001Okay. Good evening everybody. All right. Good evening. We are going to be calling this uh regular board meeting to order. This meeting will be recorded and also livereamed. Uh for the last hour, our board was in close session and no action was taken. Let's go ahead and stand now for the uh flag salute. 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, liberty and justice for all. >> All right. At this time, um I'm going to ask, uh Greg Blake to introduce the student reports. Hey, our principal. I think it's on now. Thank you, Mr. Blake, honorable board, uh, wonderful families that are turned out tonight and got your kiddos here. It's my pleasure to introduce Mr.
002Tanner John supported by Miss Nickel and Miss Ferris um and our amazing Bidwell choir. These teachers work tirelessly to create an amazing culture for our students. And uh time and time again in student interviews, they cite choir as being their home, their safe place on campus, the place where they are most them and most seen and most heard and appreciated. And I feel like that's going to come out in their music tonight. So without further ado, Pioneer Choir, Mr. Enjoy. having us get out of here. >> Thank you students. >> Thank you very much. >> That was awesome. Okay. So that was phenomenal. Thank you again. If anybody's still in the room, thank you. Good choir. We appreciate it. And ne up next we have Mr. McKay. >> Oh, I'm sorry. Can we get maybe
003uh >> What do you need? >> A mic check on you. That's really >> Yeah. >> I don't know what What do you want me to do? Further away. >> How about this one? Is that Oh, no. We're still getting some cool. Is that better? Okay. All right. Sweet Caroline. Hey. All right. I appreciate it. All right. >> No problem. It's a great encore. Uh for this portion of the uh superintendent report, I'd like to invite my colleague, Mr. Dan Lynville, up here, who is here under false pretenses, thinking he's going to talk about one thing, but really he's here to listen to me talk about him. Mr. Dan Lynville is the superintendence award winner for a certificated side for the month of February. So you don't have to answer any questions about Lego robotics
004or prop 28 or anything like that. I tried to keep it like real like hey yeah you can talk about anyway. >> No, you got me. >> So it was hard. It was hard. Sandy got assist from Sandy. >> Thank you. >> There you go. So uh Dan, he's been a rock solid teacher in Chico Unified for over two decades because I know we're about the same. You're younger than me though I think. um at elementary and at junior high. He was one of the the people that came up to Bidwell when the sixth graders moved up and has been a rock solid member of our science team ever since and definitely like the glue, the big motor that kind of keeps everything going. Um the last few years, um you know, our community has
005seen lots of adversity. Bidwell was no different. Dan, besides being outstanding in the classroom with kids, a student favorite year in and year out, also just that that consumate quiet getting roll up your sleeves, bring your lunchbox to work, getting it done for your colleagues, for your students, and also at the same time innovating and always striving to make things better. So, while I could brag about Dan uh for a while, I thought it'd be even better to hear what some of your colleagues had to say about you, because there were more people in on this than than just me. >> All right. Uh, so we'd like to salute Dan for the many hats he wears on our campus this year. Dan has stepped up in a massive way by taking on a six-fifths contract,
006expertly balancing two different subjects between his core science classes and his steam electives. He's a pillar of our science department and a true team player who consistently goes above and beyond his standard duties. Dan's hard work, versatility, and passion for his students undeniably make our school a better place to work and learn. This one in particular resonated with me. Dan is a silent hero, never boasting or requiring attention for his work, just quietly doing the most for our students with so much heart. It would be easy for him to be on autopilot after the many years he has been teaching. But he is always innovating, taking things on, and planning brand new programs, labs, and activities. For example, he's pioneering a Prop 28 funded uh VEX program, Lego Robotics 2, uh in our seven period.
007And so while we lost some of the after school program funding, Dan was somebody who stepped up and so we're effectively offering after school program choices with Prop 28 money providing those extra opportunities. Um, sure he grumbles from time to time. It's not my words. You probably know who's saying that. >> But even when grumbling, if you really listen to the message, it's that he loves his students and wants the very best for them. I'm so glad that Dan gets to be recognized today. He is more than deserving of the praise. So for that reason and many many more, it's my honor to recognize Dan Lynville as superintendent award for certificated for February. Good. And two for two. Uh, if I could get Miss Denise Mchuan down here, who I think think she's out on
008a dinner date with her daughter. They're fine. >> When did you first realize something was up? >> When we pulled into the parking lot. >> Oh, that we that long. >> Yeah. >> I thought you would have sniffed this out like I thought we were going >> every time I walked by you avoiding eye contact. >> Yeah. Okay. Good job. Christina almost blew it. >> Oh, yeah. She told me about that. She came in and confessed it. Denise Muan, our office manager at Bidwell Junior High School. Uh again, another silent hardworking cog that without whom the place would would crumble and in fact we got to experience what that was like a little bit. We had some health issues a while back. U we barely held on without her. But again, while I could brag
009all day, I think it's even cooler to hear what some of your colleagues had to say about you. Denise is the essential gear that keeps the school rolling every single day. From the complex logistics of managing substitutes and balancing budgets to handling supply orders and the endless stream of random questions that come her way, her expertise is unmatched and the sense of humor unmatched as well. She has this sign that says move away when people talk too loud. It's hilarious. It's no exaggeration to say that 99% of the time she has the answer right at her fingertips. She truly keeps the ship afloat and we are incredibly grateful for the steady hand and dedication she brings to our campus. Another colleague, I've had the honor of working with and sitting right next to Denise for
010the last 12 years. I have seen firsthand her hard work and dedication to Bidwell as our office manager. There is no one more deserving of this award. From Bidwell's remodel, our expansion to accommodate over a thousand students, the campfire, and COVID, Denise has kept the school running like a pro. In the midst of a busy day, her level of patience is unmatched. I don't know what Bidwell would do without her. To me, she is not just an amazing co-orker, but also a great friend. And then finally, Denise, our fearless leader. Well said. That are the brains of the operation. Stand on me. I'm very happy and not surprised you are being honored tonight for your amazingness. You greet everyone with a smile, positive attitude, and handle any task thrown your way. You even smile and
011laugh when you get frustrated, which is a little scary, but you know that laugh is scary, but you always stay professional. I appreciate you and think you are an amazing human. on behalf of the office team. Again, could not do this without you. You make everything happen. Um you're the go-to person and I just want to thank you for all that you do for Bidwell and I'm honored to recognize you for the superintendence award for the month of February. >> Oh, that's awesome. >> Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Congratulations. At this time, I'd like to invite um our CS CEA um president, Kelly Surl, to the podium to announce um her staff recognized this evening. Okay. Is it on now? Thank you. Thank you, President Conin, CSA school board and district office. Tonight, CSEA
012is focus focusing on our nutrition services team. CUSD nutrition services feeds almost all of Chico Unified students and is a vital part of our students education. To introduce tonight's CSA member of the month, I'd like to introduce Holly Poniano, Chico 110 vice president. Thank you again for having us here tonight. Um, I'd like to introduce to you our February uh member of the month. This is Alejandro Zarate and he is the nutrition services uh purchaser. So, he is in charge of um uh ordering, dealing with um vendors of of buying all of the food that feeds our children. So, and plus many more things. Um we're really grateful to have Alejandro on the team for nutrition services. Um he's a valuable valuable part of um almost kind of behind the scenes. Um and uh we're
013glad to have him here. Um he was nominated by Thane Poniano who said that Alejandro goes above and beyond his duties to make sure the sites get items they need to feed their students. He approaches issues and take and tasks with a very professional mindset that's helpful to us all. Vince Ensero um the director of nutrition services also told us a little bit about Alejandro. Um he said that you can see that he's a real go-getter over the years. He's challenged himself to create good relationships with all of the nutrition services team. Alejandro is one of the few people that I work with that takes advice to heart and finds ways to continue to grow. This year he and I have worked very hard on our bid for next year. Alejandro gets excited about finding
014ways to be more efficient and loves saving the department money. Um he does he does this by having good relationships with our business partners. Um when I uh talked with Alejandra a little bit, he um also has said that um you know he's been with the district since 2021. He was hired on as nutrition services purchasing coordinator um in order to purchase all the food and supplies that the district may need with along with the help of delivery drivers um their store. They rotate all their frozen, refrigerated, and dry goods throughout the day along with coordinating deliveries to every school every morning. Um, he said he appreciates all the delivery drivers, the warehouse staff, and the production kitchen staff and all the kitchen managers and cafeteria assistants for working hard and supporting one another. And
015he takes the opportunity to thank um, everybody for this award on behalf of the whole department. So, um, thank you, Alejandro. He is a great guy. Like I said, I get to talk to him, too. who he works along with my husband and um it's just fabulous to have people who care so much about their positions at Chica Unified, but to be able to help feed children obviously is um um an amazing feat. So um thank you again, Alejandro, and congratulations. Um we appreciate you so much. Thank you. >> Congratulations. Thank you. >> Okay. At this time, um I'd like to introduce uh Professor Charles Zartman and Heather Hacking. They're here um this evening with the educators from across the country. Uh so at this time, if they'd like to come forward and introduce um
016the program and the attendees that are here this evening. >> Okay. And I'll spare you the one by one, but if if my people could stand up and maybe wave. Okay. >> Yeah. Great. So, I'm Heather Hacking, um, program manager for international training at Chico State, and we wanted to recognize that we have 22 international educators from 21 countries in Chico right now. They're attending a six-w weekek really intensive training program um, through the college and starting Friday, they will be in our local schools. So, I actually see some of our partner teachers here. Um they'll be matched with one of our um your local teachers from Chico High, Pey, or Chico Junior. They'll be there for a week. We've already visited um Chico Country Day and they're learning tonight about how the school board
017um process works. So, thank you for welcoming us and um they'll be around. >> Thank you. Welcome. >> Okay. Okay. At this time, I'd like to ask if any board members have any announcements regarding student events or awards or um any school site accomplishments. >> All right. >> I I I want to say one thing. Well, maybe more than one thing. Um >> one of the perks of being retired is that I have the day available for the most part. So, I'm really enjoying um visiting sites and um just number one seeing the kiddos. that's really special. But then all of the events that are happening and how things work on campus, it's just been wonderful. And thank you to all administrators. I mean, I guess you have to, but um you welcome me with
018open arms. So, thank you. >> Thanks, Kale. And and I just I wanted to say that uh reading pals had a training um that was excellent focusing again on um h on reading theory and how the brain works and then also how um we have to focus on the student before um anything can happen. And so we had um one of the um Tiger Unified School psychologists come in and address the group. And so that was really a valuable um a valuable uh experience. So thank you to Reading Pals for doing that. You Okay, we're going to be moving on um to items from the floor at this time. Um so um just so the public is aware um items from the floor are for speakers who wish to address the board regarding a topic
019that's not um on the agenda. So at this time uh we will take public comment for speakers who wish to address the board uh for topics not on the agenda. And as a reminder, speakers will have three minutes to address the board. A buzzer will sound when 30 seconds of speaking time remains. And uh we um as the board we can listen to public comment. Uh we're not able to respond to any speaker um under these items. So we do have three names that have been submitted. So I'm going to call them in the order. Uh the first one is Deanna Lindström. Hi, my name is Diana Lindstöm. Thank you board members for allowing me to address you. I am a parent of a child who posted a political belief and was then told he
020should kill himself for it by another student. I would like to say thank you to the staff and board members who reached out offering help without judgment. being told, and I quote, "Rather, it sounds like dating Natalie and subsequently talking to a bunch of girls is the issue at hand, and Tyler's interactions with girls seem to be at issue," end quote, is an excuse to justify someone's poor behavior. This coming from someone who serves on the board, I am truly disgusted. It was not open for debate why someone might think my child was told that, nor did this person offer help. California Education Code, specifically sections 7050 through 7058, prohibit school district employees to engage in political activity during work hours and to use public resources for political activities. Teachers and administration are to remain
021neutral on political activities. When any teacher administrator helps to organize protest, post personal views within their classroom or speak on such during instructional time, they are no longer following laws or rules of Chico Unified School District. These actions then become a part of the school culture. Administration, staff, and the school should be neutral. There are already high tensions surrounding political views with adults behaving recklessly and impulsively. Children and young adults are learning from these behaviors and instead of having constructive discussions, they are assaulting their peers. No one should ever tell another human to kill themselves and no one should ever try to justify why that statement was made. The response I re received from this individual made it very apparent why these codes exist and should be followed because even the adults in charge are
022biased and allow their political emotions to distort their thinking. Again, thank you to those who reached out without judgment and offered help. Thank you. >> Thank you. Okay, at this time I'd like to invite Gina Bax. >> Good evening board. Thank you for having me here today. I am the mother who has stopped the intersection last Thursday to exercise my own freedom of speech during the protest outside the PBS school. I'm also a PB parent. What happened to me there, including an old grown man entering my vehicle and physically and verbally attacked me, is now a police matter and it will be handled appropriately. But tonight is not about me. Tonight shouldn't be about me. It should be about approaching real issues that matter and is affecting all our children. Tonight is about supervision, safety,
023and the district's responsibility to students during school hours. During instructional time, minors walk off campus and gather at a traffic intersection. This expose them to moving vehicles, counterprotesters, and confrontations. During instructional time, minor Oh, I'm sorry. I already repeat that. I originally believed this would be a demonstration occurring on campus. I didn't know this was going to happen off campus. This is this was new to me. When large numbers of students leave class at the same time, gather together, and the timing aligns with a known demonstration, the district is no longer simply recording absences. It becomes liable if something happened. Why are we putting a school staff in this situation? Their priorities are teaching, coaching, and educating children not to become police officers trying to control mobs. What a waste of taxpayers money and what
024a huge liability. Another issue, many parents learned about this protest through a flyer circulating on social media nearly a week beforehand. The original flyer listed a teacher's name and classroom number as a contact point. Later versions removed the name but kept the room number. Schools sent notifications about the protest after the fact. What bothers me the most is that responsibility shifted onto the minors. Students absolutely have free speech rights, but schools also have a legal duty to educate. Demonstrations should occur on campus in a supervised setting during recess and or before after schools. Listen, when a school allows one cause during class time, it must allow all causes. Campuses then become recurring protest venues instead of learning environments. To the parents who kept their children in class, thank you for prioritizing safety and attendance. To
025the students who stayed, you show independence and critical thinking. To the teachers who continue instruction, thank you for prioritizing academics over ideologies. We need more teachers like you in this world. Parents should also understand when minors participate in off-campus public demonstrations, they enter spaces where the school cannot reasonably ensure their safety and their privacy is not protected. Thank you. You >> Okay. And our last um speaker who submitted a card is Danielle Penning. Yes. Okay. She couldn't make it. Are there any other speakers? Okay. Come on up. Just to remind you, you have three minutes and there will be a buzzer when you have 30 seconds remaining. Can you please also introduce yourself? Nice to meet you guys again. Um, my name is um, Valyriia Torres Godí. Um, I'm here to talk about student safety
026from adults and parents regarding a recent harassment on both on and off campus. To preface, there was a protest, a peaceful protest on February 12th about ICE. Students were using their first amendment right to protest. I want to thank all of the students from PV that showed up to represent us. I'm one of the organizers that organized this protest and this is all studentled. Okay. Um we all made sure that it was a peaceful protest. We made sure to prompt other students to maintain safety and there was no teacher involvement. Okay. However, during this protest, a parent stopped during an intersection with kids still crossing and the crosswalk sign was still on and played the song Ice Ice Baby seemingly with intention to upset us and proceeded to leave her car out of out during
027this intersection to upset us. Although although she has the first right amendment just like all of us do, she put herself in harm's way and same with us students. A parent ran out there worried about our safety. Us students asked her to leave and get off the road and so did the parent. She was filming us and harassing us minors. Us students have consequences for cutting a class or being tardy leading to detention. But what are the consequences to these parents? What are you guys going to do to protect us from all of this harassment and all of these comments from adults? These are our adults. We are supposed to look up to them. But how are we supposed to look up to them when they are harassing us? I'm a future voter, so I
028have the right and so does everybody in this room have has the right to speak up and use their first amendment. Thank you. Hey, um are there any other speakers from the floor? Okay, come on up. Please introduce yourself and then just as a reminder, three minutes. >> Hi, my name is Caitlyn Sheridan. I am a sophomore at Pleasant Valley High School and was a very active participant in visualizing this protest come to life. And also, I was there on Thursday and witnessed the events. And I'm not going to stand up here and point fingers and try to play a game of he said, she said, because that's not going to get us anywhere. I'm going to cut right to the chase and say we planned a peaceful walk out studentled and I am so
029proud of us for standing up for what we believe in and exercising both our first amendment and our rights under the student conduct code. However, the events got out of hand as a parents decided that it was within their right to harass a group of minors, film us, and block traffic in order to display their own beliefs. And while everyone has freedom of speech, I it was a peaceful protest and if not for that, nothing else would have really had to have. But because of the immaturity of the people we are supposed to look up to and follow, I am standing here today before you as a result. So I just want you to think about why is it my job to be responsible for the acts of a grown adult and why is it
030our job to protest? While it is our right, it shouldn't have to happen and we shouldn't have to defend our own rights. So, I believe action should be taken. And while it is not in my hands to choose that action, I strongly urge you to really think about who you're letting near us and how you are handling these situations because at the end of the day, we were the ones at risk and we were the ones in harm's way. And that is all. Thank you. All right. Are there any other Come on up. >> Hi, my name is Alicia Trider. I'm a local educator and parent here in Chico. And I just want to say how proud I am of all the students that showed up to that protest and organized it themselves last week.
031That was amazing. Oh my god, I was so proud of you. We are doing something right in Chico. If our students can do that, can recognize something happening in our community and organize around it and stand up for their own rights. That's amazing. We have amazing young people in this community. I'm so proud of you. I hope you all hear me. I'm so proud of you. And I teach at the college level. I teach American history at the college level. And your ancestors would be so proud of you. You are the good ancestors. Uh yeah, that everybody's looking towards. Okay? You're doing the right thing. So, please keep speaking up. uh because we are so proud of you as adults. Thank you. Are there any other members public that would like to speak? Okay. Right.
