The Arizona Department of Education does not keep a record of when actual lockdowns occur. In most cases, each school reports lockdowns to the district through an email, but the districts do not keep information about lockdowns in a database.
However, schools do keep records of when they run drills because they are required by the Education Department to perform at least two lockdown drills every year.
The Star asked nine Tucson-area school districts to provide records of lockdowns over the past three years, not including drills. Few were able to produce records.
The Marana Unified School District, Flowing Wells Unified School District, Catalina Foothills School District and Tanque Verde Unified School District provided records that included the number of lockdowns in the past three years. Some records also included when and where the lockdowns happened, how long they lasted, whether police responded and the cause of the lockdown.
- Marana schools were locked down four times in the past three years.
- There were eight lockdowns at Flowing Wells schools.
- Catalina Foothills schools were locked down 11 times.
- And Tanque Verde schools had seven lockdowns.
The Sunnyside Unified School District and the Sahuarita Unified School District said lockdowns were rare in their districts but couldn’t provide concrete numbers.
TUSD, the Vail School District and Amphitheater Public Schools were not able to provide records.
Some of the most common reasons for lockdowns have been incidents involving law enforcement in the neighborhood surrounding a school, severe weather — and even wild animals near campus.
Most lockdowns lasted around an hour. The shortest was only five minutes long and occurred when a parent on campus displayed disruptive behavior. The longest recorded lockdown was at Flowing Wells Junior High, which was locked down for six hours after someone found an anonymous note threatening the staff.
Schools often work with local police when there are threats to the school or when there is law enforcement activity in the area. For three of the four lockdowns Marana reported, the Marana Police Department, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department or the Department of Public Safety responded.
