own security force. But again, I think we would love the opportunity to um come together collaboratively and uh give our our knowledge, our experience, um and potentially um you know, anything from the the the book knowledge of a GAR card to potentially archon, which would be the arrest and control self-defense. Great. Thank you. And um not so much a question for you, but to uh I believe uh Vice President Garza's point, I think having that clear contact uh in district is going to be really important just like it's important with you and law enforcement uh you and here too. So I would um also say that that's something that we can look at at some point too of like identifying that
110person and honestly I would be supportive of uh creating a executive level uh head of security for a district. I think that that's a direction that we should go to really identify that student safety person with that expertise so that that collaboration can be even more effective. And I second that. I think we need to have I like a person that oversees our district, the security in our district and that is their sole purpose. Um, since we're weighing in on so many different opinions, I also think it is really important that our own security guards on campus are there and in place because if you look at the things happening on our campuses, it's a lot of fighting. So, we definitely need people in our own security on our campuses as well. Vice President Garza.
111Thank you, President Stewart. Um, I do have one additional question with school security officer training. Um, can you speak a little bit more about what does that look like when a student is constantly pushing an adult's buttons, specifically your your officers, what do they do? What are they? So, our main focus is deescalation. Um, you know, we can give individuals all the training in the world, but they're still human. And, you know, we want to make sure that they have all the training readily available to them and uh ongoing practical um scenarios with uh that are a that they're able to deal with these situations. One of our biggest issues um that I don't want to say issues, one of our biggest training points is um the range for us or simulations because we believe
112in muscle memory. um god forbid we have an active shooter on the campus. Um instead of the officer running, it's it's the ongoing training. They're able to deploy rapidly deploy their their tools um and engage the the individual or the the threat. So again, it it just comes with training. Um it's going to be ongoing training and just ensuring that you know that that it's constantly stressed to the importance of patients and you know the line of work that we're dealing with. Okay. So by tools you mean um conversation, discussion, not we pride ourselves in deescalation. Yeah. No, we uh again uh the tools that we wear on our belt, I like to say those tools are used to protect the faculty and staff from outside threats. I'm not saying there's there can't be an
113inside threat, but again um our biggest uh our our biggest push is the verbal judo is deescalation. And you know again it just comes with uh experience training and um uh it's a trait you pick up over time in my personal opinion by any chance um is part of the training um also like holds on students because they're I'm assuming they're completely different from holds on adults. Yes. Again um that would have to that's something I would love to invite our training division um that can give a little bit more. Again, we're not we understand they're students and we're not going to the holes that we're going to be using on a student is going to be and again our intent is not to grab the student. Our intent is to separate. Um obviously if
114it escalates then we like to say you're going to use reasonable force to um to affect not necessarily an arrest but u to stop the threat. Okay. Thank you. I had a question. I know that you said that your authority stops at the end of the school. So again, if there's something across the street, you cannot go over there and help us. It just depends. Um that's something that again falls back to the private public partnership. And it falls it's a dialogue we have to have with the sheriff department. If the school allows us to have authority, you know, a block away. Um that's something that that we can uh discuss. Uh USC um perfect example is USC public safety. They're not sworn officers, but they have what's called anou with um LAPD. So they
115basically, and I'm not they have police powers while on duty, but they're not police officers. Um so you don't mean if the school allows, you mean if the law enforcement allows. I think it's a it's going to be a joint effort. So it's going to be both the school district and um law enforcement. But if we say we allow it and they say they don't, then they would override us, right? Yes. Okay. Okay. But that's not to say if there is a fight right across the street and it's school students or it's um you know we we will we will act on it. Okay. That's where I was a little confused because you said you couldn't go across the street. So you can go across the street and solve problems for us. Yes. Okay. Board
116member Armstrong. I I have a question for our staff because we're talking about training having them train our staff as a district. Do we offer noncrisis intervention to our employees and I'm I mean security um staff and teachers noncrisis intervention we do that we've offered it to the entire district on those optional PD days and do we uh keep it updated like every two years you know how you can you update it every two years okay I just want to make sure staff is saying yes I just want to make sure because that's the beginning because, you know, we have to be responsible for our own uh staff, but at the same time, that would be uh nice. I mean, I'd like to have some training. How about that? We'll invite you to our our
117facility, ma'am. Clerk Critfield. Thank you, Madam President. Um so, I'm When it comes to restraining uh students, we do have a policy on that. Correct. we do. Okay. So, that's something that um again obviously safety is the the priority, but liability and making sure that whatever we do is aligned with our policy. So, any type of implementation would be a thorough examination and training of what our district policy is so we're aligned with that 100%. I I personally think we should mirror your guys' policy. Right. On our Friday memo, can you send us that policy because I haven't seen it. And maybe just well yeah just put it on a Friday memo for us. Yeah. And I would suggest it's something that we need to look at as we move forward. Okay. Thank you. Chris,
118are you still going? Sorry. Um no, you're fine. Uh yeah, that that's actually one of the things we could look at and also uh not only that, but making sure that everybody knows our policy so they understand what the policy is. uh not only uh for uh you know a firm if if the board so chooses but also for our teachers and our staff when it comes to breaking up fights. You know there's a lot of confusion on you know are are is staff uh supposed to break up fight or do they have uh liability? Will the district have their back if there is a situation? Um I personally feel the safety of our students is most important. So breaking up a fight to me seems like a no-brainer, but obviously you know staff and
119uh and teachers be fearful of their own safety in that situation. So I think clarity on the policy now is this is a great opportunity to look at those policies. So when you do mirror them, you're mirroring, you know, really good ones. Yeah. No, definitely. And again, uh we would love to take a look at your policy. we would run it by our our general counsel and just make sure that, you know, it aligns with our internal policies, which I don't see an issue with it. Again, we we pride ourselves in being able to taper our both our policy specifically for our clients. So, if again, if it's not illegal, unethical, or moral, I don't see an issue with it. Any other questions, comments? Okay. Thank you so much. We really appreciate your presentation. Thank
120you. Okay. So, we're moving along to our second presentation. We are. Our second presentation will be given by City Guard and they're going to be coming up to the podium in just a moment. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here. Welcome. You can go ahead and begin. Um, your mic isn't on. If you'll just push that button. It's It'll turn green for you. The little go. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Sammy Nome, CEO and president of Cityguard. Good evening. My name is Michael Konis, district manager for Cityguard. Hello. Good evening. My name is Aurora Almos and I'm a contract manager at Cityguard. Good evening. I'm Howard Fritken and I'm senior security consultant for City Guard and I was the one that prepared the RFP for Belfflower USD. Good evening. I'm Henry Linares. I'm
121the senior account manager. Good evening. My name is David Price. I'm one of the supervisors, armed supervisors for cityguard. Good evening. My name is Nathaniel Gutierrez. I'm one of the patrol leads for Los Padrinos for City Guard. Cityguard was established as a corporation back in 2007 with a vision in mind to overcome shortcomings in existing security service providers and create a comprehensive security role addressing all partner concerns. So each and every one of us here atgard have multiple years of experience of working for mom and pop organizations to the Fortune 500 guard companies in the industry. Each and any every single one of us comes from a background of working from a security officer to working to an account manager and eventually moving up in the ladder. Cityguard employees currently 700 employees throughout the state
122of California. Uh we provide multiple school districts guard services. the Sacramento School District, the Los Virgin School District, San Gabriel School District, Pasadena School District, Rialto School District District, uh Twins Rivers School District, the Montabella School District. Uh we also provide a couple notable uh private schools guard services which are Cresby High, Sierra Canyon High School and Middle School and Elementary School. Uh we also provide multiple libraries guard services where we interact with students um and minors and parents that do come into um the different libraries that we provide services. So uh we provide all the Orange County um libraries guard services, Arcadia um libraries guard services, Torrance Library we provide services to and u so on and so forth. We provide services all throughout the state of California to different organizations. Uh but I