032One second here. Okay. At this time, we're going to be moving on to our consent calendar. Um are there any board members that have any questions for clarification purposes? >> Yes. Um so on page uh 25 of 31 I believe I just wanted to get clarification from um our business our CBO regarding like the timing of the payment for for the um Vicotta system. Could you explain that timing please? Uh I and I'm sorry that's on the Yes. The accounts payable. Yes. So that payment was related to the cameras that the board approved in December. Those were ordered in January and received at the end of January and then payment was issued February 10th. Thank you. Do we have any other questions? Would anyone like to uh would any board member like to pull a
033consent item for further discussion? Okay. So, at this time, um would anyone like to make a motion to approve the consent calendar? A >> motion to approve. >> Okay. We have a >> second. Yes. >> Okay. We have a first by um Vice President Olsen and a second by Lando, Mr. Lando. Uh any discussion at this time? Okay, let's go ahead and and vote. Um Oh, >> the consent calendar. Okay. Yes, we do have a quite a list. Okay. So, let's go ahead and vote. And um Mrs. Hayes, can we begin with you? H I >> Olsson I. >> Conan I. >> Lando. I >> Robinson I. >> Okay. We have um five in favor, none opposed. So, um, we this passes the consent calendar. Okay, let's go ahead and move on. Um, we're now
034on we're going to be talking about um, okay, so just to be clear here, this is a public hearingformational. Um, we're going to be talking about Wildflower Open Charter School uh renewal and let's see, uh, Heather Sufentes is going to be presenting. >> Good evening. Um, so we're here tonight to welcome Wildflower Open Classroom to share a little bit about their charter. They're currently petitioning for renewal. So they gave us their petition in January and so this is our opportunity to showcase and have them share some of the highlights of their school, things that they're focused on and and open it up to the public. They'll come back also in March, right? We're in February. So at our March meeting will be the final where we um look at the full petition and currently ed
035services is going through their renewal and looking at all the details of it. So I'd like to welcome uh Tom Hicks who is the director of wildflower. How do I click through this? Am I doing that? Just right there. All right. Thank you. >> Hello, Chica Unified Board and Administration. My name is Tom Hicks and I'm the director of WildFlower Open Classroom. uh and I'm with you this evening to highlight some of our school's successes uh in our past uh since our past charter renewal which was about seven years ago now. Uh as an FYI before I get started um I wanted to let you know that I'm going to skip through a few slides to um help us stay on time tonight. I know you guys all have a busy evening. So um first
036we'll start with our mission at Wildflower. Our mission uh is to be an innovative and progressive school. We strive to be collaborative community. Uh we are also a democratic organization that welcomes input from all stakeholders. In addition, we on a daily basis try to celebrate the adventure of learning. Got to get with it here. Sorry, there it is. Confirming my staff's um suspicions that I don't know how to use a remote control. But um this is our mission statement that should have been up last time. Um we're on to uh our guiding principles. Um these are our guiding principles. Um they are core values that serve to guide all of our actions. Um the founding uh members of Wildflower developed eight value sets that guide how we do business on a daily basis. Um and
037so these are the eight eight things that guide um our decision-making processes. Um how we act as a board and how we act as a staff too as well. Um I'd just like to highlight a couple things recently. Uh, as a staff, we've um tried to highlight being respectful and positive. Communication and honesty have been stressed at our school as of late as it seems to be increasingly important in our society. All right. Above all, our school adheres to the open classroom model uh with a wildflower twist. In fact, just as of late over the summer and into the fall, our board uh and staff has developed a list of fundamental elements that best exemplify a model classroom at our school. Elements that need to be included in every open classroom classroom. Um these are
038some of the elements that we adhere to uh in our philosophy. Uh students work uh individually or in small groups depending on the activity. Uh choice and independence uh are emphasized and supremely important at our school. Uh classrooms are multi-age uh and learning spaces are flexible. Uh uh teachers act as facilitators or guides at our school rather than kind of didactic people that stand up in front of a classroom. They interact with children and help guide them through the curriculum. Uh collaboration and community are central to the classroom and commitments or work lists uh help develop work habits, organization and focus. And one of our taglines is dirty hands and belly laughs are the sign of a great day at Wildflower. Um the most fundamental of all the fundamental elements of our school is integrated
039thematic learning. Um in integrating subjects into thematic units demonstrates the interconnectedness of our world. Um higher levels of engagements are created through this method. Uh, hands-on activities, projects, and choice support learning styles and diverse learners. Um, let's skip through these a little bit, but uh, students develop critical thinking and and they apply knowledge across disciplines and deeper understanding is created as students explore themes and make connections across multiple subjects. Some of the examples of classroom themes over the years have been food uh, growth. Um, our kindergarten did a whole year theme on just dirt, uh, which I thought was fascinating. Uh, castles, Harry Potter Potter d, uh, dig fossils, Americana were some of the other themes. And one of the most comprehensive themes that I've seen in recent memory, uh, our fifth and sixth grade
040teacher did a year-long longitudinal study of women's suffrage movement um, on the 100th anniversary of um, that movement, their uh, right to vote amongst other things. Uh Wildflower loves its surveys. Uh and we do survey quite a bit. Um we have I'm going to show you two surveys uh this evening. Our student survey and a parent survey. Um the overall satisfaction percentage on these surveys is uh an average of the 15 questions that are sent out to parents and uh kids. It's an average of u of the clim climate survey questions. Um overall um our student survey results are demonstrate solid satisfaction and a significant increase from 2425 to 2526 of about 16 percentage points which I think is great. And I'd like to highlight too uh one question um I believe my teacher cares
041about me. Um and 97% of the students answered yes on that. And I think that is supremely important. Um on to the parent survey. Um parents are surveyed twice a year. Um results drive alcap and school improvement uh goals. Uh we also take our our our survey results very seriously and act on identified areas of need. Our parent satisfaction results have been historically consistent and high over the years which I believe is a very good sign and is also representative of our great staff up in the high 80s in the parent satisfaction. I thought it would be interesting just real quick because we are uh renewing our charter uh to just take a look at our enrollment trends. Um we started in 2011 2012 with just 52 students uh and then made slow growth up
042until around the time of COVID where we received kind of a sharp decline. Uh and we're back up on the rise again and um rebounding with our enrollment and at about 187 now. Uh and we plan to grow to about 210 students over the next couple of years. Next couple of slides just kind of illustrate how we have grown since our last uh charter uh renewal which was seven years ago, quite some time ago. Um first area is uh recently we realigned our classrooms at the beginning of this academic year. Get too far. There we are. uh realigned our classrooms at the beginning of this ac academic year. This was a teacher-led initiative. Um it was also um with full community support after a couple of town halls. We discussed the topic. Um we used
043to be a a kindergarten standalone a 1 2 3 4 5 six together and then a 78 middle school. Um and now we're aligned in this in this structure which is kind of the the same process that Chica Uni Unified went through uh a number of years ago. Our grade levels are now better aligned with the scope and sequence for reading instruction and other state standards. Kindergarten was a standalone before too and it now is grouped with uh first grade. Uh and so that gives uh those K students a little bit more of a a better um multi-age not graded experience too as well. Um couple of new programs that we have since we last were uh chartered. Um we're very proud of our our meal program which was developed in 2022. Um good food
044is always a wonderful addition to our school day. Um our staff I think our staff I don't know if all education staffs are mildly obsessed with food. Uh but we certainly are at our school. Um this is Chef Jacob who is a master of turning commodities into healthy and delicious meals. Uh we used measure K funds and kit funds to redo our kitchen in 2023 and we're now serving about a 100 lunches on site and 20 breakfasts. Uh and really striving to be a model um to develop a model meal program. We have a unbelievable afterchool staff that has helped us grow our afterchool program the last couple of years and summer programs. Um we our our after-school program is now an integrated thematic program which aligns with our philosophy. Um we have our own
045staff for that. Um we have really good cohesion between our day pro you know our school day and the afterchool program which really really helps with um with discipline and behavior. Um and also um we've developed or our staff has developed an on-site six week summer camp which began in 2024. great after school staff. Um, outdoor education and adventure has always been a part of our wildflower culture. Um, a multi-day river trip down the Sacramento River is now a tradition in our school. Happens every two years and started around the the the second year uh this that the school was founded. Uh we recently added a four school transition, excuse me, a four school transitional kindergarten program and we've also added forest days um for our elementary students. Um I put together a list of
046rationale which we're not going to have time to go through uh tonight. Um it would be fun to talk about because it's really interesting research um on the need for and benefits of outdoor education. Um and and those needs and benefits are very well documented. Uh we utilize these um needs and benefits uh to develop our forest school and outdoor education programs at our school. Couple different programs and we have uh our new TK forest school program is a transitional program uh established in 2024. Um we have 14 students, one teacher and two assistants out there. It is at 5 mile in Bidwell Park. Rain or shine. Uh you can see our TK kids in their um forest school rain suits on a rainy day. Um and some of the outdoor activities you can see
047up on the screen and adventuring and healthy risk-taking are are a daily occurrence uh at our TK4 school. Uh forest days uh forest days involve individual classrooms spending the entire day in nature. Our forest days evolved out of a discussion about how to expand our forest school through the elementary grades. This was a board level decision, something that they really wanted to see a cohesion, not just a standalone uh forest uh forest school. And it it's been highly successful. Um each wildflower classroom has between five and six forest days a year, which are full immersion days. Um different places in the park. Um activities include, this is from the for school coordinator, tadpole saving, mud play, uh quiet reading. There are some academics that do go on out there. Um but mostly it's just um
048activities um uh in in Bidwell Park. Lucky lucky to have Bidwell Park. So um and to work with the city on that too as well. Um I'm going to end this section with a quote uh from one of our teachers. Uh, my students that have a hard time in the classroom were calm physically and emotionally. They were incredibly creative, productive, curious, and without prompting, they were cooperative. That's a quote from a teacher. Um, and I believe that this exemplifies why Wildflower has forest programs and um, is continuing to push for outdoor education in our community. I am going to sum it up with a shame with a with a shameless promotion for our wildflower music festival 2026. It's our biggest fundraiser. Uh this year we're bringing back the brothers come toast which is have been
049a big hit in the past. It's on May 9th. Uh and it is in 20th Street Park there's the school's largest fundraiser and it was a good time. So, um I would just like to conclude uh by thanking the CUSU board and administration for your time and consideration of our charter. Um and while I have the public's ears, I would also like to publicly acknowledge and thank uh the wild floor flower staff and board. Uh they are a phenomenal bunch of educators and it's an honor to work with them. Thank you. I have two things. Um I'm just curious if you have any insight. I was struck by the um student survey results from from 2425 to 2526 and you said it was a significant increase. I'm wondering if there if you have any insight
050into that. >> It's uh surveys with small schools are tough. Yeah. because a couple a couple answers could could move or move the move the pendulum up and down. We have spent a great deal of time which I didn't talk about tonight on social emotional growth at our school. Um and also kind of working with teachers connecting with students and making sure that they have an outlet um is as far as their is their needs are concerned and I think that that may have something I would like to think that that had something to do with it. Um and we'll see as that as time progresses because we'll have the same questions going forward. It's a good question. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. I appreciate that. You're right. The small number. Um and also if
051you haven't been to the Wallflower Music Festival, >> you got to go. >> Thank you. >> I'm just saying I think I already have my tickets. >> Any other board members have questions? >> No question. Just to thank you. I really appreciate Wildflower's approach to education. I think it's something >> our city needs. I appreciate you guys. >> Thank you. Well, I was really grateful that you explained what a forest day was because at first it wasn't it wasn't clear. >> So, thank you for that. >> Wasn't us, too. We're just ironing it out. So, >> it's amazing. Sounds great. >> It's really going well, though. >> Okay. At this time, I'm going to open um to open the public hearing. So, if there's any public comment regarding Fileflower, that can be done at this
052time. Okay. I'll go ahead and close the public hearing. Thank you. So, if I understand correctly, this isformational only. So, uh, no vote needs to be taken at this time. Um, so thank you, Wildflower. At this time, we're going to ask Blue Other. Hello again. So, we also have Blue Oak with us this evening, and they are in their charter petition as well. They presented in January. The ed services team is currently reviewing it. Um, and they are here. They have had some leadership transitions. So, I have on the mark Vicky Wanakott, board chair, and Lauren Cesca, a board member, have started the petition and are planning to present with a few other students and parents. Welcome. Welcome on up. >> Okay. Hi, I'm Vicki Wanikott. I'm the chair of the Blue Oak. Hello. I'm
053the chair of the Blue Oak Charter Council. I've been with the school since um 2017 uh a little bit after I retired from teaching and my grandkids got into Blue Oak kindergarten which was a truly magical place. Um, I took a tour of the school, became convinced it was a good way to go and became part of the board and now I'm the chair. Um, tonight we have um, Blue Oak. Blue Oak offers a grounded education in holistic principles of Waldorf. Our school offers a unique developmentally appropriate curriculum that integrates academic excellent with the arts naturebased learning in every season and social emotional development through stories from many times and places. Luok engages children through multicultural stories, movement and music every day and craft projects using a variety of media. It's a small school community,
054but very close, focused on the child's development. It engages students and builds a strong community with their fellow students, their family, and the community as a whole. bonds of family and um excuse me, bonds of family and community follow these students through high school and on into the whole community and I think they all benefit because of it. We are in the midst of a transition and I would like to introduce you to our executive director who has been on the job two whole days and this is Tim Drury. Thank you. >> Thank you. I'm I'm happy to be here. I'm I'm going to be honest. I'm 36 hours in. Um, I've I've met a lot of people, a lot of people I have not met. Um, there are, uh, some amazing people so far
055that, um, are tackling some monstrous projects. Um, they've been without a director for about a week and a half. Um, the the ship is is flowing and heading in the right direction. Um, we've had um, a major move. We condensed down our campus from a full-size building to a half. And that all happened um with the leadership of the board and some of our teachers that have just taken the bulls by the horns and and and got it done. Um one thing I'll say um there's a strong sense of community. There's a strong sense of hey, we got this. We can do this together. Um the I want to do what's best for kids and and for the whole child. Uh that mentality in a Waldorf school is uh is what I'm looking forward to
056be a part of. as as the director, I'm gonna only be here for like 36 seconds because there's a couple other people that are going to talk that are more important to me. Some parents, some board members, some students, some past students, and um I'm looking forward to partner with all of them and all of you to to make this community and our schools better. So, up next in coming our garden teacher, Sheila Moss. Good evening. Um I'm Sheila Moss. Um I've been a part of the Blue Oak community for I believe um is it 17 years since 2008? Is that math? Um first I was a parent, then I was a volunteer. Then I was the afterchool program leader and um kindergarten aid and now I've been a teacher for 10 years. I've taught
057first through fourth and now I'm teaching TK and kindergarten. Um, I love our Waldorf inspired public school because of what it did for my son. And I could go on and on about that, but I'm here as a teacher tonight to talk about what it means to me to be a teacher at Blue Oak. Um, our pedigogy is developmental. And what that means to me is I'm meeting every child exactly where they are, paying attention to research on brain development, and paying attention to what the students themselves are showing me they need each day, each week, each month. Um, we strive to teach our children to love school and learning and the world by enlivening all of our lessons um with material from cultures from all over the world. So that means engaging stories and
058histories, dances, games, singing, instrumental music, visual art, theater arts, cultural festivals um are infused into every single lesson. Um we give children regular hands-on activities and experimental learning. So they do things even in kindergarten and TK like sewing, cooking. Um in first grade they begin knitting. In third grade, gardening. um actually in kindergarten gardening too. Um math games, clay modeling, woodworking, science experiments, etc. We want to get their hands on things and really experiencing um nature and the world and how the world works. Um we involve children in the community taking them on curriculum related and very community building um day field trips starting in TK and kindergarten and then starting in third grade multi-day field trips um to various places that are related to the curriculum of that grade. Um we practice looping which
059to me is very meaningful um in that it gives the teacher and the class stay together for multiple years which gives the teachers and the students a a chance to really build relationships with with each other and build community that's really strong and supportive. Um, we use restorative practices to address challenges as they arise and to again build community, build those relationships that are so important to making the children receptive to the learning the the lessons that we're giving them. And most of all, we remember that each student brings their own unique story, gifts, cur curiosity and challenges to their class community. Um, and we try to cherish and nurture their sense of individuality, their sense of competence that they can do things, their sense of agency, and their in interconnectedness to their class community,
060the school community, the larger community of Chico and the world. Thank you so much for your continuing support of our beloved school and for your time and consideration this evening. Um, and I'd like to introduce now current Blue parents, Lauren and Daniel, Setha. >> Um, hi Chico, uh, Unified. Uh, thanks for letting me speak for a moment. Um, I just wanted to share, uh, my support and enthusiasm for Blue Oak. Um, I grew up in a Waldorf education and so it's something that is very dear to my heart and something that I want to be able to provide both my kids. Um, I've got two two two kids in at Blue Oak, one in the TK and one in first grade. Um, and every day they love they love going to school. They love their
061friends, they love their teachers. Um, you heard a little bit about the wonderful curriculum that the teachers provide. And I think that's one of the biggest strengths that I remember is the development of a love of learning um and exploring you know not just strictly academics but all all the broad breath of being human. Um you know the the different art classes, the different history lessons, all of that is really focusing on developing the whole child. Um and that's something that's really instilled in me a lifelong love of learning to this day. um and something that I really want to be able to provide to my kids and I'm really happy to have them be part of such a wonderful school um with such caring teachers um that really are the the beating heart of
