When Immigration Officers Arrive: What Kern High’s Written Rules Tell Families

September 28 update: Buttonwillow promises corrections

In a September 28 letter to Billy Roach, Buttonwillow Union School District answered a September 17 follow-up records request about its immigration-enforcement procedures. The district said it was not in possession of responsive records for two categories: staff training materials, dates, attendance or acknowledgments since January 1, 2025; and records showing when and how its English and Spanish rights guides were distributed to families, including ParentSquare announcements, emails or accompanying notices. This is the district’s response to the specific records requests. It does not prove that no employee received instruction or that no family received a guide.

The district also acknowledged discrepancies in its safety-plan text. It said the June 8, 2026 date printed on a footer in pages 35–37 will be corrected, while stating that no new safety plan was adopted or revised. It said it will reconcile language about when notification begins with a separate one-hour aspiration. The letter promises to correct a typo in the listed California Department of Justice reporting address. Readers should use the address in current official DOJ guidance rather than the erroneous address printed in the plan.

Superintendent/Principal Heidi Witcher wrote that the corrected, updated safety plan is anticipated by October 9. That is a projected delivery date, not a document we have received or verified. The response does not supply the corrected plan, an adoption record for a new plan or proof of staff training. We will compare the promised version with the earlier one when it is available.

Kern High says a first records batch was sent

A separate September 28 letter from Kern High School District public information officer Violeta Trujillo concerns a September 2 California Public Records Act request. It says the district provided an initial set of responsive, non-exempt documents with that transmission, called “Batch 1.” The image supplied to this newsroom shows the cover letter, not the enclosed records; we have not reviewed or characterized the batch’s contents.

The district says it anticipates providing some, if not all, of the remaining documents by October 29 and will notify the requester if that is not possible. The cover letter alone does not identify which requested questions those records answer. The published Kern High policy and procedure analyzed below remain separate, directly reviewable sources; no finding about new training or actual family notifications follows from this batch notice.

Update: Caliente Union’s written response

Caliente Union School District’s principal/superintendent responded to The Scoop’s public-records request, describing a district serving 47 students in the Piute Mountain community. This update adds that response to the reporting first published September 16.

The district said its Comprehensive Safety Plan was updated to include Board Policy and Administrative Regulation 1445 and was reviewed by a parent committee and all staff. The response also referred to BP/AR 1445 documents and said their approval dates appear at the top.

“No family notices were sent due to no occurrences,” the district wrote. That is the district’s explanation for the absence of those notices; it does not establish that no families experienced immigration-related impacts.

The policy documents referenced in the response have not yet been reviewed for this update, so their exact wording and approval dates remain unverified. The reported safety-plan review should not be treated as confirmation of completed staff training.

A written instruction families can check

BAKERSFIELD — Kern High School District’s published immigration-enforcement procedure calls for notifying staff working at affected district property when enforcement personnel are actually or imminently present. When that property is a school, the procedure also calls for notifying the parents or guardians of students there through its safety-plan procedures. That language gives families a specific starting point for understanding how the district would communicate.

The Scoop reviewed the district’s Board Policy 1445, dated February 2, 2026, and Administrative Regulation 1445, dated February 24. Its policy index offers both in English and Spanish. The regulation addresses documenting officers’ identity and claimed authority, consulting district leadership and counsel, and handling requests for student information. Its wider school notices and notification of an individual student’s parent are separate procedures.

These are published instructions. They do not, by themselves, establish that an encounter occurred, that every staff member received training, or that a particular family received a notice. The next reporting question is how the instructions are put into practice.

The local comparison begins with different kinds of documents

Sierra Sands Unified’s public immigration-resources page links family guides in English and Spanish, state resources and district translator contacts. Those links give families a place to start. They do not identify when every local policy was adopted or prove that staff completed training.

Bakersfield City’s equity-compliance page includes immigration-related resources and a link labeled Immigration Rights. During our September 16 review, that particular link returned a page-not-found response. This is a narrow website-access finding: it does not establish that the district lacks a policy. The parent resource page remains linked in our source list so readers can check for updates.

The comparison therefore separates adopted rules, staff procedures and family guidance. A district can publish useful guidance while additional records are needed to understand adoption, training or notification practice. Combining those categories into a single pass-or-fail score would obscure the information families need.

The state deadlines make implementation worth examining

California’s AB 49 framework required relevant policy updates by March 1, 2026. Education Code 234.7 addresses access to nonpublic school areas, information disclosure and family-facing educational-rights materials. Qualifying judicial process and statutory exceptions matter; a school policy is not a promise that federal enforcement can never occur.

SB 98 also set a March 1 deadline for school safety plans to include procedures for notification when immigration enforcement is confirmed on a schoolsite. Its K–12 provisions consider safety and exclude personal identifying details from notices. They do not establish a universal instantaneous-notification deadline. Kern High’s own language about actual or imminent presence should be read alongside its referenced safety-plan procedures.

What our records requests seek

The Scoop’s September 1 pilot requests went to Bakersfield City, Buttonwillow Union, Caliente Union, Muroc Joint Unified and Sierra Sands Unified. They seek current policies, adoption and revision records, translated family communications, staff guidance and training, notification procedures, and existing aggregate records of enforcement-related contacts.

The requests exclude student and family identifiers. They also distinguish a field an agency does not track from a search that finds no responsive records. Neither should be reported as proof that no child or family was affected.

This report now incorporates Caliente Union’s response, the September 28 Buttonwillow follow-up letter and Kern High’s September 28 cover letter alongside the original public-document review. The two new letters were supplied by the requester and are on file with the newsroom; the Kern High attachments were not included in the supplied image. This is not a completed review of all district productions. We are not using a missing email in one account as a finding that a district failed to answer.

Three practical questions for your district

Families can ask for the current policy number and adoption date, the public description of how schoolwide notices are delivered, and the language options for those notices. A general reassurance is easier to evaluate when it points to a written procedure.

Our next document checks concern implementation: dated training materials, publicly releasable notification instructions and adoption records. Parents and educators can contribute public policy links or describe an issue for follow-up through the project page. Please keep student names, immigration status and identifying family details out of public comments.