The Beverly Hills Unified School District (BHUSD) Board at its Sept. 30 meeting discussed the possibility of heightened security at Beverly Hills High School.
The item, brought for discussion by Board Members Sigalie Sabag and Russell Stuart, included potentially increasing the height of a fence being built at the school from eight feet to 20 feet.
“If we look at Beverly Vista Middle School, and we see the soccer field, the fence, I believe, is 20 feet … I think that would be very secure,” Sabag said.
Currently, the fence is planned to be eight feet tall and is slated for completion in December. The project is already designed and under contract. According to Amin Salari, the chief Operating Officer/Executive Vice President of Operations at Fonder-Salari, Inc., which is doing the construction, increasing the height of the fence would take an additional four months and cost an additional $2 million to $2.5 million.
Salari explained that the primary challenge of increasing the height of the fence would be building a foundation. Since the fence will be crafted from wrought iron, night time soil excavation would be required, among other things.
Suggesting that if the board is interested in adding height to the fence, it should be done after construction is completed on the existing plan, Salari noted that a lighter, taller structure could be placed behind the eight-foot fence.
“I am sure we can add, if you want to have a fence, add something on the top behind the existing fence later, but let’s just move forward with this project, considering the time and cost impact, because we’d have to go back to the drawing board,” he said.
In other news, during public comment at the Sept. 30 meeting, multiple parents and community members read proposed resolutions designed to combat anti-Black and anti-Hispanic prejudice which, they said, were submitted for inclusion on the board’s agenda but were not included.
“We have made multiple requests for this board to address the racism and disparate treatment that Black and Latin children in this district face,” said parent Victoria González-Tate. “But protection and acknowledgment of Black and Latin is always coming in the hereafter … If you have no interest in the equal educational rights of Black and Brown students, then step out of the way for the parents, students, teachers and community members to do so.”
Both resolutions were based on the language of the board’s recently adopted resolution to combat antisemitism.
BHUSD parent Zola Mashariki read a proposed resolution that, she said, would combat “anti-Hispanic and anti-Latino prejudice through education, awareness, remembrance and support.”
The resolution would include mandates that BHUSD recognize mid-September through mid-October as Hispanic Heritage History Month, commemorate Cesar Chavez Day on March 31, create spaces to celebrate the diversity within the Hispanic and Latino communities and adopt the United Nations (U.N.) International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, a landmark treaty definition that was adopted by the U.N. in 1965.
“It is time to educate BHUSD staff and students and to reflect, remember and learn … I hope you will take this seriously and adopt it,” Mashariki said.
Dr. Regulus Allen, also a BHUSD parent, read a proposed resolution to combat anti-Black bigotry and racial prejudice.
The draft resolution included mandates that BHUSD recognize February as Black History Month, commemorate Juneteenth as a designated day of remembrance marked by such activities as assemblies and trips to the California African American Museum in Exposition Park and designate Feb. 1 as National Freedom Day.
Speaking about the importance of such resolutions, González-Tate noted that “this board benefits off the backs of Hispanic culture by making its elementary schools dual immersion in an effort to pull BHUSD out of the gutters they put themselves in.”
