b"entries and at that point transit would take over and if there was conflict. Then later on in Martin Luther King, La Guardiawas built. And La Guardia and King were next to each other. There was a different parent leadership and a different kind ofpopulation at King and La Guardia. There was conflict so, we had to do that for a while until we got things stabilized. You were escorting students to the subway so they werent hanging around and making trouble.Particularly during the '80s, there was the Chinese Ambassador that was located right on 66th street and they didn'twant any children to be hanging out. So we tried to do it in a very diplomatic kind of way by some of us would walk on theside, some of us would walk in the back and just make sure that they knew that they had to go home, they can't hang out.Did you take Civil Service examinations in order to be promoted?When I first went into the Board of Ed, as long as you had a high school education and didn't have a record and couldpass the test to be a special patrolman, you were fine. Later on after the police department took over, there was a CivilService test. But the Civil Service test was to go up the ladder. A lot of us took the Civil Service test and we passed. The police department began to change names. Initially, we were called a School Safety Officers, at some point we were calleda sergeant, and at some point, we were called group leader. So, there was a variety of names. Once we got to the policedepartment, our uniform and everything changed. The union fought them on that, but our uniform changed becausethey didn't want us to have the same kind of uniform as the police did, particularly when it came to sergeant. If you weresergeant in school safety, you wore a white shirt, the same as the sergeant did in the police department. The union PBA[Patrolmen's Benevolent Association of the City of New York] did not like that, and there was a lot of negotiation going on.At one point, we used to wear grey pants and white shirt. Once the union fought for us and we finally had the same blueuniform that the officer wore, we were fine. We didn't want to go into the police department, but they got us out of theBoard of Ed into the police department. The transition from the Board of Education to the Police Department happened inthe late '90s. Under the Board of Education we were a separate division. We were not under the jurisdiction of the principal of the school, we were under the jurisdiction of our director of school safety. Later, when we became part of thepolice department, we were under the direction of the police department, but within our own division where we had alieutenant and a captain and we were all located in different parts of the community. Once we got in the police depart-ment, we assimilated into the police department in their terms Manhattan South and Manhattan North. ManhattanSouth started at 59th street and went all the way down to the river from east to west. Manhattan North started at west of Fifth Avenue west of 59th street and went all the way up to Washington Heights. I was Manhattan North.Please tell me more about the transition from the Board of Education to the Police Department.We had a lot of fear. Fears about the police department. And we had a lot of assumptions and we were comfortableunder the Board of Ed and the union. The union fought very very hard about that. That was a decision that the uniondidn't want to happen, because membership didn't want it to happen. It occurred because of political reason. It was awhole change . Our pension and our annuity was under BERS at Court Street (The Board of Education Retirement System.)Once we got into the police department, you had to sign a statement that either you could stay in BERS, or go to NYCERS.And you were urged to go to NYCERS, because police department is a city department not a Board of Education department, so you were urged to go to NYCERS.153 "