123would say uh when it comes to guard services, we provide multiple school districts uh guard services and we're pretty well verssed with dealing with parents, faculty, and students uh at um the schools. Yes, we consider our guards walking billboards. And the reason why we consider our guards walking billboards because they represent us on a daily basis. The easiest form of advertisement or getting our point across to our clientele is based off the performance that we provide to an organization, a school, a county, a city, a municipal building that we provide services to. Majority of our business comes to us based off the services that we provide to local government agencies um and schools that we provide services to. I like to make the example we never know if the CEO of Amazon's kid is coming
124to the school here, right? Um they could be looking for guard services and they see how we interact during drop off or a high school game or a football game or graduation. They see the way our guards are performing and what they're doing throughout the day um on a day-to-day basis and that's how we're selected and that's how we get a lot of word of mouth business. Um this is one of the type of uniforms that city guard usually uses at school campuses. It's the tactical uniform. Um or you have the choice of the shirt and polos. All shirts must be wellmaintained. No major stains or damage whatsoever. must be tucked in and put um on properly, pants, badges, accessories. Each and every guard is provided eight uniforms uh when they're brought on to city
125guard and throughout the year they're provided multiple uniforms as well. And the uniform choices comes um based off the district's decision when it comes to uniforms. And we also have the lowprofile uniforms that a lot of the school districts decide to go with that uniform because it's more approachable um and easier uh rather than that law enforcement look, but it's more approachable and obviously it's easier for the community to kind of register like, okay, this is who they are and they're wearing the tactical uniforms and we're able to deal with them at any given time. So, cityguard vehicles, we provide multiple vehicles, uh multiple different types of vehicles, but one of the types of vehicles that the different school districts have decided to use is um a sedan that's a KiaForte or the Kia uh
126K4, which is the newer model of this vehicle. Um, and usually the the vehicle will be branded. Um, has our company logo on there. Has a laptop in there that we're able to interact with dispatch. Has a radio in there. Also has a camera um a camera that records them at any given time while they're driving on campus or patrolling an area. We know where they're at. GPS tagged and uh GPS GPS on the vehicle so we know where the vehicle is at at any given time. and we control the speed and we're able to see um what the speed is at any given time and we're also able to call into the vehicle where we get to see what's happening. So our dispatch could call into the vehicle at any given time to see
127how the guard is dressed or they need to send a message out or anything of that nature if there's not a response. Site assessments. Um, so we're going to have everyone from City Guard kind of give you um a different area of presentation that they kind of work on a day-to-day basis. So going into site assessments, we evaluate each site to identify areas of improvement, emphasizing cost reduction and resource maximization, gathering school district contacts uh and mapping out layouts. This includes identifying potential entry points, assessing blind spots, and evaluating areas at risk of security breaches to implement targeted security measures. So basically, usually when we take on a school campus or a school district, we'll do a walkound of each campus and we'll come up with procedures of drop off, pickup, where guards should be
128stationed during certain times, lunchtime, recess time, uh during breaks, uh during exiting, parking, parking control, or anything of that nature. So, we'll be able to put a timeline and time frame just because school districts um you know at 7 a.m. something's happening and then at 9:00 a.m. something else is happening or there's classes get out at a certain time. So during that time to strategically place the guards at different parts of the campus and obviously dealing with the school admin on a day-to-day basis to know what areas these guards need to be protecting more than other areas or if there might have been some sort of information given that there might be a fight during crossing periods of from first period to second period to identify the area or identify by the students that might
129be involved in that situation. Reviewing access control, um going over access control, making our recommendations of access controls that are in and out of the property um at the campuses. So, if at any point in time we feel that certain areas might be a threat where someone could come into campus or leave the campus at that point in time, we'll point that um those access points out. accessing security infrastructure. We review the effectness of effectiveness of security infrastructures to ensure that the adequately equipped and detect respond to potential security threats. So that kind of goes more into if there's a football game, um, graduation or anything of that nature, uh, of us bringing out, um, metal detectors, walkthrough detectors, or anything of that nature, uh, when there's school events happening, reviewing emergency response plans. Obviously,
130we'll put together emergency response plan that would be shared with the district before we start services. and if there's any plan in place that we could uh make changes to and then going over regulatory compliance with school districts uh what Kaga requires us to do and also the Bureau of Security and Investigative Services requires us to do at any given time. Anticipating changes in site usage. Uh meaning if there's a construction site, an area that might become a construction zone, not a construction zone, going over those implementations as well. Getting a one month or 30-day ahead of uh plan going over everything. and also not with not only with the site um with the site evaluation plan. We would be setting up bi-weekly and weekly meetings with the board uh to go over any questions
131or any issues or any changes that do take place. Um the recommended campus footprint based off of uh what we looked at planning and what we looked at the different maps. Um the morning two staff main entrance for access control. One at staff uh drop uh one at student sorry we made a mistake there. Uh one at student drop off zone. Two at staff patrolling campus student patrolling uh uh campus perimeter during lunch period. One staff at main entrance. Two staff monitoring cafeteria and common areas. And two staffs conducting perimeter and dismissal. two staff members. Um for the second campus, the front gate officers responsible for controlling access control and from the from the other schools verifying visitors and ensuring no unauthorized individuals enter or exit the school campus and vehicle patrol officers are responsible
132for conducting regular patrols on campuses and surrounding areas to deter trespassing, vandalism and other security threats. The officers responsible to for alarm response, emergencies and disturbances. Good evening again for the general uh conduct and procedures. Obviously uh we hire officers. Um we strictly uh interview officers of the majority of officers come from post uh law enforcement, the the military background. They have a couple years of working security. Um so these officers know how to uh conduct the reports. Uh if there's an incident, let's say there's an afterchool incident in regards uh students fighting, uh the officers will be able to respond, intervene, um and also be able to deescalate the situation and conduct the reports. Um our officers al also uh follow the state laws and guidelines uh through BC, BSIS, excuse me, and uh
133Kaga. Um again we conduct the trainings uh for the deescalations with all officers uh sexual harassment training. Um as we know every every person in the school district is a mandated reporter. So officers also trained if a student approaches them with the situation whether it be abuse or something um they're able to report to the law law enforcement agencies and and to the superiors and principles. Yeah. So for the emergency procedures, uh we do establish the school active shooter protocol. um includes uh we actually get the former law enforcement for the city and we do actually do quarterly training with law local law enforcements uh which they actually conduct a scenario um they'll pick a location and we'll have the staff and um local law enforcement including our staff to do the training emergency uh
134fire emergency procedure uh we will assess uh evacuation plan. Uh usually uh we'll get with u officials to actually get a good um plan for evacuation. For example, um for the active shooter, where to go um also for medical emergency, who to contact um and what personnel to um provide the necessary needs. unauthorized intruder. Uh our patrol officer will actually be patrolling throughout the entire district and um his job will be to maintain um that he's aware of every um person that actually uh doesn't look that needs to be there. Uh so he will actually dispatch um our office or he will dispatch the officers inside the school. So So I'm going to go into fights and altercations. And also these two gentlemen will go into the training that um because they deal on a
135day-to-day basis when it comes to fights and altercations at different sites that they work at um with minors or students or um dealing sometimes parents, right? Parents might get into at a at a parking line or a drop off line. So, you want to go into some of your real life experiences when it comes to fights, altercations, and community involvement? Hello everyone. Good evening again. I know we're all parents here and we're like, "Okay, it's getting late now." My name is Athena Gutierrez. Uh, with my background, the biggest thing is community relations. Uh the best thing is knowing that we do have our probably even our own children here. The biggest thing is knowing how to build that relationship with the students as well with those parents and knowing the safety of your students. Correct.