062everything that happens there. So just want to offer my support um and just a little bit of that um you know flavor from my own history and how I'm able to pass it forward to my own kids. Thank you. >> Hi, I'm the other half of Daniel. I'm Lauren Cesca. I'm on the board um at Blue Oak. I'm also a Waldorf teacher. Um I don't teach at Blue Oak, but I've taught at other private schools uh Waldorf private schools around the country. And what I love is that this education is free and it's accessible to anyone. And I think that that's important. Education should be accessible to anyone. Um what I also love about Waldorf education is that um it nurtures the collective as much as the individual. And so community is huge. And one
063way in which parents at our school can really kind of dip into the wellspring um of all this amazing curriculum and the culture, the artistry, um the beauty is through our seasonal festivals and they are hosted by our parent council. Um but everyone participates. We celebrate um the fall equinox with a festival of courage. Uh we celebrate the winter solstice with a winter market where we do lots of fundraising for all of the field trips um from third through 8th grade and we celebrate the spring with a Mayfair. And in these festivals um the students are singing, the faculty is singing, there's games. Um, I know a lot of schools have at least one big festival they do. And Blue Oak and Waldorf schools, we have them throughout the year because we want to celebrate
064the human being's relationship to nature through the seasonal life. Um, and so I really enjoy that piece of Waldorf education. Um, I could go on and on. Um, but I will pass it on to a Blue Oak alumni, Josephine Anderson. um who's in high school now and graduated from Blue Oak and we'll tell you more about her experience. >> Thank you. >> Hello, my name is Josephine Anderson. Uh I currently go to Chico High and I'm a junior, but I will never forget my time at Blue Oak. It was truly amazing and it's a great part of my childhood that I will always remember. It has very much impacted my daily life and I think it will continue into my adult life and I'm very grateful for this. I have many connections from Blue Oak
065from grades below me and grades above me and we always joke with each other that you have a Blue Oak face because you just know and you just have a connection with someone when they went to Blue Oak. I've had the same best friends since kindergarten and we have a bond that will never be broken and it's it's one of the best relationships I have in my life and I think of her as a sister now. Me with all my friends, we all have branched out in high school. We all have our own relationships now. But along with my social life, I have an amazing academic life. I think Blue Oak really set me straight with the academics they gave me and the tools they gave me to have a great mind and use great
066techniques for this. Like I'm in many AP classes and honors classes with a very high GPA and this is all due to the amazing teachers and staff that were at Blue Oak. I believe that my motivation towards school has a lot to do with how I was raised in elementary school. Always looking forward to school, always going ready to get my hands dirty. And going into middle school, I learned so much curriculum that made me inspired to go to school every day. And I believe that school is is an amazing thing to everybody. And I wish that I wish that more people saw that. But I'm very grateful for Blue Oak. Um, and thank you for all who listen to what I have to say. Thank you. >> Finally, we have we have one more
067student, Payton. All righty. Eighth grader. >> Good evening, members of the board. My name is Payton and I'm an eighth grade student at Blue Oak. I'm here today to talk about how the school has helped me become the person I am today. When I think about my experience at Blue at Blue Oak, I don't just think of all the homework and tests I've done. I think of all the friendships I've made, the valuable things I've learned in main lesson or the handwork class where I learned how to knit and explore my creativity. Bulock has allowed me to learn in many different ways. Here, I feel included by all of my peers and my teachers, some who have been with my class four years. At this school, my teachers taught me how to be kind to
068others, how to resolve conflicts thoughtfully, and look at the world with an open mind. Because Blue is a charter school, the curriculum values Waldorf principles while meeting high academic standards. That means time in nature, more focus on art, and being more like a community. Renewing our charter isn't just about keeping the school open. It's about investing in the place that helps children grow and to into compassionate, open-minded people. I ask you to support the renewal of Blue Oak so more kids can experience this special holistic education. Thank you. >> Thank you. Well, that was a really fantastic presentation by all of us >> um almost want to thank Chico Unified for um listening and having um our back and um thank you. >> Thank you. I'm not sure who you would address the questions to,
069but um do you two want to stand up here just in case? Okay. And I don't even know if we have any questions. We'll see. Are there any um questions from the board? >> Great job. >> We're letting you off easy tonight, I guess. Okay. Um though at this time we do need to um open it for public hearing. Um are there any So we're now opening it for public hearing. Is there any public comment? Yes. >> Hello. Uh my name is Julia and first of all let me say that those schools sound amazing. Um unfortunately my child cannot attend that school. Um, while I think all of those things sound so fantastic, uh, my child has a disability, so she is not welcome at those schools. Um, and it is unfortunate that these amazing
070programs that um exist like going these wilderness stays and I saw um fantastic music and art and all these different things that the public schools don't generally offer do not exist for my child. And while I think it's wonderful that uh our community offers this, these schools are taking public funds and discriminating against children with disabilities. I cannot enroll my child in these schools. And to me, that is not fair. The only options my child has is and children like mine. I'm not just saying my child. We have hundreds of children with disabilities within Chico Unified that are not welcome at these schools. even though they are taking public funds. Do I think that these charters should be renewed? Absolutely. Wonderful programs. Do I think that it should be mandatory that they accept children with
071disabilities? Absolutely. Is that a question that you as the board are asking? I don't hear that. But I think it needs to be asked. Why? If you're in by law, if you're taking federal funds, you should have to include children with disabilities and that is not happening at this time. All children within you Chico USD should have access to these wonderful amazing programs that we're talking about. And right now, that's not happening. And I think that these questions need to be asked. Why aren't children with disabilities allowed in these charter schools? How should we support them in the future? And how can we integrate them? I do not agree with the fact that we continue to fund these charter schools that are discriminatory against children with disabilities. And these questions need to be asked. Again,
072I cannot just go enroll my child in these schools like I could in Chico Unified. And if Chico Unified is funding these schools, my child should have equal access. Thank you. Do we have any other public comment? My name is Elle Wit and I have big feelings. I'm a TK, well kindergarten parent at Blue Oak and I have a child with an IEP and I'd like to thank you for coming up. Well, you know, I think that Julia brings up some really good points and I want to speak to that and make public comment because while absolute statements don't really give it justice that we at Blue Oak or maybe at Wildflower or any other charter school don't accept uh children with disabilities. I'd like to point out that there are limits and I'd like
073to bring up that maybe the funding and the resources for the schools is limited when it comes to being able to facilitate programs and support the staff to be able to host childrens of a multitude of disabilities and not just certain ones. I don't know what it's like in school very much. I have my very first children in kindergarten. I'm very new at this, but I want to be supportive and I want to speak out for the staff and the teachers of the schools that work very hard to accommodate, but also to know and learn how to advocate for funding for these programs and to know specifically what needs to be met and how to meet those needs that we at Blue Oak that I've experienced are accommodating. and to what degree they can be,
074right? So, I look forward to learning how we can be supportive of um providing the resources to the staff and teachers and to the funding for all of the schools in Chico Unified School District. I'm sure it's not an easy task that you all have to determine where the funding goes, but these matters these they matter. even if um one concern doesn't cancel out the other. Right. So, I want to speak on behalf of Blue Oak and say that they do um consider and accept children with disabilities even if every children's needs aren't met. They can be and I think they should be and that's all. >> Thank you. Do we have any more public comment? Okay, we're going to close the public hearing at this time. Um, this wasformational only, so uh we don't
075need to take a vote at this time. All right, we are going to be moving on um to item three. Uh this is going to be a discussion action item. Um, at this time we're going to be discussing um we're going to be having a discussion regarding the purchase and contract uh for Riverside Technologies camera and video surveillance system um refresh using BCATA technology. So I'd like to invite John Vincent to come up at this time. >> Good evening board. So, I was uh thinking instead of maybe doing discussing cameras, we could bring the choir back for like four or five more numbers, but I think it looks like they may have left. So, we'll just dive into cameras. So, and excuse me, please. I we don't have a slideshow today, so I'm going to
076be referring to my notes. So, please excuse me for looking down multiple times. There's been a lot of discussion about Chica Unifi's recent camera system purchase. Tonight I'd like to cover the rationale for the decision to migrate from our current system which is Milestone to Verata. We'd also like to dispel rumors about how this system works, how data is safeguarded and the vendor's reputation. So first and foremost, you can't hear. So I can move this to the side. There are some seats though that have become available if anyone would be more comfortable sitting down. >> Is this better like this? >> Yes. >> All right. >> So, first and foremost, this is not a new system. So, what we're doing is it's a camera refresh what we currently have in place. So, we're going to
077be taking down one camera and putting another camera in its place. The change doesn't include a new way to access camera. It does include a new way to access cameras, but again, this is not a brand new roll out. It's a replacement for our old cameras. We do have some speakers here with us tonight who'll be presenting. So, I'd like um so I ask please um if you would if the board's willing to to hold your questions till the end so that we can get through all the speakers and then might be able to answer some of your questions as we go through this presentation. So, tonight um myself will be speaking, John Vincent, director of technology, uh Jacqueline Krueger, uh our deputy superintendent and CBO will be speaking. We have two representatives from Verata.
078We have Mike uh Shimri, is that did I pronounce that correctly? Mike is the senior regional sales director. And then Darren San Felipe who is a solutions engineer. I get that right as well. Yes. Fantastic. And then we also have David M here. He's going to talk about uh our he's a principal at one of our schools. He'll be talking about um the principal's perspective. um he like he'll be talking about how cameras are currently used at schools and also how a new system can help him and other principles um at their sites as well. So to start off I just want to give a quick review of how we got to where we are um where we are and how we got there. So we currently use a system called access and milestone. So
079access are the cameras and milestone is a system that we use to view the cameras. We be began purching those back in 2014. So that was 12 years ago. The cameras we have the access cameras all they do is stream the video. They have they don't do anything else but stream video. And so we need to have a place to put that video. And so in our data center we have storage and servers where all that video goes and is stored in our data center at the district office. So we have cameras and we have storage. We also have a third piece which is milestone. So milestone is our video management system or VMS. Milestone is the software that's used by our staff, our principles to view the camera. So when they want to see
080an event on a camera, they'll log into Milestone. They can do searching there. They can export data, export footage if they need to. So Milestone is a system that they use. So there's three parts to our current system. So that started in 2014. So over five years then that system slowly grew as we added more cameras to our school sites and because of that it also made our data center storage grow as well right so as we add cameras it made the data center the storage that we needed to grow. One of the big things about this too was so when we started we had 1080 HD cameras right so these are like you know the old 1080 HD TVs when we started we had that resolution of camera and as time went on we
081started getting 4K cameras so 4K cameras require four times the storage so to put that in perspective if we have a single server that originally held 200 cameras onto it with 1080 when we got 4K cameras it could only hold 50 right so it really caused our data storage needs to really balloon as time went by as we increased our camera resolution. So by 2019, so five years later, it became clear that we need to buy some kind of a solution for the storage for the cameras because the cameras were originally were using was the same storage that all of our systems run in. So we had to buy something for these cameras. So we purchased a equipment starting in 2019 called Pivot 3 and that's a custommade device just for video footage. That's what
082that device does. So now seven years later that equipment is in our data center and we have all of our cameras going into Pivot 3 and that equipment is now toward coming towards the end of its life. So it's based on Dell servers. Dell servers have a 5year warranty. You get two extra years. So seven years is a standard warranty that you could have a server before they become unreliable. So now we're in a position where this coming summer we need to replace that equipment because that equipment is sitting there and it's old and needs to be replaced. So when we started looking into that, we found out that the licensing for that as well was changing and they were adding additional licensing at a at a large cost. So we made the decision, hey,
083we need to look and see is is this system even still a viable system? Is it still the best system that's out there for us? So we went out and got quotes from all the different components compon all the different components because there's so many components to this and as we did that we looked at other solutions. So we looked at Vicotta and we looked at a vigilanton. So when we got all the quotes in and we looked at all the different systems it became clear that Verata was the winner based upon not only cost because the cost is so much lower than our current solution but also on the feature set and the ease of use for the interface because it's a newer interface. it's much easier to use. Um, so really Vicotta was
084the standout choice. And so moving forward on this, so that's kind of the background on how we got to where we are right now. What I'd like to do is bring this over to Jacqueline because she can talk to you a little bit about the financial side of this and what the cost difference is between what we currently use now and what the Vicata system looks like. >> Thank you, John. I just wanted to piggyback off what you were saying on the infrastructure piece. So our milestone current system, the infrastructure costs are significant. So when we in order to compare apples to apples, we looked at this from a 10-year perspective because that's what Ricotta's agreement is is a 10-year perspective. So our current system over the next 10 years would cost $4.6 million and
085the the new system would cost $ 1.9 or $2 million. So on an annual basis, we're saving over $250,000 and getting newer cameras and a better infrastructure um to support those. And I want to be really clear that the new system is coming out of the exact same budget that our current milestone um cameras are coming out of which is not in our general fund. It is a completely separate fund um that is to be used for infrastructure and facilities only. So we cannot hire staff out of it. We cannot pay for our daily operations out of that. It has to be for facilities and infrastructure related items. >> Good. Thank you, Jacqueline. So at this time I'd like to bring up our verata reps. Uh we have uh once again we have a um
086excuse me we have mic up guys and you guys can talk a little bit uh to describe we have a statement we have a statement like >> thank you everyone. Hi everyone. Good evening. Thank you community. Uh my name is Mike Shamry. So I'm here from Vicata. I'm glad here today with my colleague Darren San Felipe to share a little bit more about who we are uh and our commitment to the Chico USD community and address some questions that I know have have come up. Um Verata builds and protects uh excuse me, Vicata builds products that make communities that we live in and work safer. Uh and I specifically work with California uh schools in the public sector in California and in Northern California. Um sorry your words touching special. I totally agree with everything
087you said. So, I apologize. Um, sorry. Uh, as a parent, this is this means a lot to me to be here in in a lot of different ways. Um, I specifically work with schools in the public sector here in Northern California. Uh, we're deeply rooted in California. We have over 600 school districts that we protect and utilize Vicata. Um, we're proud to be adding Chico USD to that list. And we share the same goal that each of you have in this room, which is to create a safe environment not just for students, but for for faculty and staff. Um, Vicata's work within Chico and the schools across the state, you know, is also personal for me. My wife is an inclusion specialist. Um, and I have a son and I'm grateful for him to be
088able to go to public school. Uh, so when I say this, this means a lot to everybody. Um, including Darren who's also a parent. Um, I know John and his team have shared this already, but our platform will not just save the district long-term maintenance costs, but most importantly, it will empower Chico's team to do to do the important work of keeping students and staff safe um with a modern updated technology platform that has enhanced features um and controls in place. So, that said, I know team has shared some concerns and I'm here to address those today. So, first I want to underscore the privacy aspect. Um, that's at the heart of our products design. Uh, I know John has detailed this a lot already. Um, but for what's most important for everyone to understand
089is each of our customers fully own all of the data. Um, that's a big misconception that's going around online. Um, so every one of our customers has control of all of their data. We do not retain any video footage or any other customer information. All video, images and datas are all encrypted at rest on the devices and in transit. So that's going to the cloud architecture to view it. Um furthermore, we've built governance and control features to make responsibility easy. So that's audit logs and every traction. So think of anytime someone views a camera, who logs in, who enabled a certain feature or turn something off, it's all auditable from every single action performed on any camera within the organization. So very important. So if a video is ever leaked or anything of that nature,
090you will know exactly who and when and where and how. So that is a a big misconception to just there. Um, next, I'll bring up our security incident that was brought up from 2021. You can all read about this publicly on our Burkata blog. It's still publicly today on our website. Um where a hacker compromised our platform and gained access to then our 97 customers of our SE 6,000. Today we have over 32,000 customers globally. So we've grown tremendously since that time. Uh we immediately investigated and contained that incident. uh we curtailed the attackers access within two hours of discovery and we notified customers that same instance. Uh we then began immediate work to strengthen our safeguards and and u parenting within leading cyber security specialists. Promise I'm almost done. Just wanted to go through
091a couple of things. Uh we've since continue to prioritize strengthenings verata's data security uh for fostering obtaining leading industry uh certifications. So on top of this, we've adopted the FTC's information security programs for protocols. So a thirdparty assessors conduct uh bianual reviews as part of these protocols. So our customers are provided with another layer of assurance that we're then consistently strengthening our security posture. So security and privacy are at the core of what we do and we take that responsibility and protect you and our customers very seriously. Um next was brought up was our our company culture. I believe uh specifically from an incident back in 2019 um when I know of our our employees misused our software internally. We recognized that and we let down our members um customers and partners at that time.
