The School Attendance Review Board
(SARB) #20B, for the Bellflower and
Paramount Unified School Districts,
helps meet the needs of public school
students  with  attendance  problems.
It meets Tuesdays at the Los Cerritos
Court  in  Bellflower.  (SARB  was
established by the California Legis-
lature in 1975)

   How It Started

In the fall of 2000, Dr. Victor
Thompson (Student Services,
Paramount U.S.D.) secured the
services of Whitcomb Video
Productions of Long Beach, CA.
(winner of a Bronze award at
the PROVA competitions) It
was the culmination of a dream
Thompson had to produce an
informative and motivational
video about the School Atten-
dance Review Board at the Los
Cerritos Court in Bellflower.
His original plan was to have
one video created for two very
different audiences & purposes:

  1) Students and their parents

  2) Educators & administrators

Jonathan Whitcomb of Whitcomb
Video  Productions  suggested
creating  two  videos  instead of
just  one.  In  this  way, each of
the  two  types  of  audience gets
just what is needed.  This  idea
was accepted by Paramount USD.

Both videos were completed in
2001 and are available for pur-
chase from Jonathan Whitcomb.

    Why Are There Two Videos?

During the early planning stages of the production, it
became evident that there were two audiences: Admin-
istrators and educators need to know what SARB does
and how it functions. Students & parents need to under-
stand the importance of education. Students need to
be motivated to attend school regularly and on time.
(when there's an attendance problem) These students
don't need to know about administrative details. In
fact, they're better off avoiding SARB and deciding
to improve attendance on their own. Hence, a separate
video was created to help students and their parents
understand the seriousness of the SARB process.