136So with my background being also a public safety officer for city of Norwok and working right by side as a cso with Los Angeles sheriff department, I learned a lot when it comes to helping the Norwok Lamari School District. That being said, first things first, knowing what does the principal need, what do our uh crossuards need, because at all times we're going to have some parents that are trying to rush and all of a sudden their their kid isn't the most important thing, it's them coming to work on time. So, if it's enforcing non-moving violations, if it's working right by side with LD since that's what we have here at the Bellflower Station substation as well as Lakewood Station is knowing at all times, okay, is this parent not being a good parent at this
137time? Can this student are the students safe to be here? So, those are the best things we can do if it's working with our council, with the community as well and residents to make our school as a safe area. Um, as for myself and my partners, we do our best to always make sure that around the campuses are safe. Make sure no one's trying to hide around if it's putting drugs or anything around. making sure that, you know, there isn't a kid that maybe didn't want to go to school and decided to hide somewhere to pick a fight later on because for some reason they like to do that at a young age. Uh that being said, at all times making sure no contrabands coming into school. Uh no weapons are coming into school. And
138one biggest thing I've learned at all at all times to be able to do our job, we don't have to have weapons. It's all verbal judo at the end of the day is coming to a safe ground with that person, be able to interact with them and communicate with them. I feel like that's the biggest thing is communication uh with our students, with our parents, and with the residents of the city of Buffalo. Thank you guys. I want to add to add on to that. So, when it comes to fights, when it comes to people coming in unauthorized and people bringing in weapons to to the school or any facility, the biggest importance is situational awareness. So from my experience from being a deputy sheriff and a police officer in Imperial County and working at
139county hospitals, I have learned and I've been very observant and have strong situational awareness to be able to detect people who are acting very nervous, people who don't belong in the facility. And also when it comes to fights, a lot of fights can be prevented if you're paying attention to the circumstances that's going on. making sure students are able to think keeping an eye on students uh during cafeteria hours or during times where they're uh going from class to class and being observant on how they're interacting with each other because you could tell already before a fight occurs by the way they're talking to each other that they're getting aggressive or they're being verbally aggressive with another student. At that moment in time is the best time to intervene. Why wait for them to fight
140when we could prevent the fight from happening altogether and removing the students from the from the scene? And also when it comes to weapons as well from my experience working at county hospitals, we search every single person enter the hospital and I know I have a lot of training and understanding where people like to hide their weapons. And not just that, also preventing contraband from coming into the hospital in terms of drugs or control substances. It could also be a threat to you know a school district. Uh also being able to keep an eye out, make sure that people don't bring anything that also uh endangers the health of our students. Let me finish. Uh so when it comes to fights and altercations, um I know one of the questions that was asked uh in
141our previous meeting as well is city guards hands on or hands off. We are considered hands off but at any point in time if a teacher's a staff member's life's threat or a student is getting physical at any point in time and is becoming aggressor. Um we obviously use verbal jiu-jitsu to deescalate the situation because each and every officer is trained with deescalation skills. But at any point in time we need to become a human shield and come in between at that point in time our officers will be involved in between and physically removing one off the other. Majority of companies they won't bring someone in to bring as a live example but we're so confident that this is our product. We provide guard services and we provide a human being. There's human error, but
142we try to avoid human error with human training, constant training for our guards, ongoing training, and dealing with different scenarios, scenario training. We don't hire any guards that have less than 5 years of experience um when they come on with us. Yes. So the roles of security officers um trained in wellness checks. Um so so we use Sandy Hook but Sandy Hook is um used throughout different organizations but we use a Kalaga portal also when it comes to providing training services when it comes to school districts. Um we encourage we encourage reporting safe and anonymous reporting of students education awareness and identifying crisis and understanding critical issues that might be taking place in a student's life or at home or identifying those issues. collaboration and intervention and visible presence and confidential reporting and documentation are
143some of the training portals that they go through uh through Sandy Hook Promise. So when it comes to selecting officers for the school district, we usually will have multiple officers that come in and go through an interview process. Each and every officer qualified as the officers we have here with us today. Um, and you'd make a decision based off of which officers fit best within the culture of the school district and understand the school district. Making sure that each and every officer has experience of working with minors, working at a school district and understanding the severity and issues that come with school district or schools or understanding. One guard might work out great at a high school, but another guard might not work out great at a high school. They might work great at a
144middle school, but they might not work great at a elementary school. So understanding those training tactics and bringing in multiple guards, having the school school principal or person in charge at the school going over those interview processes and making sure that they're part of the selection process and and making sure that the guard is an actual good fit for the campus, right? So going over the selection process um integration and support uh to current security staff um we work with a lot of uh school police um the guards report a lot to the school police and not only is if the school district doesn't have school police and they have school security on staff and integrating some of the issues we run into and uh communicating with them on a daily basis and collaborating with
145them on a daily basis and collaborating with the local uh Lakewood Sheriff's Department and Bellflower substation as well. We'll get into advanced certification and specialized training. Um all our guards go through the Bureau of Security and Investigative uh services. Um they're trained through BSIS. They have a 40hour uh work uh course that they go through. Then they get their guard card and then every six months they they're reertified um through the Bureau of Security and Investigative Services. It's huge for us to have proper background checks on our guards, running TLO's on each and every officer, making sure that they get live scan before they come out to campus and making sure they're TB tested before they're on campus as well. Kalaga training, we we go through the SB 626 and SB 390 certifications. the firearm
146safety training, first aid and CPR certified, crisis prevention training, cyber security awareness, uh, training, PPE train, sexual harassment, power to arrest, pepper spray and baton certified, school safety and campus security certifications, child protection training, trauma informed security practices certified, mental health and first aid training again. And then we also use a platform that we uh for training NASO school resource officer courses um that our guards go through on a regular basis. Um so these trainings are not just a one-time training. You get certified and then you're out um and not going through any other sort of training. The training continues. It's ongoing training. So after every 30 days, you're supposed to be taken a 4-hour course through the Kalaga training portal that we have. Um, majority of companies are signed up with Kalaga, but they
147don't use the training portals that are put in place by Kalaga. And the reason why we have to us the biggest thing is recruitment and training. Um, because we're not boots on the ground. Our management is available to you 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but we're not the ones that are on ground. It's the officers that are on ground that must have the proper training and have the proper background and providing the services, training and compliance, staying current with security laws and best practices. Our team regularly practices in professional development programs. Um so account managers will usually come out here. Um Henry usually does a lot of the training. Um he'll come out and do ongoing training um at the campus. Right. So from dayto-day training. What one thing is is we
148could do the best classroom training but if it's not boots on the ground training it's not going to be it's not as efficient in a sense. and continuous uh education on changes of state and federal laws related to school security and minor protection, annual certification renewals and crisis response, first aid and CPR, participation in law enforcement briefings, school safety concerns, review of new policies from department and education, local authorities, trainings can um and also training of deescalation. So verbal jiu-jitsu again, right? A lot of people like calling it deescalation. We like calling it verbal jiu-jitsu in a sense because that's what it is. Uh you're able to calm someone down based off the way you address them and how you address the situation by speaking to them. And then going through threat recognition and behavior
149indicators of a student that might seem they might have a weapon on them and reporting that immediately or a parent that might seem too hostile when they show up to campus and identifying that behavior as well. Emergency response drills, active shooter scenarios, lockdown procedures and evacuation protocols. uh cultural sensitivity and bias training, ensuring fair and respectful interactions with all students. We're huge on community involvement. Um we usually at the majority of the school districts, we do a backpack giveaway every year. um at back to school night or during summer camp. Uh we'll do water bottle giveaways. Um when parents come onto campus for an introduction, the first day we usually take on a campus, we give away first aid kits. Um, we usually when when we do have football games or any sort of uh
150homecoming games or anything of that nature, uh, we'll we'll have a booth that we usually ask if we could set up at the school and then we'll give away information. We'll have our officers there and uh, we'll give away either keychains bottles and information about school safety and safety of the community and things that are changing laws. um teaching. We last year we just uh well a couple months ago we just did um a giveaway for car seats for a daycare a nonprofit daycare that we gave away car seats. We gave away 700 car seats uh and our goal was basically within three months to give away the 700 car seats. So, um, we do ongoing community involvement. For us, the community is huge, right? And that's why we consider ourselves walking billboards. If the
151community is not happy with us, we're not providing a good service. We're shooting ourselves in the leg if we're not providing a good service to a school district because the word will get out very quick that we're not providing a good service to you. And the whole community knows. We just shot ourselves in the leg in Lakewood, Bellflower, the surrounding cities as well in a sense. Um, you'll be able to meet with our security team. Um, you know, we'll have different uh team members that come out to different uh community events. Um, we usually come, we have a setup that we have of um different officers or different people from our company. come out and talk about current events, issues from transient issues to uh something that might have taken place at another state and
152how we're getting ready uh for a shooting that might have taken somewhere else or a stabbing that might have taken place in an area or anything of that nature. Um understanding safety protocols and training emergency repo response procedures. We usually give out those pamphlets to the parents when we do have these events. Uh and we ask the board to invite us to those events obviously. Um we're going to get into Wolf Cam the body body cam integration. So a lot of companies use um body cam integration. Our integration's a whole lot different compared to what your average body ham that's out there, right? The average body ham has a SD card that gets recorded. Um the information is recorded. It's not live. Um it could be tampered with, messed with at any given time. System
153we use is called Wolf Cam Body Integration and we're the actually only authorized security company in California to be using this technology. except for police departments. And um there's a a couple federal agencies in California that use the same technology. Basically, what this what this um what this body cam system does is we're able to our dispatch is able to call at any given time to the officers when they're on campus. We're able to see the areas that they're patrolling. we're able to see um live video streaming. So, we're able to call in at any given time. Let's say for instance, uh any interaction that does take place on a day-to-day with uh students, faculty, staff, uh parents, we're able to go back and we get a we get a report. Guard services is not
154perfect. If I tell you it's perfect, I'm lying to you. It's not that's not the case in this industry. At any given time you get a complaint saying, "I felt sexually harassed when so- and so officer approached me today." We're able to go back in time. What time did that take place? It took place at 1:00 p.m. today. At 1:00 p.m., we go back to the body camera footage that cannot be deleted, that cannot be tampered with, and we're able to pull up that footage and know exactly what took place at that given time. or the officer is on campus and there's a fight taking place, they're able to retract that that data also because they're basically a walking um walking camera system. The only time that camera shuts off is when you're using a
155restroom or walking into a restroom. So those are the only times that camera gets turned off unless there's a meeting going on and you want that officer to turn off their camera. But you're able to go see that data for up to five years. You're able to go into our system five years down the line. Let's say two years from today, someone decides, well, so and so made a comment. Now I'm going to go to an attorney's office and file a lawsuit. This is huge for us when it comes to liability because we're able to see everything that takes place up to five years. We're able to go back to looking at looking back at the footage or interaction and timing. Trying to make this as quick as possible. I know it's getting late. So,