092Um but we learned a lot from that lesson. We've made organizational changes, doubled down on um our culture, established clear protocols and began to facilitate regular training and hired new personnel to align within our company vision. Um, and what's most importantly for the room to understand is BRCAT has grown drastically since then in 2019. It's a very different company from what we are today. Uh, like I said, we've massively grown since then. Um, and 97.5% of the company was is not here or was not there at the time of that incident. So, a lot has changed. Those are essentially our our founding team. Um, many thanks to to everyone for having us here. And again, we're proud to to serve the Chico community and address any questions or concerns, but we are here to to
093protect not just the faculty staff, but the students. So, with that said, I'll pause for for that. >> I appreciate that. >> So, we also have Dave McCay here. So, he'll be telling you a little bit about how um he uses the cameras at his school. Uh we were going to have Scott Harris here, but he came down with the flu, so we don't have him here today. that he's available if you have any questions for him. >> Thank you, John. So, on behalf of uh the principles of of the the school district, and I I don't pretend to speak for everybody. This is my opinion and in talking to some colleagues particularly after we had a demo of the system there's uh over all all I think we were intrigued by the potential to
094improve the safety and efficiency of our day-to-day operations keeping students and staff safe through this system. Um, and there's a few kind of questions that come up a lot that drive administrators use of the current security cameras. And I think this system holds a lot of promise for again increasing the safety and efficiency. The first is the the who is this student question. That's very common right now. You take a screenshot, you send it to your other administrators. Uh, hey, do you recognize this student? They, you know, created some vandalism on our campus or they they were on our campus and they shouldn't have been. And so it takes time to try to identify. sometimes we're not able to identify the student based on that particular footage um you know once it's been emailed to
095other principles. So this process seems like it would be very efficient to be able to identify to lock into that particular student and be able to potentially identify them. Um also on campus uh sometimes we don't know every single kid by name and so if if a student reports to us that somebody said something or did something to them um in the hallway then we can kind of identify and find that student right now. Again, we kind of like take a screenshot and like send it around to the teachers, go, "Hey, does anybody know the student's name?" And then we kind of investigate it uh from there. Um, another uh question, where and when did did it happen? Particularly at junior high, some kids have a really hard time placing themselves at a moment in
096time, especially if something emotional happened to them. And so, right now, you have to go back and go, "Okay, so you're leaving third period." and we try to click around to many different cameras to try to manually track the student to see if we can identify when the incident took place and where it took place, who was involved, who might have seen it so we can pull in some witnesses. Um, and again, this program seems like it would really potentially aid in the efficiency being able to interview those students and then get some kind of positive resolution to that situation. Um, including the other side. Uh sometimes again we want to find out what happened a few minutes before that situation and again if we can easily identify the student and then follow that student
097seamlessly through this program instead of trying to manually click on a bunch of different cameras I think we can get a a much more efficient and a better complete picture uh of a given incident. Again we want to administer justice you know firmly fairly and get positive resolution so we can move forward. Um and then there's the should this student be here question. Uh sometimes you have students on or around campus um that should that shouldn't be there. They just they kind of kind of damn that's funny. I got thousand kids but you don't look like you know one of my students. And so trying to get uh ID on that student, find out where they are, where they're supposed to be. Again, this system could could help with that a lot in terms of
098identifying um that student and then following up to make sure that they they're not where they shouldn't be. And um finally in in this day and age, you know, we we now have in our schools uh signs that basically say, "Hey, no yelling, you know, no no berating office staff coming in here." And sometimes some people have to get uh 626 letters where like, "Hey, you're not welcome on our school grounds for, you know, seven days because you pose a a safety risk to our our staff and our students." And so being able to identify when that person is is on campus uh for that length of time again would be a huge uh boost to our current safety. And we're trying to manage the day-to-day and we have somebody coming onto campus that shouldn't
099be on campus. Perhaps they have a stayaway order or whatnot from a staff member or a student. We want to, you know, use everything that we can to make uh that situation as safe as possible. Um and then finally, there's the who took my stuff quality of life crimes. Again, sometimes kids don't know where they left their backpack that now doesn't have their cell phone. And so, again, using the technology to be able to track the student, find out where their backpack was, and then identify who maybe went rummaging through it. It's a big help to to keeping the quality of life uh in incidents to to a minimum and being able to get some speedy resolution to again safety and efficiency. So that is kind of the summary of of how I feel like
100it appeals to to me the the as a as a site administrator. So the with this new system what we're hoping to do is be able to give new tools to our principles and our system principles that lit them to be able to allow them to be able to speed up the process of what they do right now. So, right now, we've had this system now, the old system for 12 years. It's very old and clunky. They have to go in and manually scan through all the footage to try to find things. It's very, very slow, and time goes by, valuable time goes by. So, that's one of the greatest things about this system is it allows our our staff to do the same things they do today, but much more quickly. Um, I do
101have some final things here I want to mention before um we close this up and open it up to questions. Um, so many of our older cameras out now right now are out of warranty. Uh, this project will replace all of our current cameras with new 4K cameras. Uh, the old system lasted us for 12 years. It's now antiquated and slow and difficult to work with. Like I mentioned, anyone who's worked with Milestone, our system knows how that feels. It's just very it's just not very intuitive and it just takes time. It's also limited because um the current system you can only run it on certain machines. Um it's very resource hungry and so we've had to put we put office computers in our principal's offices with video cards in them. Um special machines that
102allow them to run this program smoothly. The one that we have right now um it's it's very clunky if you don't have a good quality machine. The new system is not that way. The new one is all web- based so it's very very fast. You can actually do it on your phone. Uh, so a principal could have it on their phone as they're walking to an event to an and something that's happening and know what's going on. They can see it on their phone as they walk up and they're not walking up blind or they don't have to go back to their office to view it there beforehand. So, it opens up that whole whole new door for them to be able to come into a situation with knowledge of what's going on and not
103have to worry about that. So, the new system is a 10-year all-inclusive warranty and subscription. So, the cameras themselves have a 10-year hardware warranty. It has a full 10-year subscription. The cost is already baked in, so we don't have to pay anything. It's all inclusive. No additional fees. Um, all future feature updates over the next 10 years are included as well. So, if they come out with a new feature in five years, we receive that as well. We don't have to pay anything extra for that. It's all inclusive. Um, it comes with a 247 tech technical support um for that whole period as well. And it really is truly an all-inclusive licensing that it comes with this, which makes it much more simpler than what we currently have, which is all these different licenses. And
104right now, our current cameras only have a 5-year warranty, and we can't extend those. So, it just is a a better option all the way around. Um, one thing that Mike mentioned that's really important to understand, too, is that the data that's in these this system on our cameras and in the system, it belongs to Chico Unified. It does not belong to Verata. that information is stored and encrypted and we have the encryption key. We have the key and nobody can get into that data unless we give them permission and if we were to lose that key it's so locked down if we lost that key nobody could get in. So it would be locked out and we'd have to start all over again. That's how locked down it is. So it is the data
105is very very safe up there. Only Chica Unifi can have access and grant access to others. So, I know there are concerns about um facial recognition. So, I wanted to mention that really quickly. Um, you know, as a parent, I'm I'm concerned about that as well. And I know there's big companies out there like Meta, Microsoft that collect data on us, and we don't know how they're using that data. So facial recognition is something that just like the footage itself would be locked in that system and only Chico Unified would have access. One thing I want to mention too and I think Mike mentioned it as well is all these safety features that are on this system now. So they had issues in the past. All the different cyber security um certifications they have the
106certification for the um um how to keep the data locked into a vault is all verified by thirdparty auditors and government oversight. So the FTC oversees that as well. And then finally the last thing I want to mention is um once again I know facial recognition is is an area of concern for people and that system that can be turned off. So, you know, if if that's something that the board decides they want to do is turn off the facial recognition on the system, it's very easy to do. And once that's turned off, we have a separate system that we use that we can put Verata into. So, it locks it down so nobody can change that setting. So, then it's locked into that system. So, only myself and one one other IT person can
107change it if you do want to change it. And then it's fully audited and actually takes a a screenshot of my screen. If I change a setting, it's taking a screenshot. So it's extremely locked down so that nobody can go in and just change it and then change it back. That way the board has full control over that. So no one can change that setting unless the board makes that decision to change that setting. Um so it's really then that facial recognition is in your hands and it's managed by you and not by us. So, all that being said, um this really was just a we have an old system that is antiquated and we just wanted to upgrade it to a new modern system. That's really that's all this was. Um just to to
108try to bring us into line with the new system. The old one was old and and slow and expensive. So, with that all said, um I hope you this helps you to understand how this system works and it gives uh the board and members of the audience a little piece of mind knowing that it's it's not a bad system that we're trying to shove on everybody, but it really is just a modern video surveillance system that is taking the place of the one that we currently have. So, with that, if the board has any questions, we're open to any questions. there. Did my mic come on? >> Yes. >> Okay. >> Um summary. Um because you know I'm I'm a recipient of of a lot of concerned emails the same as the rest of us.
109And when I went digging for answers to the concerned emails, correct me if I'm wrong, but what I found was, like you said, the system we are now using, which is the um uh milestone. >> Yes, that's correct. >> Is old. >> Yes. Longer than I've been on the board. Old. >> 12 years. >> Yeah, that's that's getting there. um that replacing it not only does it save us >> um $4.6 million. >> So it' be the savings of 2.6 million over 10 years. So the total cost is 4.6 million for milestone. >> Okay. >> Yes. >> So saves us money. >> A lot of money. The next thing that um you know being an employee that worked at a school site for a number of years, I know what happens when an incident occurs
110and administration and others are going out to try and figure out, okay, what just happened? Who said what? Who hit who first? Um who stole, you know, whatever it is that's missing. And I I know how long it used to take to get information for administration to act on. Sometimes it was the next day and that's not effective um protection for our students in my opinion. Um the next biggest concern of course was the facial re recognition feature that um a lot of people did not act to want to have active and I found out that we can choose to not activate that feature. I was thrilled because of all of the benefits that the program offers us to keep our students and our staff safe. Um, so what are the downsides? I don't see
111them. That's that's basically, you know, once I got information that was correct and showing us what we did or what you attempted to do for us was upgrade a system that basically it it it is old and it isn't very um you can't recognize what's going on in a lot of instances. This system has another um feature that I thought was extremely valuable, especially on our larger campuses, is if a student goes down uh a health emergency or something like that that there is uh like an alert to the >> monitoring system. Do you mind can I interrupt for a minute? We're going to have an opportunity to have some board discussion time. So, I just want to limit this time to questions if we can. Is that >> Oh, >> could we do you
112have a specific question or >> lots of them? But okay. >> I I didn't know there were going to be two components to what we were doing tonight. >> Okay. Thank you, Madam President. >> Did you want to ask a question at this time or do you want to wait a moment? >> Uh, no. the the questions I I had I made in the way the statements in but comparing the costs comparing the um use the viability of using the system those are the issues that I had but yeah if I need to wait for later I'm perfectly happy to wait for later. >> Are there questions? >> Thank you. So, um, John, can you tell us so the the feature that Eileen was talking about, um, the ability to for the system to um,
113see that there is an issue? It might be a student, it could be a staff member, you know, if somebody falls or passes out or whatnot. Um, is that a fe that feature is separate from the facial recognition feature? >> That is. Yes, that's correct. >> Okay, thank you. >> Sure. >> And just to just to address, so facial recognition for us is very different. So we're not identifying first and last name. This is simply facial analytics on a person's face matching up characteristics of a person. It's never going to identify me as Mike Shamry if I walk onto campus, if that makes sense. So it's not like an airport where it's true facial recognition going into a database. this is your recognition of similar facial features. But to address that, yes, this like slip
114and fall that has nothing to do with the face analytics. That's just purely a person. And then to address Eileen, the the features are actually Sorry, John, but they're they're default off. You have to actually turn everything on. So instead of turning them off, you have to turn them on. So everything comes default off just like audio because every state has different compliances for audio. Our cameras have the ability for that. That's all off. And to John's point, it's all um organizational admins that have the ability to change that, but you need two of them and there's an auto log on that. So if there's any mal play or foul play, the whole board and everyone will be able to see. And then for the community members, because again, I'm a parent as well, if
115there was ever an incident where video is needed to be shared with law enforcement or parents, you can selectively blur specific people in it to protect other student and parent privacy. Very, very important. That was a big feature request in 2019. So customers that bought our camera system, for example, to John's point, received that feature automatically. So that's another important thing I just wanted to highlight that there is a lot of great things for this. I understand the world that we're living in today with facial recognition and that sounds very scary and less than 5% I asked this. So less than 5% of the people at the airport actually say no to the facial recognition. You don't have to actually have your picture taken. So just wanted to say that. >> So if I could
116add really quickly too. So there is the slip and fall feature that identifies if someone goes down. So like a medical emer emergency or something. Another one they offer though too that comes with it is when someone hops a fence. So we had issues in the past with people hopping the fence at the courtyard and going and stealing um catalytic converters. This would identify that someone hey someone just hopped the fence and can notify and fighting too. So there's a fighting ability to identify if there's fighting as well. >> Yeah. >> Last thing I'll say is to again this think of Blockbuster going to Netflix. That is what the technology is shifting from in terms of searching for things versus fast forward and rewind. Everyone remembers that you get penalized if you don't return it
117to Blockbuster Rewindound. A lot of people don't know what I'm talking about. Some do. But now it's you can jump to episode 4 season 5 and instead of a day you can find the entire investigation given it to police in less than a minute if you have the identified person. So very powerful things that can truly and have saved lives that I wish I can share in front of everyone but happy to address any questions. And Darren here is from the technical side as well. So please I want everyone to feel comfortable. >> Right. Thanks. I got a laundry list. I'll try and make it short. First of all, thank you, John. Um, I do know that we all came into this with uh good intentions and I appreciate very much the community coming out
118and saying, "Hey, there's something we need to talk about here." So, thank you guys for that. Um, so first of all, this is a subscription service. We're buying the hardware. The subscription recurring payment is for just for the storage. >> So, in this instance, we bought the whole package. So, it >> What does that mean? So, we bought the the hardware, the cameras, the 10-year subscription, the um >> subscription to what >> to because it's a cloud a cloud service. So, um the so the cameras record into the camera, but it also then copies into the cloud. >> Okay. >> And then the searching and stuff, I believe, works in the cloud as well. So, it's a cloud service as well, right? So the the the package is for the entire thing is for the
119cameras, 10 years of of service, 10 years of uh of being able to utilize the cameras and then also 247 support as well. So it's a onetime payment. There's no recurring payment where it's done in that's it for 10 years. >> Unlimited storage. So to John's point on servers, the cameras hold the storage individually and then when you save something, it's saved in the archive which is on AWS. So our platform is built on Amazon Web Services. So behind their security protocol as well. So you can save unlimited amount of video. So to answer your question, the subscription that we have, we do one, three, five, and 10year licensing. And that's paid upfront to essentially recession proof and help budgets for schools just like yourself for one-time grants or build it into their capital budget
120or operational, excuse me. Does that answer your question on the >> for the most part? Yeah. So, if the cameras if if we if the agreement were severed at any point for some reason, the cameras would would brick. >> Uh, no, not necessarily. They would be just uh the ability to send the stream out, but you would need another VMS to a video management to ingest that feed. So previously you had three different manufacturers utilizing a camera system trying to talk to each other. Vicata essentially replaced all three of them to be one. So we're a hardware manufacturer but we're in Sonteo. We're a Silicon Valley. We're a software company at heart. >> So uh when AWS goes down um does our service go down security cameras? >> No. And I'm happy to address that
121with >> that's important. >> Absolutely. >> Great question. So if something went down, the cameras would still be accessible. Each camera holds uh memory locally on the camera. So all the footage is retained locally 24/7. So if the internet went down, AWS went down for some instance locally, you would still be able to get to the cameras locally. You just wouldn't be able to remote access from anywhere in the world, but the camera footage is accessible locally from a computer or a mobile uh mobile software. >> The camera holds 30 days, right? 30 days at 24. >> Thank you. That's good to know. >> Yeah, >> I hear you. Okay. Um, the end user license agreement that we were provided with uh states that we grant Ricotta non-exclusive right license to use, reproduce, modify, store,
122and process the data solely to maintain the products and to provide them to the customer. Um, under those terms, could you guys could Vicata see our data if they decided it was necessary to? >> Absolutely not. So, the only way we would be able to access uh any type of footage, it had to be explicitly uh granted access to us, the support team. It is done through a series of controls within the platform. And we use something that's called a support token, which is an encrypted token that allows us uh to access the footage. And that is also set on a certain amount of time, maybe seven days, two weeks, but absolutely not. We would not be able to get to the data unless you guys give us explicit access to it. >> Okay, I
123think answered my next question. So, if somebody came up with a a warrant or a subpoena to look at some of our our data, could they go directly to you? >> They could not. >> Okay, that's good to know. Thank you. Um and then my question actually for uh John and our admin team, who sets who sets the policy for um who on our team can access the cameras? >> So that would be done through senior cabinets. So Jen and I work with um our dirt team um John Shepard to determine who has access and that's going to really be the KUMA team, right? That's going to be our principles and vice principles and they only have access to cameras at their site, right? Not districtwide. >> So okay, so that So then really then
124directors at the district office would have district-wide access. It's very very limited. And I've been a proponent of that for many years when we have our our current system because video camera footage has the potential to be like the most sensitive data that we have if something happens. And so keeping that secured is is extremely important and I've been preaching that for a long long time. >> Okay. I may have more later but those are the key points and I want to give everybody else some time to talk to. Thank you very much. >> I have a question. I think it's um and this is something maybe the public's going to be bringing up too. I just want it kind of in layman's term because that's what I understand. Um the possibility of hacking is
125I think a significant concern. Can you address statistically or anything regarding um how easy it would be to hack because we we hear about the bank gets hacked and the insurance company gets hacked and so can you talk about that? >> I didn't take that. >> Sure. So here's where we can start a little bit. First and foremost with our cameras, uh, what happens is that footage that I talked about that's stored locally on the on the cameras, it uses what's called an encryption key. And John and team are using their own encryption key. So what that means is that data is scrambled. And the only way you're able to get to that footage is by using that encryption key that's being used. So that's kind of first and foremost on the camera. Anything that's
126transmitted over the internet also uses another standard of encryption. It basically scramles the footage or any data that's being transmitted. So someone's trying to sit in the middle and access that data, they wouldn't be able to access it. And third and uh foremost is AWS. AWS is what they do is they have a a series of standards everything from firewalls to network security and also their own encryption on top of that. And the last piece is there's a standard out there that's referred to as SOCK to compliance. And what that is is an industry standard of how to secure and protect data uh whether it's stored on AWS or with on the cameras. And we've not only does Vicata own that uh certificate, but AWS is in that same uh bucket of that certificate to
127meet industry standards. So that's kind of a high level of encryption and how we protect the data. But does that answer your question? Is that >> Well, kind of. But I my next question is probably just a little too far off for that. So, >> sure. >> Thank you. >> Can I add to that really quickly? >> So, it's very similar to how your banking app works. When you're on your banking app, it's you feel I feel safe using my banking app on my phone because it's encrypted between your phone and the bank. The data is encrypted and nobody can can take it and they can't receive it and unscramble it. Same thing with the data that we have here with uh uh with Verata. That data is encrypted as well. And so, um it
128would be it's like really high encryption. Was it 256? >> I mean, no one's going to be able to crack that. It's just like your bank. No one's going to be able to just crack that. So, um, it's very, very safe. And on the user end, so on the on the side of, let's say, the principles, and let's say they're on their phone, we're going to secure that with Duo. So, you can't just have someone get on there and get in there and look at footage. We'll use Duo. And all of our employees know about Duo. Unfortunately, it's it's one of those curses. I think our board members do, too. The curse of Duo. But, it's what we do to keep safe, right? It's a way of proving who you are because you have a
129device, right? have something. It's more than just something you know your password. It's something you have. You have Duo with you. So, you prove who you are by having it with you. That's the power of Duo. So, that's how we'll keep it safe for our staff as well. So, when staff are using it, um it'll be they'll have to they'll have to authenticate or log in using Duo. So, that way it's safe. >> That bank example was excellent. Thank you. >> I understood that. >> May I? >> Yeah. So, I think you mentioned this, but I just want to be real clear. So, the camera, the system that is for the camera, the security camera has no access or communication to any of the other student information systems. >> That is correct. >> Okay. Thank
130you. >> Yeah. >> I know you said this already, but how many um schools in California are 600 districts within California? Okay. Um, actually on that note, John, what is the deployment plan? Where exactly are these cameras going? Are they going to be mostly on the high schools? Are we going to have them on every site? What's the deployment plan? >> So, currently we have cameras on every site. Um, the all of our school sites have cameras. And so, we're looking at replacing what's out there right now. And so, we would start at a smaller site, probably up on Lassen because that's one of our smallest sites. and if there's any bugs to work out as far as the back end like the login and everything and we would work out those bugs there. And
131then when that's done, we're hoping to then deploy it um over spring break onto our high schools next so that we can get those taken care of because those are big sites. But every school has cameras. We all they all do right now. >> Do you know roughly how many there are per per elementary site? >> Um elementaryaries? Gosh, I would be guessing how many? >> 30 or 40. >> Okay. Yes. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Other questions? We have quite a few public comments, so I want to make sure um we get through these this evening. Um thank you. >> Great. Thank you. >> And we're here if you need to have any more questions. >> Yes, that'd be great. Thank you. Okay. Well, we'll we'll begin with our um students this evening and
132then um let's see here, just to remind you, you'll have uh three minutes um to speak and a buzzer will sound when you have 30 seconds remaining. Um our first speaker tonight is um Anthony Rodriguez. Good evening, uh, members of the board and community members. My name is Anthony Rodriguez, as you've already said, and I am a student in the Chico Unified School District. I'm here tonight because this decision directly affects me and students like me. Let me be clear. I care about student safety and school safety. We all do. Every student deserves to feel safe in their classroom. But safety should never come at the cost of privacy, trust, and or transparency. The proposed AI enabled camera system would not simply record video. I've learned tonight that we can have that turned off. It
133would actively analyze students throughout the school day. As minors, we do not have the ability to not be at school. could because we have to go to school. And I think this important raises some important questions. I wanted to know how this technology would be used dayto-day, who would oversee it, and I've already learned about the safeguards that are in place to prevent misuse. I also wanted to talk about facial recognition technology because it is not perfect. False matches do happen in a school setting. Even one error could ruin the reputation of a student either among colleges or other academic areas or their peers as another students. I also had some some concerns about bicata themselves. As they mentioned, they have faced public controversy in the past, including reports of internal employee access to customer
134camera feeds and a significant security breach. I think school should be a place built on trust. Constant monitoring changes that environment. It sends the message that students are being watched first and trusted second. We are not problems to be managed. We are not threats to be monitored. We are students. I wanted to I wanted to say that if the district is considering implementing this system, then it should be prepared to clearly explain why this level of surveillance is necessary and how students will be protected. Safety should strengthen trust, not weaken it. Thank you. Okay. I'd like to invite uh Rosa Lee up this evening. Hi, my name is Rosalie and I'm a student at Chico High. I'm a student that takes AP classes. I'm a student that's done volunteer work and I'm a student who's
135in Debute College Connections program. I always try and stay active in my education, not because others expect it of me, but because I love my school. My school is a very supportive environment. is a second home to me. And as a student who clearly does a lot of work and who loves her school, I'll tell you this now. I'm not looking forward to this new surveillance system. And not only that, I'm not looking forward to the system that tells us you aren't trustworthy. With this security system, you're making it clear you don't trust us. You don't trust us, the youth, the future of America. Constant supervision. with this constant supervision. Instead, you swept it under the rug. And even now, a lot of people in my school who are directly affected by the system still
136don't know it's going to be a thing. In an article about facial recognition software, Harvard Griffin Science Policy Group says, quote, "Surveillance is linked to behavioral changes, including selfcensorship and avoiding activism for fear of retribution." End quote. And quote, "Continual surveillance induces fear and psychological harm." End quote. So, not only is this system expensive, an invasion of privacy, and frankly creepy, it's likely to do the opposite of what is intended. If this system becomes a reality, my school will no longer be a welcoming place. I'm glad I'm in Debute College Connections program because it means I'll be able to be somewhere where I'm trusted, somewhere that doesn't foster a big brother culture. Thank you. Thank you. Um, Ana Lisa Petraani. Good evening. My name is Anelisa Pedinati and I'm a junior at Chico High School.
