Barstow Unified to launch Guardian incident-reporting system Jan. 5 to centralize complaints

Rebecca Michaelelsson, the district’s Title IX/UCP compliance officer, demonstrated Guardian — a case-management platform the district purchased — and told trustees the district will publish a public reporting URL in early January so students, parents, staff and community members can submit incident reports online.

Michaelelsson said Guardian will centralize incident intake, allow users to choose report types (including HR, Title IX/sex discrimination, UCP reports and generic informational submissions), and store documentation such as evidence, contact logs and workflow states (pending, investigation, appeal). She described form fields that ask about location (on campus, off campus, online), whether a written complaint has already been submitted, and whether the site principal has been contacted — information she said will help staff triage complaints and meet legal timelines.

"We will be launching this January 5th, 2026," Michaelelsson said during a slide demonstration, adding that the system should streamline acknowledgements and improve timeliness of follow-up. She said staff will prepare a district-facing video and roll out training to principals before the public URL is made available.

Trustees asked whether the tool is available to everyone; Michaelelsson answered that the public access URL is intended for "literally everyone," including parents, students, employees and community members. She emphasized that the platform will reduce paper handling and consolidate records into a searchable case file to support investigations and recordkeeping.

Next steps: district staff will finalize configuration, prepare training materials for site administrators and target the first-week-of-January publication of the public URL; the board will receive implementation updates.