156reporting this just one thing just remember we've all read this. So, you're really just kind of presenting to the community, but we've all read this. So you don't have to cover every detail, but you're almost finished. We're on our way. All right, we're almost there. So reporting. So we use a system called City Track. Um the system basically you're we're able to see where the guards are at at any point in time. A fight takes place, car accident at the school campus, any interaction that's taking place, we're able to report it on there. Again, up to five years to to see those reports, right? We're able to see where the guards are at at campus at any given time. If they're patrolling certain areas, they're not checking certain areas, we're able to pull that data
157up and based off of that data, these are areas or targeted areas that need to be checked on a regular basis. Sometimes we might get a call from a school district and we're told, "Well, we didn't see the guard uh in so- and so area. We don't think that they're patrolling enough, right?" or there was a fight that took place on the field, but then we see through the body cam and also reporting app that there was an incident, there was a car accident in the parking lot and that's what they were dealing with. Then we're able to go back and backtrack to see what exactly took place. So, not only is it good for us for liability purposes, but for accountability purposes as well. Um, to look at the reports, you'll have loginins to
158look at our reports. They're streamlined reports. They're live. You could be in Hawaii and watch the guards to see what they're doing at any given time. Especially if it's a graveyard shift, we're able to see what they're doing on site. Our insurance coverage, our insurance coverage policy uh covers $20 million for negligence uh when service is rendered. This ensures a peace of mind for our partners, reinforcing our commitment to delivering professional security solutions with the highest standards of care and accountability. So, We carry a regular insurance policy. Then we carry a crime insurance policy. We carry um a cyber security policy. When you add everything up with our excess liability insurance and everything, we're at $20 million. Also, one of the things I didn't really cover was when it comes to providing services. um when
159there's events that take place or emergencies that take place um I can assure you that we've done events as big as Coachella from music festivals to concerts to providing services uh to the sofi stadium to providing services to crypto uh stadium as well. So, um, we do have an event staff that when we do have big events that comes out, um, there's no event that's too big for us. All right. Okay. Questions from my colleagues? Yeah. Um, um, thank you so much. Thank you so much, uh, President um, Stewart. Uh, thank you so much for that report. Um I just want to So you do have uh do you have women officers? Absolutely. Okay. And you say you know you're successful because of word of mouth. You know you get that's how you get a
160lot of your referrals. Correct. Okay. Um um you you talked about weapons. How do you detect weapons? How do you detect weapons and find them on students? So, a lot has to do with like behavioral um and if someone has a weapon, you know, sticking out of their backpack, a machete, we know that they have a weapon on them, obviously. And the first thing we do is approach them and try to grab that machete out of their hand or whatever weapon that might be on them. But if at any point in time there's a report that there might be a weapon on this individual, right, we're tracking them down and asking school official. We notify the school officials to let them know that this individual has a weapon on them and we're tracking their direction
161of where they're headed towards. So not necessarily I mean certain schools that we provide services for um they have metal detectors where every single student walks through a metal detector uh because of incidents that have taken place. Um but the only way we could detect a a weapon is based off of behavior of seeing their behavior of you want to get into how would you how would you detect something? So, it's easy to detect weapons because you have to pay observation. All this pretty much our entire work is observing what's going on. So, for me, it's easy to me to be able to see when somebody has a knife because I look at their pockets. A lot of people when they have knives, they have a clip in their pocket. That shows to me that
162there's a knife possibly also be a pen, but that's why you take closer inspection. Um, for pens, the bar is really small, but for knives, it's much thicker. uh when it comes to other weapons like uh guns or blunt objects, you're able to see the bulges in the person's uh person. So unless they're unless they're wearing very bad clothing, that's the only way it's very diff difficult to detect weapons. The alo the other the other thing that my uh the CEO was talking about too is also behavioral. when somebody has a gun. As an example, when I was working at the hospital, the county hospital, I was able to remove a gun from a patient, a site patient quickly and immediately because I noticed that he kept having a a close guard on his waistband
163because somebody has carrying a weapon, they're trying to make sure that you that I don't see it or anybody at the house doesn't see it. So, they're going to put a lot of attention to that location. May they be a pocket, might be their front waistband, may be back, or it might be in their ankle because they know there's a weapon there. They don't know that I know, but their behavioral is showing me that this person is trying to conceal something. So, that's how I would know if they have a weapon or not or just based off how they're reacting or how they're acting when I interact with them, when I have speak with them. Another thing that I forgot to mention too is it's very easy to prevent uh narcotics or weapons coming to
164facility just by asking basic investigative questions, paying attention to body language. When you ask somebody who's who's doing nothing good or is up to no good, they're very nervous. they don't know how to uh answer questions. As an example, uh for my train from being a peace officer, whenever I pull somebody over, we ask the very basic questions of where are you coming from, where are you going? When you're telling the truth, the truth is immediate. I'm I just came from the gym. I'm going home. When you're lying, that's when that's when people hesitate. And that hesitation is what tells me the behavior issues. There's something there's something wrong, something that I need to do. Focus more person more focus more on on investigating the situation and seeing what this person's up to. And that's
165how I'll be able to detect this person has a weapon if they're unauthorized to be here and be able to ensure the safety of the school and ensure the safety of all staff and students. Okay. Well, you know, we are a school district also and we do have students that have invisible disabilities. So, sometimes you can't see that maybe that there's a um a behavioral issue. You know, it's you just can't see it. Um how do you handle children like that? I I understand you just talked about behaviors. I'm talking that was in a sense like a typically developing student, but like are students who may have underlying issues and just doesn't look like they have anything that they're dealing with. So the officers do go under um there is an entire course dedicated to
166distinguishing that difference, the difference between having between having a a mental health issue, right, or being a special needs student versus actively being a threat. And a lot of that comes with the experience of having the officer on site and having a regular officer scheduled and stationed at your school. Right? So, what we like to do is we like to make sure that you have the same officer uh consistently so that they become familiar with the community, they become familiar with the students so that they know the difference between a student who's acting a little strange today versus a student who who is that's just their person. That is their person. Yeah. that that is part of their sensitivity training. You know, both of them I believe you lead that, right? Yeah, he leads that
167type of training. So, it is distinguishing the difference between someone who is having um who is in crisis versus someone who who just has special needs. Um so, that is a fine line. It's a regulatory course. Um you know, guidelines on any kind of uh how do I put this specifically with like substance abuse, right? So with substance abuse, uh the behavior of the student will change drastically based on the type of narcotic or whatever they may be using. And so an officer who's regularly scheduled, they have that trained eye to know that such and such looks, what's a really good example? Uh there might be the teeth one is probably the most obvious one where certain they'll grind their teeth. So, if they see the student every day and all of a sudden they've
168noticed, hey, such and such is grinding all the time, um they'll approach the student, just check in with them. You know, it's part of the the building the rapport in the community just to make sure. Um and they they're able to assess that they go under a uh the drug called Yeah. No, it's not the drug testing itself. It's the course that you take to to evaluate the difference uh someone who is actively using Yes. Yes. Sorry. So, so one of the things also is um I forgot to mention this to you guys earlier and we do provide services to a school district called the help group which is a part of LUSD. So majority the officers do work with disabled students and students that might have any sort of issues or underlying lining issues
169or we have a lot of students that go there that have like cancer and then they end up there because they don't want to go to public school with bald head or whatever where they had to shave their head. So, we understand the sensitivity and we make sure that each and every officer is trained in that sensitivity. And Aurora touched on something when it comes to providing services. We want to make sure it's the same officer day in day out, right? Let's say it's officer Mike. Everyone at campus knows who officer Mike is. Every every parent that comes in knows officer Mike. Every teacher at the school knows who Officer Mike is. for even the guy that comes and picks up the garbage from SoCal Sanitation or whatever garbage company it might be, they know
170that Mr. Mike or Officer Mike is going to be the officer um at this gate or this is where he's going to be posted. Thank you. You're welcome. Board member Crushfield. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you for the presentation. Uh okay, one thing I'm I'm grabbing with because I was on the committee where we presented the first time. Uh and what one of the questions was really important one was the very direct question of if there is a fight between two students, are you hands on or hands off? And the answer was we are hands off. So today we we got a little bit different of an answer with some explanation. You don't got to do the whole explanation again. Um but why the the change and and what's the rationale there? So, one of
171the things I I went back um and when we walked out of that meeting, because I'm the one that answered that question when we walked out of that meeting, Henry did share with us when three years back when we first started Pasadena School District, we were hands off, but then we had to get a special crimes insurance and going forward um after that three three year, it was two years into our contract, then that's when they wanted us to become hands-on. But there's still we're still not hands-on. We're where we're bodys slamming a child off of one another, right? Nobody wants body slamming. But but the question is is when two students are engaged in a fist fight, hurting each other um and there there's staff there that that might intervene and but if we
172have a guard there, would the guard intervene and break up the fight? I I get the verbal jiu-jitsu. It's always best to deescalate verbally. I 100% agree and understand. But in that in that instance where there is violence occurring, are we protecting our children? Absolutely. That's just human nature of response, right? Even though I'm sure they could tell you there's c certain sites where they don't want you to be physically involved, but when you see two people attacking one another, you're going to try to grab the two off of one another as much as you can. Okay. Thank you. Uh I do have another uh question if I may. Go ahead. Um, on the insurance, you mentioned 20 million. You're just adding all the different insuranceances together. With our umbrella insurance, it comes out to
173$20 million on on the slide. It's not on the slide. It's not It's not in the slide. So, our umbrella policy is a separate policy that gets you to 20 million. Okay. So, you're the aggregate about two and a half messages insurance. And can we turn back to the slide uh the insurance coverage slide? Thank you. Would you be able to kind of break that down for us? Yeah. Thank you. A lot of definitely not going to be able to see that. Um because I'm just curious because it looks like it's from four different insuranceances, but like the and there's like per occurrences which are could tell if you're just adding all the So when you do the um $5 million in the umbrella, right? And then there's a 5 million excess liability policy right
174underneath it. If you see that there. And then you have $1 million per accident and then per incident and then per uh deceased, right? Which obviously we don't want to ever use that insurance. The general aggregates 3 million and then the the product liability which it basically covers the property when an incident takes place. It's another 3 million there and then you have professional liability at 1 million and personal um injury at 1 million and 1 million per occurrence. Okay. So it is adding them all. Yeah, you add all of them up, but our crime insurance is not a part of this. But our excess liability on top of what we have here, we have another five million on top of here, which this comes out to 10 million. And then there's another excess liability
175policy that we have up to $5 million. Okay. Thanks for that. and and that could be sent in a endorsement um where they endorse like depending on the organization that we're working with that they'll endorse that organization. Okay. The reason I thought of it is because that was one of the questions again I take like the committee work very seriously because we're there to gather as much information to bring back to the board. Uh the answer in the committee wasn't 20 million. I believe you gave uh I have I have notes, but I believe it was like five and three. No. So, it it definitely wasn't 20 million. I I'm very confident that I told you it was $20 million. Okay. Was it like I would have remembered $20 million? That's a lot of insurance.