137And today I would like to discuss the recent multi-million dollar contract signed inconspicuously for new AI technology at all of our schools. I'm confused as to why our school administrators have signed away millions of dollars without any public discussion. Our input has not been asked nor our consent. The public has not even so much as received an explanation for this decision. In class, we theorized that this decision was made with the question of safety in mind. our safety, student safety. And yet this decision has been made without consulting the group that supposedly needs protection and that and it has left us feeling controlled and washed as apparently our principal can access our surveillance on his phone 24/7. I also did a quick search into the company you are using for this technology, Vicata. And I
138cannot emphasize enough the surprise I felt upon the discovery that in September of 2024, Ricarda was sued by both the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commissions for failure to enact proper security measures that led to that led to sensitive footage from both hospitals and schools being leaked. I was also confused about the legality of this project because you see, according to the California Department of Justice, neither businesses nor schools can gather, use, or sell the biometric information for children under 16. And according to the 2016 Student Online Personal Information Protection Act, K through2 edtech operators cannot use our biometric information to create profiles without explicit parental or student consent. Neither I nor my parents consented to this action, nor have the majority of the families in this district. This begs the question, how
139could this project possibly move forward given this law? And there is one final concern I feel the need to express. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in order to biometrically identify you, a company will take your will take your image and extract an exact face print that is saved for later identification. This means that the faces of thousands of children, some as young as four years old, will be in the hands of Verata, the same company known for security breaches. And now, I greatly appreciate this district's vow to stand with immigrant families. However, we have received no such promise from Verata. The data of thousands of children, parents, and teachers risk being sold or breached or accessed by ICE who do not require consent for taking biometric information and have been using AI surveillance to
140um identify and detain both illegal and legal immigrants such as my father, my sister, and I. I will graduate in a little over a year, and this is the world I will be welcomed into, where I see innocent people on the news be detained, kidnapped, assaulted, and shot in our streets. I'm 16 years old. I should not be up here asking my school board to reconsider a contract that could lead to our own students facing the brutalities that thousands already are. And yet, here I am. So, please reconsider this contract. Thank you. Okay. Uh, Noel Sie. Um, hello. My name is Noel Sie and I'm a sophomore at Chico High School. People seem to believe that letting this company install AI cameras is harmless, but it isn't. It can seriously affect students, hurting them more
141than helping them. AI cameras are often incorrect and have gender and racial bias. AI security cameras can get people confused, especially it often mixes up people of color and women. According to AC Minnesota, um we shouldn't get students in serious potentially lifealtering trouble because of the failure of this technology. It is not advanced enough to be installed. We as students are able to opt out the yearbook and social media, but we can't opt out of these cameras. If I decide to work a job that has AI surveillance to um I can just decide not to go. Um I do not have a choice about not going to school. I have to. It's getting to the point where this is an is about safety and it's also about control. It takes away from our rights as
142students and I'm not against security cameras but I am against adding AI that will store my data. The company is able to look at this without my consent and this is not okay. Um security cameras are supposed to keep us safe but with AI they are able to hurt students and teachers alike. Would you rather listen to the people who financially benefits who financially benefit from uh Vetica cameras or who it really affects the students? >> Thank you. Hey, Alicia Trider. Hello again. Um, good evening again. My name is Alicia Trider. I'm a local parent and educator. I do not support this $2 million contract because we send our children to school to learn, not to be surveiled. Chico Unified Schools can upgrade their security systems without outsourcing services to cloud providers like Verata, a
143company with a history of lawsuits and data breaches. For example, in 2024, Verata settled a $2.95 million lawsuit brought against them by the Federal Trade Commission regarding severe security lapses that allowed hackers to access customer surveillance. The settlement requires a 10 to 20year security program overhaul, which means that you bought a product which has been deemed insecure by the US government and will continue to be compromised for the next two decades as they do this program overhaul. Riverside and Vicata Technologies save collected data in the cloud, which is an online network of remote servers that store, manage, and process data. This data or sorry this goes directly against the children's online privacy protection act which requires operators of online services knowingly collecting personal information from children under the age of 13 to a notify parents
144of their information uh practices. B obtain verifiable parental consent of that collection. C let parents prevent future collection of their child's personal information. D. Provide parents access to their child's personal information. E, not require a child to provide more personal information than is reasonably necessary to participate in an activity. And F, maintain reasonable procedures to protect the confidentiality, security, and integrity of the personal information, which as history has shown us, Vicata cannot do. To comply with this privacy act, how are you obtaining uh verifiable parental consent? How are you going to provide parental access to the collected data? How are you going to maintain security of our children's data with a company like Verata who cannot guarantee data security? Basically, how are you going to follow the law with this new surveillance system? When and
145how will you be updating all employee contracts to gain their permission to be surveiled at work? Have you negotiated this change with the teachers union? I want to conclude by highlighting that precedent has been set by other states, municipalities, and countries when it comes to the use of AI facial recognition surveillance software in schools and public spaces. This type of software is already banned in New York State, San Francisco, Portland, Oregon, several Massachusetts cities, including Boston, and the entire country of Sweden. And I want Chico Unified to do the same. Ban the use of AI facial recognition software so we don't have to continue this conversation every time the security cameras need a refresh or every time we get a new school board. And please save taxpayer dollars by continuing to use on premises network
146video recorders for your security purposes. Thank you. Okay. Kendall Smith. >> Good evening. My name is Abby. I'm speaking um on behalf of my friend Kendall Smith. She and I are both teachers at Chico High School. Good evening. Many of us spoke at a previous board meeting and outlined our concerns with the system in great detail. Rather than rehashing the details of all those points, I simply want to reiterate that the choice to spend these facilities funds in this way sends a message to our students about where the district's priorities lie. On the Chico High campus specifically, I see my students lives impacted daily and tangibly by a multitude of frankly crumbling facilities that are in need of repair. And when students see millions of dollars going towards surveillance instead of the broken bathroom that
147I can see from my classroom, they don't hear we care about you. They hear we're watching you. Um, like we heard tonight, a principal can watch them on their phone now. Um, your principal is becoming Oh, sorry. This is a step towards making our schools less personal. Your principal is now a person who watches you from behind a screen instead of a person who looks you in the eye and knows your name. Uh, we've been repeatedly assured tonight that we own our data. Our data is secure. Our data is encrypted, etc. But ultimately, it's stored in the cloud. We all know the internet is forever. Hacks happen all the time. They have happened and like stated BATA specifically has already experienced a catastrophic hack. Forgive me if I cannot take the word of a tech
148company whose frankly objective is to make money when it comes to protecting our children's faces. We've been told also that this facial recognition feature attached can um is an add-on that can be turned off. But if we don't intend to use the facial recognition, then we shouldn't be contracting with a vendor whose business model centers on this. We also would be losing many if not most of the positive qualities that people have mentioned are the reason why we want this system. Choosing this system is not inevitable. There are alternative choices and I'm hoping we can make a more informed decision together. When a decision introduces this level of privacy, legal and ethical concerns without engaging stakeholders. The responsible action is not to defend it and double down. The responsible action would be to take ownership
149and pause and correct it. If correcting this decision is beyond our grasp, we need to do everything we can to make this as close to right as possible. Safety decisions of this magnitude rely on informal cannot rely on informal assurances that features will stay off that hacks won't happen. That's not governance. Governance requires written safeguards embedded in policy. Right now, we do not have those safeguards in place. All we have is someone's word. This is a structural flaw. We're not assuming bad intentions on anyone's part. This is about accountability. When mistakes are made, a strong institution acknowledges the mist mistake and course corrects. Thank you. Okay. Jake Texara. Um, first first I'd like to say as a teacher at Chico High, how proud I am of my my various students who spoke because that was
150amazing. I I feel like I can just walk away, but I I do digress. My name is Jake Texar. I am both a teacher and a parent in Chico Unified School District. I'm speaking tonight because I have concerns about the district's contract with Vicata. Not only about privacy, law, compliance, but also transparency, ethics, and priorities. First, this is nearly $2 million investment in AI surveillance and infrastructure. As teachers and parents, all of us learned about this um after the fact. Decision of the scale affects every child on every campus. This deserves public discussion uh before approval, not after. Second, uh, data protections. I have a whole list, but instead I would like to speak to this. What we were told was that some mistakes were made in the past and that the company learned from
151it. And that's wonderful. My children, my students are not a lesson to be learned. They're to be protected. This is not something for them to figure out how to fix later and make more money. These are my children and these are my students and that is not something that I feel comfortable with. We know what the ed code is. Um it's uh 49073.1. It's been over it's been gone over by students again very impressively. Students images, movement patterns or behaviors datas are captured, stored on cloud-based AI system. That data must be tightly controlled. We already said that it's owned by the district, but we know that it's now protected not just by Verata, but also AWS. That's great that Amazon has this. And what insurance do we have that Amazon is going to protect that?
152And to say loosely that, yeah, you know, there's protections. They they meet this grade of of protection from some other company that said that they were good, that's not assurance. Those are those are gentle words that really had no depth to them. There is obviously uh a concern for misuse. AI cameras systems don't just record, they analyze, they sort, they categorize and they flag. We are turning our students and our children into data points and not into human beings. It is our goal. Our students are not products. Our students are not data streams. Our students are young human beings that we are entrusted with to take care of, to help grow, and to help learn. And I think that this could be something that that we could rethink. And I think that we could move
153in a different direction and we could stay inhouse and we could protect our students in a much different way. Thank you. Okay. Jacob. My last name just Jacob. Anthony Gonzalez. Good evening everybody. Thank you audience for being here. Hello board members. Um, I've heard all the reasons why you thought this was a good idea. Um, and I'm sure at the time you were just thinking you were saving money and updating a system that was old and difficult to work with. I understand that, but what you've actually done is invited the global surveillance state into Chico. Um, I'm not saying that Verata is necessarily some type of bad actor, but they are going to enable a certain set of conditions down the line. Um, I find it ironic number one that this uh this technology was
154rolled out with our ATC, our adult transition center. Um, so our our disabled population are the guinea pigs for this new this new technology. That's great. But that aside, um, the funds have to be used anyways, it was said. So, we need to choose a different option. one that does not uh open up the door to to to our students and our staff being targeted in all the ways that we're seeing in Minnesota and other places. We need to change course. We need to stop penny pinching and think about the real issues at hand which is the the greater state of our nation and our community. Great change is coming and things are getting crazier and crazier by the day and we need to we need to ensure that all of our systems are closed.
155We do not give anybody access. And I know they said there's only one key and it's Chico employees that have that key, but all it takes is one bad actor, one person who is too comfortable giving away our information or one person who decides that um the what law enforcement wants is more important than the safety and lives of our students and staff and our entire system is compromised from then on. All it takes is one moment and one person and then the it's it's over. They have access and they have the information. So we need to prevent that from happening and we need we need to move away from that possibility. Thank you. >> Thank you. So, um that concludes um our list of those who have submitted speaker cards. Would you like to
156speak? Yes. I'm tall, so I'm gonna have to bend down. Um first of all, I want to echo what was already said and give a shout out to the students. Um yeah. Yeah. This is hard. So, um, and also shout out to all the, um, educators in the room. You're doing something right. You're doing something right. Um, I'm Alan Burwell. Um, I work at, uh, BU College. I'm a research analyst, so um, I am a colleague of sorts in the education environment. Um, and I am a parent. I have a, uh, fifth grade student in, um, J Unified School District. Love it. Um, you guys are awesome. Um, and I wanted to uh echo some of the points here that as a parent and I don't want AI in anywhere near my my student period.
