When Russell Stuart drops off his daughter at Hawthorne Elementary School, there are a few thoughts that always cross his mind.
“I want to feel confident that she’s 100% safe, I want to feel confident she’s getting the best education, and I want to feel confident that she’s learning to build strong relationships with others,” Stuart told the Courier.
These concerns are the driving force behind Stuart’s candidacy for the Beverly Hills Unified School District Board of Education. One of three candidates currently vying for three seats in the Nov. 5 general election, Stuart said he is running to make the district safer, boost test scores and curb mental health issues, behavioral problems and bullying.
Born in Vancouver, Canada, Stuart’s family moved to Las Vegas when he was young, and he later moved to Los Angeles before settling in Beverly Hills in 2015. A veteran of the California State Guard, Stuart served for eight years before reaching the rank of captain. Stuart later built on that experience to launch a private security company that specializes in celebrity clients and founded Beverly Hills’ only gun store.
His store’s popularity exploded during the unrest following the 2020 murder of George Floyd, giving him a deeper sense of the security and safety concerns weighing on Beverly Hills residents. That experience prompted him to mount a last-minute campaign for City Council last December, and he said that supporting the school district was a cornerstone of his campaign.
In Stuart’s eyes, serving on the school board is another opportunity to improve the opportunities afforded to Beverly Hills students, including his daughter.
“It truly is just a continued passion to bring my skillset and leadership to the school board,” Stuart said. “I have a daughter going into first grade … My goal isn’t just to make the schools better, it’s to give my own child the greatest chance of success in her future.”
Though Stuart is finalizing details of his plans to increase academic excellence, he said that he wants to prioritize small class sizes and create more individualized educational opportunities.
Stuart also worried that students were gaining too much access to technology at too young an age, threatening their concentration and social skills. It is a problem Stuart has noticed with his own daughter, and he wants to limit the amount of technology used inside the classroom.
“I’m not saying technology is evil, I’m just saying there’s a time and a place for it,” Stuart said. “And in the early stages of development of a child, I think the evidence is clear as day that throwing an iPad in front of a 5-year-old and saying everything you’re going to do is going to be on this thing … that becomes their world.”
Given his professional and military background, school security is also a central part of Stuart’s platform. If elected, Stuart wants to increase the number of security officers stationed in front of the schools and ramp up police presence across the district, with at least one BHPD officer at each school.
He also thinks that better training is essential, recalling what he saw as a dismal security response when the schools were placed on lockdown last year. Ignoring automated messages that parents should not come to their children’s school, Stuart arrived expecting dozens of police officers and a SWAT team. Instead, there was “nobody,” he said.
“Where are the protocols, where are the drills that must kick into place if something like this happened,” Stuart said.
While Stuart acknowledged that investing in students’ mental health is the biggest way to ensure a safe environment, it is still not enough to prevent violence, and the authorities cannot be relied on to find and deter every person who might commit a violent act.
Despite his focus on security, Stuart does not take gun use lightly, and he does not like to be defined by his role as a gun dealer. And he thinks that his background, unique among the educational professionals, attorney, property manager and student currently serving on the board, will only serve to improve the board’s decision making.
“It’s not about me coming in and saying, ‘My way or the highway,” Stuart said. “It’s [about] me coming in going, ‘How about this thought. This is something that’s coming from a different angle that you guys haven’t thought of, and let’s talk about it.”’