176But that but that'd be like if all of these things happened at the same time. No. So, so the thing is is our ex's liability, right? So the way these insurance companies now work, it's a whole lot like so let's say there was a fight that took place, right? There was personal injury, there was negligence on our end, and there was there was a crime, a property damage that took place at the same time. Right. I I'll stop you just because I'm not smart enough to understand insurance, period. So you I don't want you to spend the time on it. Uh you're you're well insured. Uh have you guys uh had to use the insurance a lot? No. Okay. I mean, we use our workers comp because there's issues that happen with employees tripping and
177fallen or um breaking up a situation or uh they get attacked by a transient or anything of that nature. We've had to use our workers comp. But I think on our liability insurance excess liability end of it, the only time I could remember is like a car accident. Cool. I appreciate the clarification. Vice President GarcA, thank you. Um, President Stewart, my question is, um, who would be the point of contact? So, you would have a contract manager that's assigned to you, and then you would have an account manager, a senior account manager, which would be Henry, and then you have a regional director that's available to you. And I'm available to you 24 hours a day as well. you'd have my cell number, get in touch with me. I take two days off out of
178the year. It's my birthday, which is coming up March 30th, and New Year's. So, those are the two times don't bother me. Other than that, I'm available to you 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Okay. And would the point of contact be the same at all times? I don't I think everyone here is planning to retire from city guard. They've all been here for a pretty long time. Thank you. Um, for that, let's see, I did have one more question. Um, you actually mentioned that you have um, sorry, your own metal detectors. Yes, we do. They're mobile metal detectors. Um, usually what will happen is during games, uh, big events, we'll bring those out. Um, and then we have wands as well. So, we have the walkth through metal detectors and we also
179have wands. So, Um, they're really easy to move because they have tires on them and we can move them wherever we want to move them as fast as we want. Sometimes at the Sacramento school district, we currently have three of them that just stayed there because they have so many events, it just made no sense for us to transport them on a constant basis. Um, they kind of rent out their field to soccer games. So on a constant basis, every two weeks, can you bring it back out here? It just didn't make no more sense. So, we just left them on property and said, "You guys find us a place to store these safely and when these games happen, we'll roll them out and have them out." Thank you. And so, if you were if
180we were to use those metal detectors at some point, is that an add-on service? Absolutely not. So, there's no extra cost to it. Thank you. Um, and that's one of the things when it comes to like community involvement. I think throughout the year, um, I sign off on so much free services because for us, we understand like school districts don't have a lot of money. Um, they're funded and there's things that do come up and we're willing to work with the community at any point in time. There's anything that we could do for the community, we do. Um, and we asked we asked the school districts if there's um something that we can help out with, let us know. If you need a certain thing donated for the prom or for the school dance or
181whatever it might be, homecoming, you let us know so we could help out and just announce that we helped you guys out during, you know, that event that's taking place. Thank you um for that information. So, on your advanced certification and specialized training. It says you have child protection training. What does that look like? So, child protection training, it's it's through a portal that we use and basically any issues that you might see that could be a potential threat where you see a student come into school on campus where they might have pinch marks, they might have a black eye, or they might have something that just looks out of the norm of reporting that information at any given time. I mean, one thing is they have a scab because they fell in the yard.
182Obviously, we're not running in and reporting that stuff, but identifying those issues, identifying potential issues at home um that might have came up and sharing that with the school administrator, principal, or whoever it needs to be reported to. And that's during our walkthrough, we would ask those questions. Okay, so if so and so happens, who do we report to? So, it's sort of like mandated trainer reporting, correct? Um, okay. And do you also report? Um, so are your is your staff a mandated reporter as well? Yes, we are. On school campuses, were mandated to report. We're considered officers of the organization in a sense, right? So we always try to tell our officers, don't differentiate yourself. You don't work for cityguard once your boots on the ground. You work for the school organization or you
183work for the school district. So whatever rules and regulations that they follow, you have to follow those rules and regulations as well. But we we self-report anything that we see that's out of the norm. Two more questions if I thank you. Um, so here says also crisis prevention trained. Is that also? Correct. So you want to get into Gaggle? I think I think in our last meeting we got into um some of the schools that we work with. They use um a software called Gaggle. Um Las Vegas school district uses it as well. Pasadena school district as well. Pas uh San Gabriel Valley as well. anything that and focus. So pretty much any any equipment that the district provides to the students uh obviously if any students typing in anything out of the normal whether
184it be violence whether it be threats uh even nudity the software catches it itself as a keyword sends us an email uh to the team to the to me to myself and to the team uh identifying a potential threat a potential situation situation. Um, and it's our job, um, as mandated reporters obviously to, uh, make contact with the parent and ask them, hey, the first thing we're going to ask them is, is your child okay? Is your child with you? A lot of response. Uh, we get upset parents is understandable because obviously they don't know who we are and even though we're giving them their names and we're letting know we work side by side with the school district, they still don't believe us. Um but after we explain the situation and how this um
185this product works they start understanding. So if we communicate with the parents and they say it's okay at the end we we assess the situation we get a full report and we send it to the district uh for Pasadena. Uh we work directly with the superintendent. So, anytime my officers create a a incident report involving a child, involving anything that's happening on campus, whether it be from uh the kindergarten level to all the way to the high school, uh we do that report, I send it directly uh directly to them. Uh the people who are involved is either the principal of that child's school, uh the local uh I believe if they have a therapist in in in that group and that school. So all that reports goes goes to them. Uh the second thing
186would be if again we get a report for the same situation uh the keywords are used we contact the parents the parents do not respond we tend to go to uh the parents home and address because that app yeah to conduct a wellness check because the app provides us all the detail regarding the parents where they live. Now if once we approach the household and we conduct the wellness check and they do not open the door, our next process is to contact the local police agencies to come and assist. We explain the situations and then they take over from there and then we get the incident report and then still submit it uh to the superintendent and to the uh therapist as well. So your your guards also conduct wellness checks. They're the ones who's
187going to be conducting it, not me. uh but they're trained for that. Um and then they're the ones who are going to submit the report. They're the ones who are actually going to go do the wellness check. They're the ones who also contact the local agencies. So So most recent issues we've ran into with the wellness checks is the school will contact PD and uh either some of the schools lately have not had like the school police support in a sense, right? they're underst staffed and they don't have the school police support and then they'll contact like the local PD and sometimes they'll tell them oh in three four days we'll show up to do this wellness check right um and it just depends on territory right especially with all the fires that were taking
188place and everything um all over um California or not Los Angeles in a sense right uh we were the ones that were communicating with the superintendent of the schools and doing these wellness checks and If we weren't able to get in touch with them, then at that point in time, it was considered a crisis report with the local police department to let them know that someone needs to respond immediately because now we think it's a real emergency. Okay. And last question is, does your staff also um participate in any drills that the school has? Yes. So for for the schools, sorry, for the schools, uh we tend to when we do the walkthroughs, sightseeing, we ask uh what events are coming up. I know for the LUSD's uh earthquake day, uh we participate with that.