157Okay, I could be done. However, um I I'm the uh classified senate president, so I kind of understand the importance of kind of balancing a lot of different things and hearing different perspectives. So, I wanted to bring some things that I might be considering if I was in your shoes. Um, so I was reviewing California Ed Code uh 49060 uh-49079 and this is um the code that articulates protections against student or with student records. Um it's also closely um aligned with FERPA. This is the federal regulation. Um if AI is being used to um leverage uh is being leveraged to identify students um and is being maintained then such footage likely becomes student records. um and would be protected under these regulations. Um and additionally, things like behavior analysis, meta- profofiles, threat assessments, these would
158also become student records um and its maintenance um and use by any third party would clearly be in conflict with these regulations. Um we also have the California constitutional uh privacy right act article 1 section one which directs salance to uh surveillance to be reasonable, narrowly tailored and require a justifiable safety reason. uh AI use um and such facial recognition, behavior profiling, etc. um I think as evidenced by this packed house um might be suggested to be um overboard surveillance. Um we heard about the uh student online personal protection act which prohibits um using student data for targeting advertising um commercial profiles, things like that. I know we've heard that that's not what's being done, but we have to think about here the training um of these AI models. we're going to want to have
159that information and that that um if we're going to using that, we want that feedback loop. That's going to be a real big problem here when we're talking about um our student data and how that's being used and how that's being managed more locally. Um you have board policy 5022. Um, and I want to read something specifically out of here that states that the superintendent or designate shall consult with parents and guardians regarding the development regulation pertaining to other uses of personal information which shall at a minimum address the following arrangements for protecting student privacy when collecting, disclosing or using students individually individually identifiable information for any purpose. And there are additional ones. are your BPs that I would recommend that you look at as possible conflicts. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Uh we can
160we can um have two more speakers this evening. So >> for the record, I filled out a speaker card. >> Okay. You filled out one? >> Yes. No. I'm going to I'm going to take that opportunity since I filled it out and >> that would be fine. >> So, um the purpose of the Brown Act is to ensure that the public can observe, understand, and participate in the decision making of local government. The Riverside Verata contract was a controversial item put on the consent agenda with a vague description that goes against the spirit of the Brown Act. To find this on the December 17th agenda, you had to click on consent calendar, sort through 18 items, then click on consideration of approval of contracts. Then you had to scroll down to bullet point number four,
161which states camera and surveillance system refresh with Verata technology. The word refresh strongly implies a minor change. The online definition of refresh is a minor update to an existing product. description on the December 17th agenda did not state that it was district-wide implementation. It did not mention the cost unless you clicked on the word Riverside to find a surprisingly incomplete contract. It do did not mention it was AI enabled. It did not mention potential privacy and civil right issues. This vagueness not only made this issue opaque to the public, it slipped by many board members. Several board members have mentioned that they did not know what they were voting upon. With a raise of hands, how many of you completely understood what you were voting on when you passed that when you voted that consent
162agenda? For the record, no hands were raised. This very well could have been an honest mistake, but if an item was voted upon and the board members were unaware of what they voted upon, that affects the ability the vilityility validity of the vote and it affects the it affects the trust the public has in this institution. It seems to me that the proper thing to do to rebuild the trust with the public would do what's called a cure and correct, which is how you cure and correct mistakes with the Brown Act. The 12 to 17 decision should be cured and corrected by reagendizing this contracted under the discussion action agenda on a future agenda. And during the interim, we are requesting that the board create an emerging technology committee to review all AI technologies used
163by the district which is made this this committee should be made up of parents, students, teachers, administrators, and at least one board member. And I have to say this puts Chico Unified in a it makes you very exposed to litigation. It exposes uh I am also surprised Vicata would take funds public funds from something that was voted upon without the knowledge of the board members. I don't think that would be right either. We need a redo. We need to do a cure and correct. Put this on a future agenda. have the the public participation and have a conversation about how we want to move forward with security at our schools. Thank you. >> Um my name is Alisa. My daughter is one of the students who spoke and most of you will remember me from
164the last meeting I spoke. So I'm not going to go over all of the things that I talked about last time. I just have a couple of things to add. Um, Vicotta has a great sales pitch. They they know how to say the words that need to be said to make people feel comfortable. I'm wondering if that's the same sales pitch that they gave to all of the communities and all of their customers who had their systems hacked and their information taken. Um, they've assured us it's not able to be hacked, but they have been. Um, they gave a list of safeguards. Sounds great. Those safeguards are there because the Department of Justice and the FTC went after them, not because they put those into effect on their own. Facial recognition has verified and documented
165racial bias. Women are more likely to have false identification. People of African descent, people of Asian descent. It might not affect your children, but it will affect mine. I want to add one more thing. I love the Chico school system. You guys do a great job. The teachers are amazing. They teach things like 1984. They tell our kids about Big Brother. They tell our kids it's wrong, but they don't practice it. You're not practicing that. Practice what you preach and protect our kids. Thank you. So, normally we limit public discussion to 30 minutes, which is 10 speakers at 3 minutes each. Uh, the board can always choose to offer more time if they'd like to do so. That requires a vote to amend our procedures. There's a question about whether we need to vote to
166suspend the rules to allow more speakers than we normally do. >> Yeah. >> Okay. All right. Um, sir, >> I didn't I don't know if I counted. >> Uh, good evening everybody. Uh, thanks for staying late. Really appreciate you all. Um, and you know, really impressed to see everybody come out. Uh, it's been been pretty awesome. Um, just a couple of thoughts. I mean, everybody's pretty much covered everything, but I, you know, listening to everybody, I I I couldn't help but but think about a couple of things in response to the the statements. Um, and, uh, there's a lot of interesting stuff about all of these added safety uh, you know, abilities, um, that we have. and and it strikes me that a lot of this this stuff the the slip and falls and the
167fighting and all of this stuff um that seems to be inherently generated upon AI and predictive software. So if we get this and we remove you know we untoggle the option does that not you know eliminate a lot of the effectiveness of of some of these bells and whistles. Um, and to the the second point on that, um, you know, it says it was encrypted end to end, and that sounds really great, but the massive data breach wasn't, uh, you know, a a hack from, uh, you know, from the ether. It was an administrative password and username that was obtained. Uh, you know, that's human error. And the more times you allow for human error in a system, the more opportunities that there are for bad actors to take advantage of that, no matter how,
168you know, careful you can be, this is still adding a lot of liability and a lot of uh you know, uh uh problems uh to to the scenario. Um, and then, you know, no one's mentioned what, you know, they talked about it came down to to this system and then another system, and no one's in this 1.9 million, we're going to save a lot of money, and that's great, but nobody said what the second runner up is. I mean, could we get a system that's basically just as good without, you know, all of this uh potential for nefarious actions for 2.5 million? Because that seems like that's a pretty good deal. Um and and the fact that we don't hear more about these other options and instead uh you know we've got these two AI
169ghouls from Silicon Valley out here, you know, pushing their stuff, you know, strikes me as, um as as uh not enough information to make a decision as serious about this. So, uh thank you very much for your time. Really appreciate it. >> Yeah. Hi, I've been here before uh early over there. Um if you don't know me, my name is Tanner Johns. I am a teacher for Chico Unified School District and a parent of two kids at Rosedale Elementary School in fourth grade and first grade. Um I want to echo what others have already said. It is hard to restate in better ways um what has been said before, but I cannot say clearly enough that AI facial recognition software has no business on our campuses whatsoever. They sell us a cloud service to store
170our data and I don't care how robust the system is and the security measures in place which we have already called into question. Those systems can be hacked. I promise you. A system that keeps our information on a closed system intranet should be explored. Systems that are closed to a campus are much more difficult. They're not traveling between servers into the cloud and other things. We need to explore options like this. I have firsthand, as a teacher, seen Mr. McKay effectively use our current camera systems to find and identify students. Does it maybe take a little more leg work than an AI system would do? Yes. Has it been effective? I think so. I also want to call into the question the use of um the cost. Somebody else mentioned it earlier. Our facilities funds
171are being used for these but our facilities are crumbling. You hear that? Have you been on my site? Because for years I have had uh painters tape X's on the floor for when it rains. I'm a band teacher with thousands of dollars of instruments in my classroom. And I'm tired of putting buckets on the floor. I'm tired of it. I'm tired of my kids going to Rosedale and holding their bathroom break to get home because the toilets are always leaking and unavailable. There are four toilets for the girls to use on that campus and two of them half the time don't work. I'm tired of it. We can do better. I want better for my kids. I want classrooms that are designed to reflect the future that I want my educ the education that I
172want my kids to have to be prepared for the future and we don't have it. Surveillance systems, cameras can be a useful tool in identifying students, but when you add in AI facial recognition software in any part, and I'm sorry, he says, well, it it does data points, but it doesn't mark a person. What are we talking about? If you're marking data points, it's inevitably connecting to something to a person. Data points are being made out of our kids and our facilities are crumbling and we need to do better. Hi, I'm Caitlyn Sheridan. I previously spoke here. >> Yeah, no, not about this. Sorry. Um, I'm really glad I stayed for this though and thank you for letting more of us speak. Okay, there we go. Um, at first they did have me on this
173because I do pose a unique issue to the schooling system in the fact that I do have a health issue where I pass out multiple times every day. And that has become a part of my regular routine. And if you had asked me if this would be great probably two years ago at my original, not original, at my old school, I would have said yes because at that school I was left unattended on the concrete floor outside for 10 minutes. This was before we had any idea what was going on with me. And if it had been something else than what I do have, then I possibly could have died or something could have seriously gone wrong. And these cameras would have helped that in theory. But at my new school, I have found that
174the AI system, we preach to our students every single day against the use of AI and to, you know, not use it. But then how are we going to do that when we're turning around and using it on our students? And while I have those health issues, I have found great support at my PV high school without these recognition for falls or fights. They've all been dealt with. And I really true feel truly feel that the idea in theory is good, but this has not had enough research or surveillance and it is absolutely not secure enough to be placing it in schools where students are vulnerable and we already feel unsafe in many ways. Think of all of the things going on in America right now. We already feel safe. We do not need a
175robot looming over our shoulder 24/7. So, while it could be a good thing, and I think research on this is very important, I do not think we're ready for it. And I highly urge you to not let this into our schools because it's downright creepy. So, that's all. Okay. Okay, one more time. I'm going to talk about children with disabilities as always. Um, so a few things. So my daughter is on the autism spectrum. She is in your ESN class. In no way can she consent to this. She doesn't even have the capability to understand what's happening to her or how this is going to affect her. And it's not just her, it's children with disabilities throughout. We also know that children with disabilities are disproportionately suspended. And so when you talk about um them
176being able to see the fighting, them being able to see they're not just going to see fighting, they're going to see my child's meltdown. They're going to see other children with disabilities in their worst possible moments. And those children will be targeted. They're already targeted by staff, by the over suspension, by the constant monitoring. And now every time that they move, every time they do something, you know, when my child's on campus, she doesn't move, she doesn't interact like other students, that AI is going to target her because she's different. Every single student that is different is going to be targeted by this AI because it has it's programmed to see what's supposed to be and she is not what's supposed to be. And so, how are you going to keep my child safe? How
177are you going to keep children with disabilities from being disproportionately targeted by this um AI and by this camera system? We also know that our federal government is compiling list of autistic people. Uh the health and human services are going into medical records. They're going into schools. How do I know that this company is going to keep my child safe from a government who is overstepping and wanting to put my child and children like her on lists? This is not conspiracy theory. This is happening in our in our government right now. And I do not trust Chico Unified. I do not trust this company to keep my child safe. And I think that we really need to see how this AI not only um monitors typical students, but how does it monitor students who are
178different with disabilities. >> All right. I just want to say thank you to all the speakers this evening um for coming out and speaking. Um, at this time, uh, we will have an opportunity to discuss anything, um, we want to as a board. Uh, but I'd like to ask if there is a board member that has a motion at this time. Correct. Well, I don't have I don't have a motion at this time. I had I but I do have some more questions or do we have to do we have to like I'm not sure what's going on right now as far as So Tom Tom >> Yeah. Do you want to ask more questions? >> Well, I was just going to say that Tom Tom agendaized this and I'm not sure exactly. Um Yeah.
179Not to me. If you got questions, ask them by all means. >> Um, so I wanted to know is biometric identification would would biometric information be collected by the system. >> So, you know, I'd like to maybe Darren, can you maybe address that? I think he knows the system more than myself. And anything that would be collected would be stay inside Chief Unifi. Just to clarify that once again with AES 256 encryption which takes I looked it up it's like trillions of years to break that encryption. That encryption is so strong that it cannot be cracked by modern computers for many years. So to answer to answer your question today, >> bi biometric biometric is like a fingerprint or the actual uh pieces of the face. This is not something that we're tracking. What we're
180uh tracking is attributes. So think of a color of a top or something of the top >> of of a shirt or also uh measurements of a face. So biometrics no but it's uh measurements and the attributes of an individual >> person. >> Um so that another um another question was it is regarding if the information is staying in house. So John, would you uh address that again please? >> So um so even though the c the cameras have data on them and they go to Amazon Web Services, what's in what is in Amazon Web Services is encrypted. So >> I I'd like to interrupt and pardon me, but um please be respectful. We were respectful. We listened to you. We heard you and we have questions >> and we're cl clarifying the things that
181I I I'm the purpose of my questions are to actually I mean I wrote down things that I feel like perhaps the public wants more clarification on and then I think it's respectful to for if I ask the question for at least for somebody to be able to answer that question. You don't have to like the answer but I think we need to hear the an I would appreciate hearing the answer. So the data is in AWS, Amazon Web Services, but it's encrypted. And so if anyone was to break into that data store in AWS, they're just going to have a bucket of encrypted garbage that they can't extract or see. They need the key that only Chica Unified holds to be able to unlock that data and see that data. So, and that is
182the key to this is that not only does Varcata not hold the key, I mean normally in the old days they would hold the key and so they got hacked and people could see the data. They've made changes since then. We hold the key now and nobody can get in, not even them. Nobody can get into that data. Only Chico Unified because that key belongs to us and we'll print off a copy and put it in the safe so that we don't lose it and we hold the key. So, another point that was made is that it it really, you know, it could come down to one person or one moment um where, you know, somebody could make a decision. So, again, I'd like to know. So, you Chico Unified holds this the key >>
183Yes. to encrypt encryption and um I I think uh Tom asked so who's going to have access to the key and you you answered that but it sounds like could you restate that please? >> Yes. So the encryption key itself is um applied to the system and then we hide that away so nobody has access to the key. Nobody can see the key. It's been applied to the system. way again like AWS and our systems can talk because they both have the key but nobody else does and that's put away where no one has access to it. So no staff member is going to take it. Oh, I got the key. It's it's hidden, you know, it's put away in a safe where nobody can get to it. So the data is secure through that.
184And once again, when it comes to our staff accessing footage, they would need to then not only log in with their username and password, but utilize Duo to get into it to prove who they are. So that way not just anybody can log in and we limit who has access to the SIM system to just those folks who who need access like our principles and and vice principles. >> Thank you. >> Welcome. >> And one piece I can also add in as well is uh with the features uh that are enabled in Vicata system by default these are all off and so nothing is stored on AWS until you enable these features. There are certain features that we would need to process something to work. But by default, if you choose to do so, it
185would all be housed locally on the camera. Nothing would be shared with AWS. And even if you choose to do so, you can actually offload that video if you want to store it locally. You could push that locally to your server. Now, of course, the huge value ad is we could save those storage costs. But if you choose to do so, you can save your footage locally on your own servers, protect it inhouse if you choose to do that. But once again, the idea with Vicata is to take that lift off you and the protection of data is a challenge today. I've worked with numerous schools that have been compromised and their data has been taken over. So with the extra security on AWS, that's typically where we see it and networking uh teams leverage
186us. But once again to call that out, if you choose to choose to do that, you can keep the stuff in house, not store on AWS. >> Is that a decision that can be made at any time or does it need to be made? >> It can be made at any time. Absolutely. Um just another um follow-up question. So again um there was there was a question about are are all the bells and whistles reliant upon uh re reliant upon one another basically. So, if we didn't have facial recognition, um how does that impact the the ability for, let's say, um administrators to be able to search um search information, the ability for like slips and falls and medical emergencies. Um, again, if if I've heard you say that none of the by default the
187features are turned off and we actually have to activate them to turn them on. And so I'm just wanting to know if we wanted to know uh be able to have the safety features of um you know slips and falls or be able to search quickly for um bites or for whatever but we did not want to have facial recognition. Um tell tell me more about that. >> So that is correct. So, um, and I'll take this one. Um, so, um, yes, when you turn off facial rec recognition, it only turns off the ability to identify a face. So, if someone has a slip and fall, um, you can still do that. If if someone has a red jacket with a blue backpack and, you know, that's who, you know, who shouldn't be on the
188campus, you can easily do use that as well. Then you can still use that as a a way to find something. >> Um, but so they are separate, right? >> That's exactly. So, so tell me, so, uh, when you say if somebody had a a red jacket and a blue backpack, uh, we could search for that. So, tell me about that. What do you mean by that, John? >> So, for instance, let's say that so it has the clothing recognition as well. So, if someone comes on campus who shouldn't be there and you know, hey, you know, I saw go a principal as say a student goes and says, someone came on campus, they have a red jacket and a blue backpack and I saw them walking down this way towards the, you know, the
189the B-wing. you can then they can go in and actually put that in a blue jacket, red backpack and bring up all the people in the campus that have blue jackets and red backpacks and quickly find them and remediate that situation very quickly. So if it is a problem, you can actually then know right away and you're not, you know, fumbling through different cameras like you are today in our current milestone system trying to find someone, you know, is very quick and it's very and that's makes a huge difference. >> Thank you. So, forgive me. Um, even if we opt not to use any of the AI facial recognition features, is that data ever used to train any of your guys' models that you use for other services? >> Not have access to the data
190at all. >> Okay. Madame President, I I don't have a question necessarily, but I do have something to say about statements have been made about um identifying um a student by uh what they look like, what they're wearing. That's what we do now, but we do it in a very slow and and inefficient way. But that's what we do. We have a principal or an assistant principal or a teacher come in and and you know, as long as it takes it, and it is lengthy. That's what we do. We look at, okay, does that student look like Dond Doe or does that student look more like Mary Jane? Because that's how we function by identifying students and that's how we we act to keep things safe. that's how we act to um intercede with discipline
191and finding things. So I I yes it would be enhanced by the um the rapid um identification that this new software provides but it isn't changing our function. It's just changing the efficiency of our function. my opinion, >> if I may, um the problem that I think a lot of people have is that the way we do it now, it is a person making, you know, making those connections. And the concern is that if we see someone who we're interested in because maybe they shouldn't be on campus, there's piece of software saying this matches someone else and and there's a higher likelihood of the software being wrong about who they're looking at the second time. and that we want the assurance that it's a person actually making that decision that the two people are in
192fact the same person. >> Um just and I think that's an excellent call. I think you know when security time is of the most importance right so when relying on a human piece there could be an element of time where someone can get off campus an incident happens you know leveraging the AI can definitely improve those processes. Now granted, of course, there could be maybe something that's misidentified, but I'd rather have more information to make an informed decision and act quickly and protect the faculty, the students quickly rather than waiting a day or so to come back when the incident has happened. So, you know, just to kind of touch on that a little bit as well. >> I would just say to the biometric aspect is very different than than actually identifying on a
193face. It's similar to why I can't hold up a picture of someone and unlock your phone because that's not just looking at a camera. It's actually sending sensors to your face. That's a 3D image of it. Very different in terms of biometrics. So, just want to call that out too because again, we're not doing facial recognition that's going to identify any person. It is looking at attributes from a person. Very different. Yeah, >> that's it. That I just wanted to address that because people have thought that that was a possibility to unlock stuff with a picture walking through not just our technology in general technology. Just one >> I also wanted to address um uh another issue. Is this would this be considered um a change in working environment at all from the standpoint of
194our CSEA or CUTA members? Um and I'm I'm seeing John shake his head. No. Um uh could do you want to speak to that like why why why do you feel that it's not a change in working environment? So as has been mentioned it's um this is a tool and there are many board policy and AR and negoti negotiable items that preclude us from using tools in specific manners. So we would ensure that whatever is agreed to would fall within those parameters and that would be and I have our union reps over there on the other side, Kelly Serill and Charlie Snyder and we would ensure that whatever is agreed to would fall within those parameters. >> Thank you. >> Actually, I would like to actually check in with our union reps. You guys agree
195with that assessment that it's not a change in working condition or would do you think these kind of things would be negotiable? >> Uh I would have to wait to see what board action is taken tonight and what features are used or not utilized and I speak for 800 people. So our internal process right now we're working. Um we're going to our rep council tomorrow to talk about this entire process which has unfolded pretty quickly. um and to report back on board response and action to get guidance uh for our Eboard and to look at further actions and whether or not we feel we need to negotiate new language or look at current language >> and and I will concur with what Charlie says. We're in the same boat. >> Thank you. >> Um I'm
196curious. Um, so the cameras don't have just an um the video feature but also audio. Is that or am I mistaken? >> They have the capability to do audio but that would be turned off. And once again just as the facial recognition would be turned off if you so wish and put into a place where nobody can turn on without your permission. The same thing with the audio that would be locked in. >> Thank you. Um, I am curious if the equipment is programmed innately to look for like differences. And what I mean by that just speaking to the issue of um you know I I worked for years with uh persons with developmental disabilities and I believe that we definit and and of course we have uh ESN students. I think it's a fair
197question to say what is it is the software designed to pick out those differences and in what way if so >> I can address this first so from an attribute standpoint what our cameras do is they look at a frame and what they're doing is looking at first colors they use colors of clothing it's the attributes of clothing that individuals are wearing or a backpack or something of that sort. That's the first piece that we use for identification, what we call attributes. Now, from the second standpoint, of course, we've been talking about the facial uh piece quite a bit. Once again, it's not based on color, skin, or anything of those sorts. It's all based on measurements. We take a hyper zoom of an individual. We zoom in and what our what our chips are
198doing is measuring the outline of a person's face and depth of their face. There's no in inherent like I guess discrimination or something of that sort built into it. It's all based on measurements to keep it so-called an even uh playing field. That's the way our analytics works on cutting cameras. >> Thank you. >> Can I get a little clarification on that last PC? So hyper zoom, take measurements, and then to track or attempt to track that person, you just look at the exact same measurements somewhere else. You're not comparing it to a like an AI model or a database or anything. >> That's exactly it, Tom. We're not going to at some source or anything like that. It's all built in with your system. So your system is learning within Chico. Just Chico's own
199data is learning. We measure the depths and yes, Tom, we see that same attributes on someone else in our system. We see that as the same person. >> Your use of learning concerns me a little bit. Um because does that mean there is in fact a a please? Thank you. Um a static or not a static a dynamic model that persists that we continually compare people to. >> So what what it's really doing is your own system. It learns about your own individuals. So basically I've seen John's uh attributes on his face. I've seen it again. I've seen it again. Now we can kind of say, "Hey, that's similar attributes of John." That's what our system does. >> You can turn >> the facial piece. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. >> Yeah. And typically what
200I can talk to about that as well, what I've seen with the some of the largest school districts I've worked with is absolutely can be it's off by default. You can toggle on typically it's done on strategic cameras typically where a lot of outside or someone else you can turn on a particular camera if you choose to do so. There's a lot of settings to craft it to fit the mold and the needs of Chico, but absolutely off by default, completely turned off. And one of the questions was, would those other features work without it? Absolutely. Slip and fall, fence, climbing, fighting, those are all uh uh tools within the system to help protect students and staff. >> Followup. Um so we can we can turn off or not turn on that kind of is
201it biometric um measurements >> what we call facial attributes >> facial facial attributes. Thank you. Um h so if we were going to compare facial attributes it would be a person one of our administrators a principal someone looking at the raw video and saying I know who that is. think that walk me through that. >> Well, that's that's what we do. You know, having worked in a school, that's how we we worked with following up on things. It may be the next day, which is the problem. But that's what we do. we look at it and go ah yeah I >> so the administrator will get they can look at it and they can see a face that they think is the person or that they think is misbehaving and the system will help them
202compare that face to other ones. So essentially it's that same process just sped up through our technology. >> And again, RZ is not going to be perfect because it's not biometric. It is taking an image from a camera. So it's not again like you're going through TSA where they're identifying you in 3D. Very different. >> Did Did I hear correctly that you >> It's not on by default. Everything is off by default. You have to turn everything on and we do not have biometric on cameras. That is not something that we do. We just launched something on doors for that for access control on doors which is very different and not something that Chico has bought. That is something that we launched just a couple weeks ago for different type of customers but on cameras
203it is not doing biometric very different. >> Is there a breakdown? You mentioned that you are uh currently serving 600 school districts in California. >> That's correct. >> Is there a breakdown on what services those 600 school district you know are most of them not using AIA or >> a lot of them are using a lot of stuff and I would encourage you to reach out to them directly because some of them make it public some of them do not. It's based on their community and their policies and I'll just have everyone reach out. But great question. >> We're we're not the first to do this. >> So you said you focus on Northern California. Are there other are there other districts or entities in our area that are using Vicata? >> Yes. >> Um
204can you tell us whom? >> Yes, I can. >> Would you? >> No, not right now. >> Oh. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. I that >> I want to make sure I give the correct statement because again for privacy of our customers. Some do not like to disclose and some do. >> We have a full customer story reference on our page. I can name a hundred off of my head, >> but I want to respect our customers and their privacy. >> Um >> I hope that comes off okay. >> That's okay. Well, so I so I >> That's okay. Thank you. Um Mr. Blake you said that uh Thermalo school district where you used to be superintendent is using ricotta. Do you have any feedback from Thermalo for example? >> I can tell you that we
205don't have anything. I mean if I would if we asked anybody from thermal well if we asked the superintendent and the maintenance director of maintenance and operation and transportation as I have recently they have no complaints at all about picata >> mountain view lotos is a publicly traded or public customer that is willing to talk to anyone >> Santa Clair unified Palo Alto unified >> Cordova >> I believe John you mentioned that BCOE uses the the is that am I misremembering? >> That is correct. Yes, BCOE does and actually was a a presentation that BCOA gave showing how well it works. That was our introduction to the software. >> Do you know in what capacity? So BCOE um has sites literally around the state like they they have teachers that are down in San Diego.
