Chico Unified pauses Verkada camera rollout, forms stakeholder committee and bans facial-recognition use

After a packed public hearing in which students, parents and teachers criticized a recent district contract to refresh campus cameras with Verkada technology, the Chico Unified School District board on Thursday voted to pause deployment of the new system, create a stakeholder committee to recommend permissible features, and direct staff to draft a policy banning facial-recognition and other AI-modeling in surveillance.

"Safety should never come at the cost of privacy, trust, and or transparency," said student Anthony Rodriguez, who spoke during public comment. "The proposed AI-enabled camera system would actively analyze students throughout the school day. As minors, we do not have the ability to not be at school." (Anthony Rodriguez, student.)

Board members heard a 40‑minute presentation from district staff explaining the rationale for replacing an aging Milestone/Pivot3 system with a cloud-enabled, subscription-backed Verkada package. John Vincent, the district’s director of technology, said the current infrastructure is old, costly to maintain and due for replacement; Jacqueline Krueger, deputy superintendent and CBO, told the board staff compared ten‑year total-cost estimates and found the Verkada proposal substantially lower than projected replacement costs for the old system.

"We had to look and see, is this system even still a viable system?" Vincent said. He described the package as a 10‑year all‑inclusive subscription that includes hardware, warranty and support and said the district would retain the encryption keys for recorded footage.

Verkada representatives emphasized controls and audit logs and said safety features are off by default. "Each of our customers fully own all of the data," said Mike Shembry, a Verkada regional sales director, adding that the company has taken steps to harden its security posture since a widely reported breach in 2021.

Despite those assurances, dozens of speakers told the board they were not comfortable with the contract’s scope or the vendor’s history. Speakers cited federal and state privacy rules and news accounts describing prior breaches and enforcement actions; others raised particular concerns about impacts on immigrant and disabled students, and on student activism.

"This system is expensive and invasion of privacy and frankly creepy," Alicia Bridal, a local parent and educator, told the board. She cited a recent FTC enforcement action and asked how the district would comply with children’s online-protection rules and secure parental consent where required. (Alicia Bridal, parent/educator.)

Multiple student speakers said surveillance would chill protest and activism and that the district should have engaged students earlier. "It sends the message that students are being watched first and trusted second," a student said.

After public comment, the board debated terms, access controls and deployment schedules. Trustees moved and passed a motion directing staff to convene a committee made up of board members, staff, students and community members to recommend which features of the new system should be enabled. The board also approved a separate motion directing staff to draft a board policy that would expressly ban facial-recognition and AI-modeling uses in district surveillance systems. Both actions passed unanimously, 5–0.

The board additionally directed staff to collect cost estimates and options for keeping video storage in‑house rather than using cloud archival services.

The board’s motions leave intact the contracted purchase but pause deployment and lock in policy and study steps the board will use to set operational limits. Board President (speaking as the meeting chair) said the committee will help determine feature settings, and staff will report back with recommendations and cost estimates for local storage.

What’s next: the committee will be convened and report back to senior cabinet and the board with recommendations; staff will produce a cost comparison for in‑house storage and draft a policy banning facial‑recognition and related AI profiling for board consideration.