189Fire drills, uh we participate with that. We try to coordinate uh with the schools itself and and uh and try to get to know what procedures you guys have in place. We'll bring our staff. I'll show up and we'll make it a team event and get to know what drills we're conducting, how do you guys conduct it, where's the safe spots and stuff like that. Thank you. No more questions. Board member Crutchfield. Thank you, Madam President. Um, just real quick, the again just the things that are different from the last time. Uh, the there was a recommended campus footprint. Um, you haven't done a a site walk through or anything, right? No. So, I I prepared that slide based off of the information that I was given uh by Carrie. So, she sent us some
190site maps of the of the schools and then I took the recommendations that were there and we developed this based off of what we typically do uh at site visits at other properties. So, we haven't done any official walkthroughs. Nothing is set in stone. Anything can be moved based off of the needs of the particular campus. So this is just a general idea. This is a general idea based off of the information that I was given. Does this also Sorry, real quick. Does this also take consideration the amount of staff that we have already at those sites? I don't think I got that information. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So also when those walkthroughs do take place um we do make a recommendation also, right? So if we feel that you might have a recommendation of having
191two two officers on a campus but the campus has 700 students or a thousand students or 1500 students. We're going to recommend that two two officers are not going to be able to handle that campus. It would be a collaborative thing. Correct. Thank you. You're welcome. Any other questions members? Short and sweet if possible. And thank you so much for presenting to us. Um I just wanted to just clarify the um the collaboration the philosophy of your company with collaboration with existing staff and administration that oversee um our guards on campus. What does that look like when you're coming in? So, so we try to make it a very smooth transition in a sense. So, as soon as we're awarded a contract, what we try to do is try to set up these walkthroughs, meetings,
192introduction of guards, going over post orders, walkthroughs of making sure that we have the adequate staff, um, understanding the culture of the campus. Those all take place before we start services. And then on a bi-weekly basis, we set up a call, a Zoom call, and we go over concerns, right? We go the f the first first couple months of service or first month of service, we we try to ask to have a call every week. Um quick call. Sometimes we'll get on a call, it's two minutes. Okay, Everything's great at my campus. We're done with the call. Or this is the issue I have. this is the issue I might have with the guard. So, not only having the bi-weekly meeting in person, we try to do a weekly call to understand to make sure
193that everything's being met that was promised to you. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions, comments? Um, I just want to give you some feedback. Um, I don't have any questions, but I just one thing I really enjoyed and liked about your presentation was that it was very transformative. I think that you have to make connections with kids and so I appreciate that and that you talked about relationships up front that were very night. That was very nice. Also, I like the fact that you talked about tactical versus like looking like law enforcement because sometimes people don't want law enforcement on your campus. So, the fact that you have tactical uniforms as well. I think that's awesome as well. Um, I thank you for thoroughly describing the assessment. We really didn't want anything out with, you
194know, our plans. We didn't want to ask specific questions. So, just the fact that you describe the process for us and what you would do for the assessment I really appreciate as well. Um, I'm still a little bit and it's not your company, it's from I wasn't on the committee, so what I'm seeing is all of the companies is that hands-on versus handsoff thing. That's still a little confusing, but we can get back to that. And I think that was it for me. Um, yeah, I just I really appreciated the relationship and the connection aspect of it and the deescalating prior being proactive because I'm a teacher myself and I know that you can talk some kids out of some things sometimes. So, I appreciate that um outlook from you guys as well. Thank you
195so much. Um, if there's not anything further, thank you for your presentation. We really appreciate Thank you guys for your time. Thank you for the opportunity. We look forward to hearing back from you guys. Thank you. Okay. So, as a major action item, it's proposed that we select and approve one of these consultant firms. um for services. So, is there any questions or comments on that? Any recommendations from our board? Um I would recommend we go with black knight. Um I have uh I don't know how much time I want want to take, but I think part of the discussion really needs to be um consistency in what the what these companies have said throughout the process. I think that's really important. um says a lot. Uh and also I think uh you know one
196one company uh city was talking about transition plans and a lot about transitioning. I think it's very important for whatever company we work with to understand that it's an added layer of support for our sites to and uh and not a transition uh of of that. And also the the amount of Uh when asked the question about training our uh current staff and development, I think the uh Black Knight having their own training facility and being well verssed in actual training uh is really important to me because for me uh this isn't a fix all of all safety issues. I think, you know, this is a really great conversation and I'm proud of the board for having the conversation and taking the time with it because I think it uncovers or puts a spotlight on
197a lot of different areas of safety that we can improve and I think one of those is the the training of our current staff. So, whatever we decide, I want to make sure that that uh supports that initiative going forward. Board member Son, I think just based on what we saw in the committee and then to see the presentations again, I think a few things stood out to me um in the differences of both companies. Um, and I piggyback off of uh clerk um critfield's uh remarks on it needs to be a collaborative for what we're actually asking for, not a takeover. I think one of the insights that we have in the committee is that our existing guards need support in many different areas. not just breaking up fights. Um it goes back to
198skill building, capacity building, certifications, um credentials and things like that. And so again, I thank the board for addressing these things, but I think it's one of many things that we could be doing and that we should be doing um in addressing this issue. But Black Knight just said over and over and over again, we're here in a collaborative way to support to make sure that we're here to be part of the team versus Cityguard was like, "Okay, we're going to do this and we're going to do this and this is how we're going to roll on, you know, rock and roll on these campuses and this is this is what we've And then I think I was off-puted by the two um officers that were speaking. One's from a juvenile detention camp and one's
199from a mental health um facility and we're talking about school campuses. And though those skills, because I've worked in both, those skills are very much needed, but it takes away from kind of like the bigger idea of our schools and what our campuses need to feel like versus what they're presenting. Black Guard also said that they make sure that they don't look like, you know, officers, you know, militant or an officer guard and they put their vest underneath their shirts and things like that to be more open and friendly for our students. And that's not the impression I got from this company. This company was very militant and I don't think we need that on our campuses. there is an element of something that we could have if that's what we so choose, but outside
200of our gates, not inside of our gates. I'm going to go ahead and chime in. Um, it's really difficult to have this conversation because we haven't talked about specifics and I don't even know if we want anyone on our campuses at this point, but I'll be honest, I think that Cityguard is the best company and that's where I would lean to basically because um, Black Knight was founded in 2015. They have been founded since 2007. Black Knight liability insurance was $7 million. City was $20 million. Um I thought they were both collaborative. They both have tactical gear. I didn't see anything really different um with the training. There didn't seem to be much of a difference and I again just as I said in my comments, I really appreciate the transformative views that they had
201in making connections with their kids. So I would be in favor of City Guard. Um, board member Armstrong. Yes. Um, I I'm for the record, I'm just going to say this. Um, I recognize that vehicle. Uh, and apparently they serve in and around Montabelloo and they did say that. And so I and and and they've never been on my campus. Never. And every time we have um a drill or something, it's uh well, I I have to say my district has their own uh police force also. So they come I've never I've seen the car drive around because you know like we're going to discuss this. So are we going to have them patrolling the area? Are we going to have them on campus? And that's something that we can discuss. So like I say,
202I've seen that car every day. But I have not seen them on my campus. I don't. But my district is three times as big as Bellflower. And plus, we we have more high schools. So maybe the model is going to have to be different depending on what site they are. You might need them on a high school campus and may not need them on an elementary school campus. Um I I really And I I I think even from the presentation and everything, I really do think I like City Guard. I also think that that you brought up another point for me is that they deal with a lot of different school districts when I'm looking at the comparison of who they deal with. I didn't write them all down, but he named off about 10