206I mean everywhere. So in what way I guess is BCOE using Vicata? Do you know? I'm just curious. >> I would just be taking a just in talking to them it's it's limited. They um they're migrating away from a vigilon which is the other system that we looked at as well. Migrating away from a vigilon to verata. So it's a it's a migration for them. I'm not sure to what extent right now. >> Okay. Um do you have a general impression? But but since since they were the ones that were hosting the presentation, would your general impression what would your u general impression be from BCOE? They were very pleased with the product and that was really one of the selling points for us was how well it worked for them, how easy the interface
207was for our their staff to use to be able to find footage quickly and and and stop things from happening before they get out of control. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> If there's not um any other questions, I think I'm ready to actually make a motion. Was there any other questions though? because I feel like we could still continue to discuss this and maybe come up with a Okay. >> Um, may I? >> Yeah. With the stipulation that there might be additional motions, I would like they possibly might want to take more than one piece of action on this item. That's >> Thank you. >> Yeah. I'm just kind of putting this out there as like a working um motion and so I'm not even sure I have the wording down correctly. But
208um I think from all the information I've heard this evening um what I've gathered that uh we've we've purchased this program BRCATA and I'm gathering that it's something that we can very much customize to what our needs as a district are. I'm definitely hearing that um we are not liking the facial recognition piece and I completely understand that. Um, I like the idea and I'm not even sure how to make this motion, but we um we move forward with our decision that we've already made and we create um a committee that um consists of board members, um teachers, students maybe also since we have a a strong um student representation here tonight. um possibly other community members to determine what our priorities are as a community and what we want to um how we want
209to utilize this program. Um I think that makes the most sense. Um I'm even I'm I didn't even realize that we had the opportunity to go with another and I'm sorry I'm not using these terms correctly, but another way to store the data. Correct. I mean that would be on our dime. we would purchase that. Um, so I think that that's even also something that we could further discuss. So I guess my motion is um we move forward and develop a committee to help um represent what our community wants in this program. >> May I offer a friendly amendment? >> Did that that committee, if it passes, that committee meets before we deploy uh any of the ricotta cameras? and um another friendly amendment type constraint to what we that because I know there's a
210schedule for finishing deployment of this that we h we asked this group if if we approve establishing a group to have a recommendation back to senior cabinet within 30 days. That seems like >> I don't think that's realistic. I'm I don't think that's realistic to be able to get that committee together, met, and have a decision within 30 days. I'm sorry. I just I mean, I'd love to be able to do that. I just I don't see how it's possible. I We can pause We can pause deployment as long as we need to. So, I just don't I don't think we need to be in a >> I don't know that that can happen. It's just too It's just too fast because I'm thinking, you know, I'm looking around the room thinking, okay, we, you
211know, how am I going to put pull this off, right? I mean, it's who who's, you know, getting getting the right people involved, including the people some of the people sitting out here. So, that's going to be a lot. >> We haven't voted on. >> All right. So, um, >> did we vote on accepting the friendly amendment? >> Well, if it's friendly, we don't need. She just needs to decide if she wants to accept it or or we don't need to vote on a friendly amendment. If she accepts an amendment is friendly, then it's just as if she had stated that in her original motion. >> So, I accept your friendly amendment. >> I'm sorry. I'm Mr. Mr. President. Oh my gosh. So, can either of you restate the motion so that we can get
212it make it clear or give it a shot and we'll keep hacking at it till it's clear. >> Okay, let me see if I can do this here. Um uh so I would like my motion is um we well we've already purchased the ricotta. Uh we create a um committee that consists of um uh teachers uh staff, students, board members and um community members uh to discuss which um which features we will enable, we will turn on um as part of the program. And until uh we meet, we will not um push play on the on the cameras basically. We will not deploy them. >> Does that sound about right? >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> Oh, yeah. That was yours. >> I'll second that motion. >> Let's do a a roll call. >> Hold up.
213Now, do we have a motion? >> We give it to discuss it. That's correct. >> All right. Um, may I just since I'm already talking? Um, okay. So, first of all, there's a lot going on here. Um, I do want to say that I really appreciate both the community and the vendors, and I don't think there are any bad actors here. I think everybody's trying to do what they think is right. And I'd like we all came at it from that point of view. Um, just we got to grant each other ground before we can have a debate, right? Because there's so many issues here. We've heard about um the culture on our campuses and whether surveillance cameras in general as they exist or might exist in the future um inspire the kind of culture
214we want. Uh we've heard about concerns about data security um either via uh ricotta software via uh worries about uh AWS usage and um setup and concerns about data security from the point of view of uh you know human error um bad actors um and these are separate from the AI and facial recognition issue which is its own thing and I've heard a lot of much more consens ensus on that. I think we also heard about spending choices which is kind of linked to the culture um about whether this is where we want facilities money to go and finally there's an issue regarding how we as a board uh use the consent calendar and I know that internally that's already we uh some people have been having discussions about that. Um so I think we
215kind of need to address all those at some point or another which is just to say that I do want to offer more motions in the future. As for this one, um I think that the committee is a an important first step. Um not only specifically around this issue, but because we um I don't I was going to say we we did screw up in passing the consent calendar and I think a lot of us were frugally found that. And the accountability piece is important. Um, and again, I I do appreciate staff has immediately um started working with us to figure out, okay, how are we going to make sure that big ticket items that might be really important as a community don't uh get passed without proper scrutiny. That's that's important. Um all that
216is to say that part of repairing uh that trust and making sure that um we remain a entity firmly re rooted in our community um is that this kind of a committee even though it will be slow um is the most important first step um long-winded way of saying I think we should do that thing. Yeah. So, I wanted to uh say that I think this is a is a um great learning opportunity for our senior cabinet or I I firmly believe that um John Vincent had no intention of like sneaking something onto this consent calendar without um the board uh having an idea of what was going on. I I I believe that that was not the intention. Uh, and nevertheless, I I also believe that the board didn't have when when you look
217at the RTI contract and the fact that there's nothing that mentions AI on it. Um, and I and I want you to also understand that the $1.9 million um to that to regular ordinary people, $1.9 million. That's a lot of money and I'm not downplaying that. But in a school budget, when you're looking at our budget of what is our our working what is our our yearly budget, >> we're about 225 million. >> Yeah. So 225 million. Um we we as a board we do see big ticket items come across for approval. Um and in facilities that's not that's not outrageous at all. Um you know we are building there are lots of things going on and um when uh I I told Mr. lake that I feel like if the public wants to come
218and with pitchforks, that's what we that's what we get, right? Because because it was handled badly. Um, and it wasn't just Mr. Lando. I I don't know if other members of the board asked for this to be agendaized, but I I did as well. And so, I think we are here listening to you, and I hope I hope that you feel like we listened and uh are compassionate and reactive and uh I feel like um the the district has has uh taken some responsibility and I I truly appreciate uh Mr. Vincent taking the time to walk us through how did we get here? Why why was this even an option? Um I think that is an important piece that we've had cameras on campuses for years for longer than even our seniors. They they were
219on campuses before this group of seniors was were in school, right? And so they the idea that students are being surveiled they tr it's true and they have been for their entire our seniors for their entire career in Chico Unified. And the difference is that our administration wants to do it more effectively for safety concerns. And that being said, I'm hearing that you're saying, "Yeah, but what what's going to happen with that?" Um, you know, I have a granddaughter at uh Rosedale and I have a grandson at Loma Vista. Uh, it's these are important things, right? I was a teacher. I I was a union president. I would want my, you know, my um teachers in my um unit to feel like they that their rights were being protected. So anyway, that's my comment. Are
220we ready to vote? Okay, let's do a roll call vote. We'll start with um member H. >> Hi. >> Olsen. I >> Conan I. >> Lando. I >> Robinson. I with a vote of five to zero. Um that passes. All right. >> May I offer another amendment on the same another motion on the same topic? >> Yes. >> Um I am very concerned about the potential use and misuse of um either biometric data or um facial recognition, true facial recognition um and the use of AI models to surveil our students. And I would like to and I think it's been brought up that there have been many large um districts and other entities around the just outright say no, we don't do that. So I would move that we direct staff to draft a board
221policy um that specifically bans the use of facial recognition and AI uh models in our security. >> I'd second that. I second that. We have um an amendment uh motion motion by Tom um to develop a board policy. >> It specifically bans >> specifically bans AI and facial recognition in our surveillance. >> And a second um by Second. >> Yes, I did. >> Darn it. >> You can vote. >> All right. Um, shall we do another roll call vote? Okay, we'll start with >> Is there any debate on this one? >> Do you want to do you want to have discussion? >> No, we just got just got to check. That's all. >> No. >> Okay. >> Sorry, I'm getting tired here and I need to go >> at my end again. >> Uh, we'll
222start with um Vice President Olson. First >> Olson. I >> Conan I >> Lando I >> Robinson I >> Hace I >> with a vote of five to zero. That passes that motion. >> How are we doing guys? Are you needing a >> Can I Can I just just throw one more? I'm really sorry. Um, but as part of the um as part of um this committee, what we look at, I would like to I don't know if this needs to be a motion um but yeah, I kind of want it to be. Yes. I'd like to direct staff um to identify um prices and options for bringing uh our data inhouse rather than using AWS. I second that. >> Okay. Do you want to discuss that >> discussion? Um, yeah. I know I know
223we got information on that, but I I don't know that we ever got a kind of a firm handle on what that cost would be. I know that they said there would be a cost. Um, do you want to put anything in there or ju or just that you want the information? >> I want the information as as we move forward with this with this committee. >> I feel like that's one of the key pieces they're going to need when they make these decisions. We're going to want to look at both. >> I have no objection to that >> because we're going to want to educate the whole community on okay, what does the security actually mean, but also, you know, how much is it going to cost us to do that if that's the
224route we chose we choose to go. So you would like as a part of the committee to also consider how much it would or what it would take to have our data stored inhouse. >> Yes. >> Why don't we just make that happen then? >> I mean I don't necessarily think it need it can just be part of the committee's duties. Right. >> Okay. >> I don't think we need I don't know that it needs to be a separate motion for that. >> I >> No, >> I think um well I'm just clarifying. I think Tom is asking that we find out what that cost is and I mean because we do have I mean facilities we do have we have do have money that needs to be spent on facilities and if this money
225is being taken out of facilities I think it's important to know if we store it inhouse this is the cost I mean I think there is a co you have to look at the cost risk benefit and see if it makes sense to store it inhouse or whether or not that that we look at it and say, um, it doesn't make sense, but I thought Tom's motion was to direct the staff to find out what that cost would be. Is that correct? >> Yeah. And >> yes. >> So, that's the motion that has been seconded is for the staff to find out the cost. So, we have a motion. Um, >> and report back, of course. Yes, you're right. So, I'm thinking like programmer now. Can't just make it variable. You got to do something
226with it. Anyhow, >> so a motion um to direct staff to find out the cost of using an in-house Yeah. storage. >> Yes. >> Okay. And that was by um Vice President Olsen. >> Okay. Let's just we've been unanimous for the last couple of times. Can we just do a vote all together? >> Okay. All those in favor signify by saying I. >> I. Those opposed. Okay, that passes. Vote to five to zero. >> Any more motions? >> Um, we will at some point come back and look at the consent calendar. I'm not ready to make a motion about formally changing how we do that yet. I know we've been talking about in-house and I want to do a little more research and a little more thinking before we talk about that. So, no, right
227now I'm done. Anybody else? >> Right. Okay, we're moving along. Are we all doing okay? >> Yeah. >> Okay, we're going to take a five minute break. >> Thank you all again for coming out. I really appreciate it. Okay. >> Yes, we do. >> I know. I know. >> All right. We're moving along. >> Thank you. >> We're um on item number four,formational. Um this is the midyear local or the LCAP update. Ina Kee, >> does this mic work? >> Use this. >> It does. >> So, every February, uh, Tim and I generally come back here together to the board to give you the midyear local control accountability plan update. Uh, it is the midyear update and has to be approved by boards by February 28th of each school year. So, uh, Tim, can you
228turn just flick to the, uh, next page, please? So, a little bit of background. Uh, we do have the requirements given to us by the state that each governing board needs to see this snapshot of where we're at with our midyear LCAP view. Basically, uh, you'll see some data in this presentation that you've seen before. Tim's going to uh go through it in a much more condensed version, but you'll also see the expenditures that that go with each of the goals and where we are currently midyear in those goals. If you have any questions at the end, we're happy to uh to answer them. Tim, go ahead. >> There we go. Is am I good now? >> Just use your big boy voice. I'll use my big my teacher voice. Um I'm going to I'm
229going to share some um data with you today. Nothing new. Everything we went over um a couple weeks ago um in much more detail. We're simply required to report to the board along with the financials um by the state. But so I am going to kind of kind of run through that fast. But as always, if you have any questions, want more details, um you know where to find me. So, um, so starting off, um, with an update on goal one, which is academic achievement in Chico Unified. We talked a couple weeks ago about the, um, the academic scores that we're very, very proud of. Um, and I want to call attention to, um, to our students with disabilities and socioeconomically disadvantaged students there. Um, when we talk about expenditures, this is by far our
230our goal that we spend the most on. Um, you can see we budgeted over $35 million to um to address our academic needs. Uh, the actual expenditures that you see below, roughly half of the budgeted expenditures are what we have paid out through January 31st. And so for goal one, we're right on target for for our our budgeted expenditures. For goal two, um this is social emotional well-being and education for for our kids. Um as I mentioned a couple weeks ago, again, we did go up a little bit in chronic absenteeism. Um you can see the the goal two expenditures there and you can see less money here. Um a little over 4 million budgeted and we're at about um 2,350 or 2 million 350,000 um through the end of January. So we are on
231target um to hit our budget marks. Um goal three is behavioral um supports for our students. Uh we measure this with suspension data. Um and again we went up a little bit in 0.2 percentage points in suspension rate. Um our budget expenditures you can see right there. Um I'm having a hard time reading from that far. um uh almost $4 million and we're at almost two million um so far through the end of January. So, we are on target with that. Goal four um is related to schools that have the um equity multiplier um that have met E equity multiplier requirements. um they have each of those sites up there um has very very specific goals that actually hit um academic, social, emotional, and behavioral goals. But this is a catchall for those schools. Um,
232and you can see there that $828,000 was um, budgeted and we are at 370,000. So, we're a little bit below where we um, so you notice that says in progress and not on target. Um, we are a little bit below budget right now. The primary reason for that is the variety of of funding sources that come into our alternative ed campuses, including community schools money, um CSI money, um title one. So, um there's a lot of and they've been doing wonderful things there. Um it's just a lot of money to spend. I will add to that that uh Andrew Maul, who's the administrator over on that campus, uh is actively always looking to creatively spend those pots of money down, including this one. >> And that is that is the midyear update. Um I provided
233links to the presentation from a couple weeks ago if anybody wants to review more detailed data as well as the California dashboard. But I'm also available anytime for for questions. >> Yeah, that that data will be coming soon. >> Does the board have any questions? >> Any public comment? A quick question. Um, is there any information that the public has regarding uh the budgeted I forget if you could go back a couple Oh, I can go back a couple. >> All right. So you can see here on the slide I was wondering if there's anything um that the bud that shows the budgeted expenditures and the actual expenditures like what where the money is actually being spent. >> Sure. There are a couple places uh it is in the LCAP from last year and it's
234also in the school plan. They typically every school site does a school plan that actually will be up for uh looking into next year's at the May meeting and then LCAP for the next year of course comes in June. So um those big ideas of what they had looked at they're in there for sure but then there's still a gap of money because as Tim mentioned there are all these pot pots of money so um their site council approves things as they add along the way. >> Yeah, great great question. Thank you. Is was there a particular school you were wanting to look at? Like could could we give you more direction or >> Well, follow up with with my principal at the school that my son goes to. I'm happy to do that. I
235guess I was just wondering where to start, but obviously I'm here so I'd ask a question. >> Yeah. Well, we're we're happy to point you in the right direction. Okay. >> Any other public comment? Okay. So this is information um only and so we don't need to take action this evening. Thank you very much. So um we're actually um for 9B which is business services. Um this is regarding the lease back agreement. Um. Uh oh. >> You okay? So, we're actually just going to um skip this item tonight. We're gathering some more information. So, um we'll this you'll see this again on the March 11th agenda, correct? Okay. >> 9B1. Yes. So now postpone yeah till March 11th. All right. So now um discussion action um we are going to be talking about a bid
236approval district restroom projects package B um presented by Maria Campos. >> Um is it good night or good evening? Okay, as as mentioned tonight, we are requesting approval for a bid package B, which includes improvements at Chico Junior High School, Hooker Oak Elementary, and Marsh Junior High School restroom improvements as part of the facility's master plan. $14.3 million has been allocated districtwide to modernize restrooms. These upgrades are focused on providing clean, functional restrooms for all students. Previously at the January 20 or January 20254 meetings, the board approved a list of projects and sites where work would be completed. Staff um facility staff issued a notice to biders on January 1st, 2026 and received bids on February 10th. Four bids were received. Lean Construction was the lowest responsive bidder at $841,94 all within our budget. The
237project will be funded by measure K uh building fund 32. We are requesting the board's authorization uh for the superintendent or designate to execute contract with lean construction. Any questions? Any public comment? Hey, this um is a discussion action. So um would a board member like to make a motion at this time? >> Yeah, I'll motion approval of the contract for package B to lean construction. >> I'll second. Okay, we have a motion um by um Mrs. Hayes and a second by Vice President Olsen. Um let's just go ahead and do a vote al together. All those in favor signify by saying I >> I Okay, those opposed. All right, this passes with a vote of five to zero. >> Thank you. Okay, we're moving along. Um, also a discussion action item. Um, this is
238regarding Chico High school roofing repairs presented by Jacqueline Krueger. >> Yeah. So, I'm bringing forward uh requests this evening to kind of rep prioritize some money. So, um, in our facilities master plan, some building improvements related to Chico High. Um, we're estimating to occur in 2032, but we have a couple areas of campus that have some significant leaky roofs um that are impacting our classrooms. And so what we want to do is reallocate $2 million from the restroom projects over to repair those roofs. Um and then with onetime money, assuming it comes through with the budget next year, repay that back. So it wouldn't impact our restroom projects. We're phasing them out into A through F. Now, originally we thought it was going to be A and B. Um but we can only have the
239summer really to work on the restroom um renovations. It's really hard to take down restrooms when kids are on campus, obviously. So, we're making the packages a lot smaller um than we originally had planned. So, we're elongating that. So, the money is available for the next um year or so to be able to do kind of a a switch temporarily to be able to address the leaky roofs at Chico High. >> Any questions? Any public comment? We have a board member who'd like to make a motion. I to take care of compliment thinking to take care of what is a very immediate need but not completely forgetting those restrooms. >> We have a second >> seconded. Uh we have a motion by um member Robinson, a second by member Lando. Let's go ahead and all
240vote together. All those in favor signify by saying I. >> I. Those opposed. >> All right, that passes with a vote of five to zero. We are moving along to human resources. Um, this is also a discussion action item regarding resolution 1715-26 release non-reelection of a temporary um certificated employee. John, >> thank you, Madam President. Before you is a resolution 1715-26, uh, education code 44954B requires that the governing board notify a temporary employee in a position requiring certification qualifications of the decision to release or non-reelect the employee from such a position for the next succeeding school year. The board may be wondering why we're doing this in February. It seems for some to be early. However, our process is to be sure we give enough time for administrators to uh handdel and have conversations with
241people who uh fall within this resolution. And our March board meeting would only give them two days to have those conversations. So, it's a I realize it's early. Um I do want to emphasize too for the board, you'll see in the second paragraph in the first sentence, it's highlighted that we may retain certain employment protections. Um, I wish Charlie were here from the Chico Unified Teachers Association to to um to acknowledge that within our collective bingarding agreement, we do uh we do mandate that any temporary employee be allowed or be um they are they they are not required. They are um eligible to apply and must be interviewed and that's something that many collective bargaining agreements don't have. So we appreciate the um that collaboration on that language. >> Any questions? >> I was curious.
