Element 1

Element 1: Safe School Environments and Violence Prevention Activities

Our first goal is to increase the number of students who report feeling safe at school. The objective of the goal is to increase this number annually by 10%. One additional school police officer will be hired to contribute to education and prevention activities. Security cameras and monitoring stations installed at each MUSD school site will contribute to the students’ feeling protected. The presence of security cameras and police officers will contribute to students’ sense of safety by making them feel protected. An anonymous phone tip line will instill a sense of personal responsibility in students, giving them a tool to report incidents that might otherwise go unreported. Students will feel empowered by sharing responsibility for school safety. The second goal under Element One is to decrease truancy and improve students’ attendance. The first objective to attaining this goal will be to hire a truancy officer. The truancy officer will annually conduct 200 hours of truancy education and prevention training with the objective to decrease the number of annual truancy citations by 10% each year – for a total reduction of 40% by the end of the grant period. Habitual truants will receive mentoring and discipline alternatives in order to improve their attendance. We will raise attendance levels for first period classes by 5% each year, for a total of 20% attendance increase by the end of the grant period. In order to achieve our third goal, we will expand our partnership with LA County Department of Probation. One case manager and one additional Deputy Probation Officer will be hired under the grant. The additional personnel will enable the achievement of our objective: to rehabilitate chronic juvenile offenders, mentor pre-offenders, and decrease juvenile recidivism rates by 3% annually.

MUSD will increase overall emergency preparedness and response procedures under Project Safety Net. Our objectives are to hire a nationally recognized school security firm to conduct security and vulnerability assessments; develop protocols and requirements for emergency drills as well as conduct and evaluate emergency drills at each school site; and provide training, including a formal Train-the-Trainer program. Our final goal under Element One is to remove barriers to learning by reducing violence among children and youth at all MUSD school sites. By reducing risk factors and expanding protective factors related to violence among youth, we will reduce the number of violent incidents on school campus by 10% annually. The Too Good for Violence curriculum will address social and emotional competency, perceived norms regarding violence and aggression, and perception of harm/risk involving violence. The implementation of this program, which provides 20 hours of developmentally appropriate violence prevention training to students K-8, will enable us to achieve our objective of reducing the number of students entering the juvenile justice system.

Element Leader: Sgt. Linh Dinh

Sgt. Dinh has served on the force for over six years in numerous capacities: first serving as a district-wide patrol officer, moving up to the rank of Corporal for field training, as well as serving as School Resource Officer for Montebello High School. After a 2009 promotion to Sergeant, Dinh took on the responsibility for the overall supervision of field operations, including several administrative assignments in personnel training, background checks, procurement, fleet management, and district emergency operations. Most recently, Sgt. Dinh has become the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) Manager and Operations Chief following the departure of Capt. John Ortega earlier this year. He leads a department of 106 sworn and non-sworn officers who oversee the safety and security of all district schools, their students, staff, and faculty. Sgt. Dinh comes highly qualified with extensive experience in the area of disaster response and emergency preparedness.

Sgt. Dihn’s career path has taken some twists and turns to reach his current calling. He graduated from UCLA in 1997 with a degree major in Geography with an emphasis on Biogeography. Teaching certificate in hand, he taught for one year in the district’s Montebello High School. But as chance would have it, he started working for the City of Glendale as a Reserve Park Ranger for a number of years. Linh attended the LA County Sheriff’s Department Reserve Academy and then moved on to the Rio Hondo Police Academy to achieve his certification as a full time officer. Emergency preparedness was a particular interest for Sgt. Dinh, but to achieve his current skill set he put in long hours training with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and California’s Fire Marshal department as well as with local and regional fire/rescue agencies.

On the personal side of Linh Dinh, we find a husband and father, an enthusiastic Bruin’s fan, a golfer who says he’s trying to “figure out how to play a decent round,” a guy who enjoys relaxing with action films and comedies, and a “wannabe handyman around the house who has no trouble starting projects - it’s the completion of them that sometimes gets him in trouble!”

But Sgt. Dinh has had no problem completing a Search & Rescue Unit, which will give the district’s first responders the ability to mobilize quickly and efficiently set up a tactical command post, medical treatment/triage areas, and initiate search and rescue. Next up on his list is the construction of a mobile EOC to be utilized during extended emergency operations. Add to his already loaded plate, Sgt. Dinh will be working to upgrade the district’s radio communications network in order to meet FCC narrowbanding mandates. MUSD is indeed fortunate to have an officer with Sgt. Linh Dinh’s capabilities.

Element 1: Activities