203school districts. So, I think that was really important to me as well. um board member or vice president GarcA um for me it was kind of a tough call um because like you're you all made the exact points that I was looking at as well um um without having a lot more details I think at this point I'm going to side with um city guard as I really like their um presentation. They their answers, the extra coverage that they do have. And I also saw that they have um some bias prevention training like that, equity bias prevention training, but I'm not sure if um I'm hoping that that will come into play more often. Clerk Crutchfield. Thank you, Madam President. Um, so a few things actually. Uh, one, um, can you, uh, how much does
204city guard pay their unarmed guards? Do we have those notes from the, uh, from the meeting? No, we we didn't. I'm sorry, I don't have those notes with me right now. Think that that would be a good Okay. Uh, so I believe it was $22 an hour. Um, where Black Knight's going to pay their their people closer to to 30, I believe. I wish I had the the numbers. 34. What I don't want this shouldn't be a cost item. Um, but if there's a reason why Black Knight mentioned having a somebody with 22 years of experience who's an SRO on campuses right now interested in the position of coming over, if they're going to retire and pick up a a a job, a retirement job, and they're going to choose whether or not to go
205with companies, I don't think they're going to go for the $22 when they can go for uh somebody who's going to pay more. And I think that when it comes to the quality of people on our campuses, that's the most important thing we could do, having somebody with experience and a background. Um, I would hate for us to go with somebody uh just because they're they're cheaper, but also like having lower experienced individuals on our campuses. I think that's a really important thing to to consider is the actual uh expertise of the people that we're hiring. Um, I think there there's positives with with City Guard. Um, but again, I think uh the quality of people that we're we're putting on our campuses is the most uh important thing to consider. And I I will
206also note that when it comes to going off in a committee, when a committee spends 12 to 14 hours going over all of this and makes a recommendation to the board and lays out why, I understand the hesitation, but uh it really uh in my opinion takes away the uh the value of spending 14 hours with a dozen people going over all this information to bring it back to your board. and then based off of two lengthy lengthy uh presentations come up with a completely uh different um opinion outside of the committee. Um let me one thing I'm sorry board member and Sean um before you say that uh one thing that I did want to say is we don't have those numbers. Do you have those numbers for us of the cost? Because we
207did not hear how much each one was paying. We didn't hear the expertise. We heard how one, you know, one was founded in 2007 versus 2015. And I understand about the committee going and I respect you guys and the work you do, but I also think that if the committee was so just adamant about one company, why were we given two companies? Why didn't you just bring us one company and tell us your recommendations? Do we have the numbers for what they pay them? Can I chime in? No, please. Hold on. I'm not finished. I'm going to bring that up for you. just in a moment. I believe it was sent on a daily memo. So, let me find that for you. Okay. Thank you. Okay. I understand, but I'm talking. Board member Centron, do
208you want to answer? Yeah. So, so um for city guard, their armed is only paid $24 an hour. or they're unarmed is paid $20 an hour versus Black Knight. They're they pay not what we're built, but what they pay out of pocket for hourly is $35 armed and $28 unarmed. Thank you, Vice President Garza. Yes. So just um to confirm our committee is thinking black knight is the best choice. Miss Trump, I think based on the presentations that were given tonight and the inconsistencies with one of the agencies or the companies, I think Black Knight is the favorite just based on the discussions that the committee had and the outside discussions as well. Um, really quick, um, Superintendent um, Acavo, I know they did presentations because we saw the initial presentations and the committee presentations
209were a little bit different than these presentations. Correct. That is correct. So, they were asked to provide additional information for the presentations for the board tonight. Correct. That is correct. They are both provided the same set of questions and the same information. And you were on that committee with our colleagues as well? Yes. Was there a did the committee come to a decision and did they all agree on one company? I would say that there are members of that committee that did express that Black Knight was their top of the two, but they did narrow down the four presenters to their top two and they automatically agreed that these were the top two that they wanted to recommend to the board. But they didn't come up with one final one as a committee. We didn't
210have them do that. We asked them to narrow it down. So, we didn't ask them to move forward with just one, but there were committee members that did express that that was their selected top one. Thank you for the additional information that we need. Board member Armstrong, um, did you also did any of the committee members, you said some said they really like Black Knight. Did some really like City Guard also? Again, let me clarify. We didn't do a tally of how many pick Black Knight first versus how many pick city guard first. We specifically asked them to narrow it down to two. I can tell you that verbally people did say that their top candidate was Black Knight, but I didn't have them write that down. I can't tell you, you know, five of
211the members said this and five members picked citygard, for example. My goodness, I have one more question and I forgot it. I'll come back to you. I there's a lot of people on here. Vice President GarcA um um Miss Tesso, would you be able to tell us exactly um because I can't remember off the top of my head who was in that committee? Oh goodness. Let's see if I can remember all of them. We had both of our union presidents. We had both of our high school principles, myself, Renee Alma, u Mr. Critzfield, U, Miss Cron, uh, we had Patrick Turner, Kevin Maize, Robin Mootz, Bail, who am I forgetting? Am I forgetting anyone? Miss Arcus, you say principal? Yes, high school principles. Christian Caceres, thank you. Did I miss anyone else? It was a
212fairly large group. Thank you. I I remember now. President, go ahead, board member. I'm sorry. Okay, we as a board still have to determine uh the terms in what we want and one of the terms is that it is a pilot program. So um even if we choose cityguard it's a pilot program. it, you know, we we may not want to extend that contract, but I I mean myself, I mean, honestly, I didn't I didn't even know City Guard was um a security company and I see the car every day. So, you're talking about low prow uh low profile. Um you know, we we we have our police that still does their job. So, we're still going to have our people doing their job. As far as, you know, Montabella, we still have Lakewood. I
213mean, I it's it's going to be a pilot program. There's a lot to still talk about with this with the specifics and things like that. We may not use them for anything. We just want to pick a company. Um, Clerk Richfield. Um, one thing I would say is that one of the I think benefits of having a security presence is the visual deterrent. So, I would say like seeing the car all the time and not even know that they're a security company like is counter uh it's counter to that where I think a visible deterrent is probably uh a good thing. Um, I would say and I understand like like committee and then bringing back information that like I'm the first one to feel like I don't have all the information. I get kind of
214freaked out uh sometimes. Um so I I totally get it. Uh and you wouldn't have all of the information out of like all of the meetings. Um but what I would say is is from my my personal uh experience having seen multiple presentations um there is that that feeling when someone's changing their answer because they they see that you didn't like it. they like the answer the first time, so they want to switch it up on you to me doesn't doesn't sit well with me. Um, and consistency is really important, especially with something as important as what we're talking about. Um, and but you wouldn't have that experience because you didn't see the the first presentation. Um but the that that switch up um and and there was a few instances of that in in
215the presentation uh doesn't sit well with me. Um I think the the quality of the the people coming on, people that would be willing to work for the 22 or 20 22 as opposed to um the like $10 more or whatever. Um I I find that That's going to be really important when it comes to who they're able to recruit because they're all kind of pulling from the same pool of people of retired law enforcement and people that are career security. Um, and again the training for our staff because you're right, this would be a novel thing for a district of in a more of a pilot thing and I don't think it's the end solution for our district. I think that this is one step to uh actually move forward with our campus security.
216Uh invest in it uh but with the intention of training our current staff, refining our policies, making them better overall, and then looking at ways to uh enhance our uh our security based off of what we find useful from a company that we were to contract with. whether it's investing in body cams for for our people or certain certifications and training um or even uh an additional position for for better communication. To me, this is moving forward on something that deserves our investment. Uh it's not a fixall to every security and safety concern that would arise from it. And uh for me that the character of the uh the information the the people and the information that I'm hearing um I feel much more comfortable uh with Black Knight given the consistency in their presentation
217um throughout the entire thing. Thank you. Any other comments, Vice President GarcA? Yes. Um, I I'm I know that when I say this that I think that people will judge me by going back and forth and not really being, you know, um, I mean on one decision or another, but after hearing um, you know, it's going to be a pilot. We don't have to keep them. Um and also uh valuing the time and effort that our board members did and the committee itself did did um invest in this. Um I'm going to change my decision. Um it'll be black knight. Okay. Can I get a motion or is there anything else? Can I get a motion? Make a motion to select Black Knight. Can I get a second? Second roll call, please. Miss Armstrong, no.