242So this is So this is temporary and just probationary zero. No probationary one or two. >> Correct. >> Okay. >> Yeah. any of the probationary 2 or probationary one teachers who um were in a a situation that would um initiate a non-reelection conversation um they they were given the option to resign and did so. >> I see. Thank you. >> Other questions? Any public comment? Do we have a motion? I motion approval of resolution se 1715-26 >> seconded. >> We have a motion by um member Hayes, a second by member Lando. Let's go ahead and vote. All those in favor signify by saying I. >> I. >> Those opposed passes with a vote of five to zero. Okay. Moving along to 9D. Also um a discussion action um item. Uh we're going to be talking
243tonight about these um updated um board policies. So um Tina, do you want to get us started? >> Sure. This agenda item has three that we'll be discussing. Two of them are new um a board policy or an update and a third one is a deleted. So we'll go in order of them up on the screen. The first one is mental health and I'm open to taking any questions or thoughts that you have with this policy before you consider adoption. >> Is this where I get to chime in? >> Go ahead. >> Okay. Um, so I do have a um I guess it's a recommendation um on page three um just below number nine. Um and a recommendation for some rewarding more for clarification purposes and a little bit more specificity of the language used.
244um to read. A student 12 years of age or older may consent to mental health treatment or counseling if the student in the professional opinion of the attending mental health care provider is mature enough to participate intelligently in the services. A health care provider shall obtain consent and involve the parent guardian in the minor's treatment unless the health care provider deems the do deems and documents that making parent guardian contact is detrimental to the safety and well-being of the student. I don't think Right. >> I don't think >> No, my impression is it actually provides more specificity. Um, Jen and I actually had conversations about this paragraph oursel. So I think your idea of added specificity and not changing the meaning of that uh would would be totally fine to be put in this policy
245in in lie of that paragraph. >> As a former well and I still sub special ed teacher the word inappropriate drives me crazy because who determines that? So, okay. Um, let's see here. Actually, >> that's on just that one, but there's >> Yeah, hold on a moment. Let me just make sure we're going in the right order. Does the board have any um technical questions? only that I want to put on the record that to the best of our knowledge, this isn't going to conflict with or change our position regarding any ongoing litigation. >> No, it should not. This is only specifically about mental health services. >> Yep. I just want to make sure that's real clear and that's on the record as being our intention not to mess with anything that >> no current
246litigation. >> Thank you. >> Is there any? >> So I have a I just have a clarification question. So in order for the board to accept this change, what would be the steps to do that would we just say that we Okay. Okay. So to replace All right. So I would like to motion that the >> real quick. Let me just make sure we don't have any public comment. >> Okay. Sure. >> Any public comment? >> Okay. Sorry. Thank you. >> That's okay. I motion that the board member suggested language replace the paragraph below the number nine on page three of seven of policy 5141.5. We have a second. >> Seconded. >> Any board discussion? I'm also definitely in favor of this as well. I feel like some of the language was a little bit
247um loose and so I think it just provides a little extra clarity and the intention um we had was um just to provide um more support to the health care provider but also at the same time just um supporting the family in in this way too. So, any other comment or discussion? Let's go ahead and vote. Um, are you okay with us continuing with our vote voting al together? Okay. All of those. And >> I'm I'm sorry because um I I'm just just a point of clarification. Um, I did I just didn't know whether the all of the policies h that's really what I was wondering is if all of them have to be approved at once or we can go through one. >> We're going to go through them separately, right? >> Okay, great.
248Thank you. >> That's what I was under the impression. >> Awesome. Thank you. >> Okay, so we're just specifically talking about the mental health at this point. >> Okay, perfect. Okay. So, um what we're voting on now is um approval of the revised policy um the mental health one uh with the changes um that have been presented tonight with this in regards to this particular paragraph. All those in favor signify by saying I. >> I. Opposed. Okay, this passes. So, I'm not exactly sure how we go about with the deleted board policy. Do you wanna? >> Sure. My best guess would be because uh this board policy has been deleted and struck completely because a new one has come up and you'll see that in the next agenda item. I think it's probably pretty simple
249uh to vote as a deletion. >> Yeah. So, >> are we not going to deal with discussing the rest of Where is it? Cheers. It's already done. >> And thank you. I I was under the impression we had gone to the next one, so I um had let Jen head home as she's got to drive uh back to her place. But I will be happy to express uh your your warm wishes for her work. >> Okay. >> I I will move that 5145.13 be deleted from board policy. >> Seconded. Sorry. Um, this time, uh, we're going to take a look at the updated board policy. um uh 6162-.7 the use of technology in instruction and let's see >> sure thank you. There were just uh two things that were requested to be looked at. Um
250one was at the bottom of page two the last paragraph. Um, there was some some board member uh requests for some verbiage in that last paragraph to um read clearly. And I also believe member Olsen had wondered about number two up at the top of that page adding the word interaction. I believe yes. So if I understood her correctly, it would be balance required and then that would read technology should complement other educational activities that promote communication, physical activity, interaction, and digital citizenship. Is that correct? >> I couldn't have said it better. >> Why thank you. Wow. >> Is it okay to >> Yeah. >> Okay. So, um I'm sure uh Tesha will have some comments um on this as well. Um um I think it's clear to just um just so the board understands
251um that one of the changes that uh we are suggesting um in regards to the use of technology um it is it's a pretty um I don't want to say it's a big change but uh let's see on yes on page two so um the changes are at the very bottom all staff should strive to use technology in transformative and in supportive ways um and limit restrictive uh usage. In addition, disruptive technology use should be eliminated. So, we um we're suggesting a couple changes there. Um specifically saying that basically there should be no disruptive use of technology. Um, but I think probably the biggest um suggestion and change we have is um the board supports Chromebooks only being sent home with elementary age students if requested by the students family. So, it suggests a pretty
252um big change because um as it stood before um Chromebooks were were sent home um with elementary age students unless the parents requested that they weren't sent home. So, um we have different reasons for why we believe it that this is a a positive change. Um, and so I'm gonna let you talk about it too, Tisha. >> Well, I just wanted to say I really appreciate um, Rebecca's work on this and also other board members sending us information. The gist of it is that um, what research shows is that uh, having too much screen time is bad for the development of brains. And we believe that at the elementary school level that there isn't a good enough reason to send Chromebooks home unless a family specifically requests it. In that case, then that the family
253can have a conversation with the school administrator. I assume it would be the school administrator. And then you know that that need can if it's a need, then of course we want to be responsive to our community um and our family's needs. But um you know right now I mean I've sat in on elementary LCAP meetings and I did hear that students are taking their Chromebooks home and that they have homework to do on their Chromebook. and uh Rebecca and I both felt um as you know the liaison for this topic that um perhaps that's an instructional practice that needs to change that um we don't see the need for elementary school age children uh that there are other if homework is going to be assigned then other means can be assign you know it
254doesn't have to be done on a Chromebook that was our our feeling and we feel like uh it's in the best interest of those elementary age students developing brains. >> That's my primary um intention, too. I think there's um other ways that we can accomplish this goal. I also think um from a financial standpoint, I think those Chromebooks probably take a pretty good beating um going back and forth uh from school to home. Um, I still think that um, Chromebooks can be used in transformative um, and supportive ways while they are in the classroom. Um, I just don't see that it's essential that they um, make their way home with kids. Um, and this is not um, just my feeling or Tisha's feeling. This is um the feedback we're receiving from from parents and I
255think um some of the parents have come and spoke at meetings and I think their points are valid. Um I think there's a sense of when we issue a Chromebook to an elementary uh student, they see it as theirs and and um something that they can use in in their own way. Um, and I don't know that parents always appreciate that. So, I think um, certainly this um, change with board policy supports parents if they're if they're coming to the teacher and saying, "Hey, we'd like a Chromebook so that we can work on these things at home." Um, we can certainly issue those. Um but for um the best interest of all students, I think um we can find other ways to do homework assignments aside from the use of a Chromebook for elementary students.
256Again, just to point out, this is specifically for elementary. So, uh Heather and Suentes and I will work with the elementary principles. Uh this may take a little bit to get going because it is a pretty significant change for them currently. Uh so you'll if you will allow us some time to to get this into effect and the communication to administrators to teachers and then with their own their own families as well. >> This needs to be a amendment but I mean I'm comfortable with this being something that's initiated with the the fall school year. I mean I don't know >> that would be helpful on our end to make sure the communication's clear and everybody knows what uh what the expectations are. >> Yeah. I I I believe that um for those students who
257like I was just thinking of those LCAP students who currently take theirs home that it would be um it would be an a big change for them to be told, yeah, you can't have that at your home anymore. And it also gives uh teachers an opportunity to figure out, you know, what do they want homework to look like if there's going to be homework at the elementary school level, right? Um, and I also want to really appreciate John Benson, Antina. They were great to work with on this. And I really do feel as I look as I look at what's included, I mean, I I realize that maybe a board policy doesn't need to have purpose matters balance. I think this to me is really important language. Even though, you know, it doesn't it doesn't
258read like um other board policies maybe do. I I think that when we're talking about brain development, I I'm just proud of this. So, I'm I'm really pleased. Thank you for helping on this and being responsive to uh Rebecca's and my um suggestions. >> You're welcome. Um for one last piece, so to make it really clear, which would probably be helpful, I would suggest maybe we stay we say something about like effective in August 2026, the board supports Chromebooks only being sent home right before that last sentence. Then it's very very clear and and transparent. Are you good with that? And this is something that um as I've been spending some time like just researching and reading up on um what's going on, this seems to be not just specific to something um we'd like
259to see happen, but um I think districts um across the state and country are recognizing >> around the world um that maybe we need to look at at this form of um education and kind of >> go back to our roots and go a little more old school. So, >> right. >> I don't I I think I can say this now and if I can't I'm going to just the other piece of it, it would be like, you know, when we first started with Chromebooks, we had the Chromebook carts, you know, so that at the elementary level, they have to figure out, you know, the charging because they're going to have to be charged. They're not going to go home and, you know, for the students to charge. Not that the students necessarily charge them
260all the time but um so that's another component that needs to be worked out as well. So I think giving time is is the best thing. >> Yeah. Thank you very much. That'll be very helpful on our end. and including the time the time. >> Yeah, >> that's too much for me. >> Okay. So I move that that policy 6162.7 be approved with the inclusion of the word interaction after phys after the comma after physical activity number two and that um at the bottom of page two that it says be beginning in August of 2026 6. The board supports Chromebooks only being sent home with elementary age students if requested by the students family. >> Seconded. >> Okay, we have a motion by member Hayes, a second by um member Lando. Let's go ahead and
261do a vote all together. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. I. >> Those opposed. >> Okay, that passes. Awesome. All right. Okay. Moving along. Um let's see. Discussion action. This is um first reading and approval of new board policy by Tina Kee. >> Correct. So as I mentioned previously, the other immigration uh enforcement board policy was completely removed. It's a whole new number now. It becomes 1445. And uh you'll see it's all in red. It is uh quite it's quite more substantial than the um in in breadth and information than the previous board policy. And can you tell us um just for members of the public that may be watching um how does how does this come about that a a whole policy would be stricken and then a whole new policy
262would be created? Do you have a sense of that? >> Well, I don't know uh exactly. you know that uh as I learn more and more about policies, I haven't gotten quite to that piece, but um I do know when there are substantial additions to be made, much like the mental health uh one previously, I think uh the most effective way that they probably believe, and this comes from CSBA, is to add a new one. And um >> CSBA is the California School Boards Association, >> right? That's where we get these from. and they're they have teams of lawyers that sit down and say and enact new ed code and and >> correct any legal additions. Uh California law has uh strengthened their pieces in relation to this and those are all included in ed
263code here. >> Thank you. >> Right. Any other questions? >> I would Oh, yeah. Go ahead. >> No, I was just going to motion. >> Any public comment? >> First read, right? Oh, >> we need this tonight. Okay, cool. >> Yeah, we're on a a date to have these posted by March 1st on our website. >> Any uh public comment? >> Okay, any motions? >> I motion that board of uh the board policy 1445 be approved. >> We have a motion by Hayes, a second by um member uh Robinson. Go ahead and vote. All those in favor signify by saying I. >> I. >> Opposed. That passes. All right. Another one. Tina. First reading and approval of the new board policy. >> So that was it. That was it. >> You're just so used to
264those policies now that we thought there was one more, but there's not. >> Okay. >> No, >> we have this financial >> Oh, darn it. >> What? There's another little component. Okay. Um, do we adjourn that first meeting and then we open the next one? Yes. Okay. >> Okay. We're going to go ahead and join to recess. Now we're back. >> It's not near as much fun as recess in elementary school. Welcome to the financial um meeting. I'm going to call the Chico Unified School District annual annual financial corporation meeting to order. Um this meeting is livereamed and recorded. At this time, um I'm going to introduce agenda item 2.1. This is discussion action um approving the minutes of the annual meeting um presented by Jacqueline Cougar. Yes. So this is our annual meeting of
265the financial corporation um behalf of Chico Unified. Um the only item we have this evening are the mits looking for approval of the minutes. Last year we did we did not have any activity in the finance corporation this year and at this point in time we don't have any projected items to bring forth um for discussion or information at this point. >> Looking for approval on the minutes. >> Any questions? Any public comment? We have a motion at this time. >> I'll move to approve the minutes. >> I second it. >> We have a motion um by member Orlando, a second by member Hayes to approve the minutes. Um any discussion? >> Right, let's go ahead and vote. All those in favor signify by saying I. >> I opposed. This passes. All right, we're going
266to adjourn that meeting. Is there uh I'm sorry. Is there a motion to adjourn this meeting? some. >> Yes. Okay. Uh I think that was >> it was Robinson. Okay. That was um that motion was by Mrs. Robinson. Uh M and second by member Lando. >> Sure. >> Let's go ahead and vote on that >> unless we want to discuss it first. >> Okay. All those in favor? >> I opposed. >> Okay. Uh we can adjourn that financial meeting. Um, now the board will resume the Chico Unified School District regular board meeting um in accordance with the meeting agenda. That was fun. Okay, I'd like to call this um board meeting back to order. Um at this time, we're going to see if there's any items from the floor. Are there any items from the
267floor? >> Okay. Um at this time, uh we have not Okay. Any uh we did not receive any board member um request to agendaize items. So we can move forward um to adjourning this meeting. >> So moved. >> Okay. We >> I second. >> Okay. Um that was Mr. Lando, second by Mrs. Hayes. Um no discussion needed. Um do we want to go ahead and vote? All those in favor? >> I She's leaving. She's like