218Miss Cron, yes. Mr. Critchfield, yes. Mrs. Garza, yes. Miss Stewart, no. All right. So, moving along to consent agenda. Does anybody have any items they would like to pull for the consent agenda? Clerk Crill. All right. Hearing none. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? So moved. May I get a second? You have a second. Roll call, please. Miss Armstrong. Um I Mr. Trron I. Mr. Critchfield. I. Mrs. Garza. I. Miss Stewart. I. All right. We're at board communications. Um board member Centron, would you like to start? Sure. I'll try to make this short and sweet. Okay. So, [Music] um we're still undergoing the superintendent search. Um there was a forum done on March 18th, but I wanted to do a shout out to um remind parents and community members to please
219still the survey is still open. It ends on March 31st. You can find it on the district website. Um, scroll down to the um to the community input and the survey uh options are in English, Spanish and Arabic. So, please keep um community please uh keep um giving us your opinions on what we should be looking for and and forward to for our superintendent search. And then I also with that I'd also like to do a shout out that um B USD is hiring. So we're hiring for 11 positions ple uh um classified and certif and certified. Um and people can find and look into these jobs at edjoin.org blackbellflower ununified. I think it's very important that everybody is notified and those that want to apply can. Um, yeah. And that's all I'll say. Thank
220you, Bo Member Armstrong. Thank you, President Stewart. Um, all right. Um, I went to the training, the implicit bias training, and um, I I didn't I I'm sorry I didn't I didn't do the full the the the full training, but I've been trained before, but I love going to get a refresher and um, it was very very well received by the teachers and um, and I'm just going to just reiterate what I wanted to say. It was so much going on. we ran out of time and everyone was just chatting afterwards and everyone was really excited about it. But um I just want to say that it it does the um everything that he talked about and how we think and how we operate, it begins with us. It begins with you. And sometimes we
221don't know what's going on in our students lives. However, finding out their family dynamics will will provide you with we need to begin to make a difference in a child's existence. I do know that some of our teachers have assigned tasks for their students to share why they are participating in a extracurricular activity or or whatever a club. And like one year um this particular teacher was so impacted by the responses that the teacher sobbed. But the teacher did an immediate reset in hopes to meet the needs of the students. And to be sure all that was done was with empathy. That teacher now enjoys working with students even more because of the relationship that is being cultivated daily. And this is be this teacher did not have this training before. So we we're actually
222practicing a lot of this stuff. So again, I encourage you again to take as many of the implicit bias tests as you can and reflect. And as we continue to interact with our students, let's practice these principles. Let's keep this training alive by talking with our colleagues and strengthening that relationship. Let's be conscious of what we do and how we are doing it. And again, staff and my board members, my colleagues, I and and my teachers, uh you know, everybody, I really do appreciate all that you do uh in in this district for all of us. It's like we are we really want to foster that family concept. And um I do I want to give a shout out to every teacher, counselor, security staff, principal, assistant principal, uh custodial staff, cafeteria worker, everything. Um
223because my youngest my youngest child is about is set to graduate from Belfower High School. Glory, glory. I'm so happy. Um and and I want to say that my family has been blessed because three of my children now have careers. one is in her last few months of an externship and and the last one um is in um is about to graduate and her biggest problem is trying to find a prom dress and decide on what college she wants to go to. And the fun thing about it is that my kids would I've been in been in this district for years. My oldest daughter is Oh, I'm not gonna say that. Anyway, a lot of the teachers is because of the teachers here at Bellflower really and really took the time out to see the
224needs of my students. I and I'm going to tell you this is personal. I had this one ch one child I tell you every day her teacher would give her her a cup of grapefruit. You know how you have the little cuties in the cup? Well, this particular PE teacher had uh it was grapefruit and she would give it to my daughter every almost every morning and and I don't know I I I don't know what it was. Maybe she was hungry. She didn't want to eat her cereal or whatever breakfast I had and and trust me, we made our little lunch. But those little things that teachers do for the children, it makes a difference. And I'm telling you, the reason uh the reason why my children are are successful is because of the
225bellflower teachers and the time and effort they put in for my children. So I need to thank um the teachers for that because I didn't do this by myself and it's probably one reason why they so spoiled too because of these teachers here. So again, and one other thing is I did um last night um I went to the the transitioning for the mayor and the oath of office for the city of Cerritos. And um I just want to thank uh our president Amy Stewart because she got up there in front of I don't know how many people. It was packed, y'all. And it was it I mean, did you feel the like the unity in there? Everybody in there was it seemed like they were friends. But anyway, Amy got up there in front
226of everybody and she spoke on behalf of Belfflower. So, be proud of our president. So, thank you for that. And um a lot of history was also made last night for Cerritos because now they have three women on their board. And not only that, every one of the council members are Asian, Japanese, Taiwanese, they and they and I'm telling you they have so much support. They had all kind of elected officials and dignitaries in attendance. And I tell you, Amy and Amy and Brad left me. Do you know they were talking and making comments up to like 11 o'clock, if not later. That's why we left you, man. But they had some good food afterwards. So anyway, anyway, um I just want you to know, City of Cerritos. And the reason why I speak about
227Cerritos, just in case everyone doesn't know, we do serve a portion of Cerritos. Um um and so it's very important that Bellflower um continues that relationship with Cerritos. And one more shout out, remember that all of our students here in Bellflower can get a free library card from Cerritos. I can reme remember when I first met um the Frank Yokoyama way back. Well, not way back, but um in 2018, that was one of my first push is to make sure that they allowed our children to get a library card for free because they wanted to charge them $100. Now, if you lived in Alhhamra, because of the relationship that they have with Alhamra, you can get the car free. And I know that because I got brother that live out there. Uh but now we
228don't have to do that. Our children are in uh can get it can get a library card for free. It's a very nice facility. So remember you guys go out and get your library card and um and um let me see what else. I guess that's enough. Thank you so much for your time and yay, happy women's month. We got three women on the city of Certo's council. So, okay, that's it. Thank you, board member Armstrong. Clerk Cridgefield, thank you, Madam President. Just three. We got them beat. We got them beat. Uh yeah. No, but that's why we left. We knew it was going to go late. Um I do want to say uh congratulations to newly uh elected mayor Frank Aurelio Yokoyama. Much deserved and uh long overdue. also Vice Mayor Linda Johnson and
229newly elected council members Mark Pledo, Sophia Seay, and Jennifer Hong. Um, on top of them being just great representations of the community. Um, you know, the at least the four that I'm I'm really familiar with, they're they're just really good, passionate people that that really have a a passion for cerritos and just like sweat and bleed certos. So, I think the city's in in great hands and I hope that partnership uh with them just only grows with the the new council. So, congrats to them. Um I completed my bannual ethics training which is always very fun. Uh on March 14th, I met with Assemblyman Jose Salace to discuss AB1390. That's a great conversation. Uh excited to see how that goes through the uh the state assembly and senate. uh met with uh Michelle Quayard Dou
230and one of our district safety staff. Uh and on March 20th, I went to the Long Beach City College state of the college. I worked it, but I was there, so it's in the report. Uh and March March 26, I went to the Kendallite vigil for at Mayfair for Kayla Payne. Uh I will say her her light was definitely shining uh bright that night. And I just want to say thank you. First of all, my condolences again to her family. Her mother, her mother spoke at the uh event. Um I was accompanied by uh my board member Centron and district staff. And uh so I say thank you to everybody at the site who made that event uh just just perfect. And uh I think everybody felt her and felt the love and uh proud
231of the site for for putting that on. I think it was really important. Um that's all. Thank you, CRO. Vice President GarcA, good evening everyone. Um, I was a little bit um out of action this month. So, um, I do want to apologize for my tardiness today. Um, my school had an open house. Um, decided to to put it on. Teachers had to be there 4:30 to 6:30, so that's why I was late. Um, but I also wanted to make a comment. Um, I think in my opinion, um, and I think that I I've already said this during my last during our vote for the security company, um, I if we are saying we are united in purpose, then we should be sticking together just like it says there. Um, I want to remind everyone
232that although we have gone through very traumatic parts of our history here at BUSD that we are not the same board, we are a brand new board, we have members here who are brand new to our board. Um, we strive to make sure that our district and our staff members are getting what they need, getting what they um, deserve, and also that we are working with you. And we expect that from everyone, not just ourselves, but of our staffs and um, the staff that works for us on a daily basis on those campuses because we should be united. we should be together. Um because this is for the kids and I know that we are we would not be doing and or be here doing the daily work that is so sometimes difficult um for
233everyone if we were not united for those kids. So I just that's my comment for tonight. Have a nice night. Thank you, Vice President Garza. Good evening. Um, I attended our Cal Apps meeting again. We talked about 13 students made to Skills USA April 10th to 12th. So, I'm really excited and wish them good luck. Friday, I stopped by the implicit training um at Belfflower High School. I really want to thank board member Armstrong. I know you pushed this training and its importance. And to Dr. Smith and to Dr. Knox, thank you so much for bringing a fantastic speaker. I need to see him. So, we need to bring him back so I can go see him because I've only seen bits and pieces, but everyone I have gotten so much great feedback. So, I
234don't know if there was more people involved, but I know you two guys did a lot. And any other staff, thank you so much for bringing him to us. On Tuesday, I joined the Somerset Wasque Zoom with staff and um board member Centron. I was glad to be a part of that process. I had not been a part of that process, so that was a good learning experience. Last night, I too attended the Cerritos city uh council mayor transition. Congrats to Frank Aurelio Yokoyama on becoming the new mayor of Cerritos. I look forward to any collaboration that we can do with our city partners. And I just wanted to introduce myself and let them know we're here to support, to collaborate. We're all here for kids. So, that was pretty cool. I am very excited
235to hear that Mayfair will be offering dual enrollment. We have talked about this since I came on the board. Um so, it was really nice to see that we're finally making this happen. I was able at last night to talk with Marica Perez and she gave me some um background information. Um and it was really nice to hear that we're putting that in place. I was also excited to see the banners were put up at Mayfair to let our community know that the fields will be coming soon. I learned about that through Clerk Critzfield's video. And so that was really exciting for me to look at and see on his um his Instagram. Um, lastly, I just want to thank all of our educational partners for their input during our community forums and for the
236replies to our superintendent search survey. Collaboration is a word that we use often, but it's so important to get feedback from our parents, our students, our teachers, and staff. So, thank you. It's been nice to see that there's been a lot of participation with this search for our new leader. And I know as a board that is our main focus is to find a great leader that can lead us and do great things for us. So, that is number one on our minds right now. Um, so thank you so much. Are there any questions onformational items? Hearing none, we are going to be going back to close session. So at this time, the board will recess to close session. There will be no further action taken in open session.