Tucson Unified School District Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo is calling on the district Governing Board to fund additional security systems for its schools.
Trujillo said Tuesday that he will propose a plan to the Governing Board next month that will include adding security cameras and keyless entry systems in every TUSD school, at an estimated cost of about $300,000, or roughly $5,000 for each of the districtβs 52 schools that arenβt already equipped with the technology.
βThese systems would be designed to give school personnel an opportunity to see who is at the door. (If itβs) someone looking funny in a trench coat, theyβre not coming in,β Trujillo said at a news conference. βWith keyless entry and locks, it would give administrative teams the authority to lock down an entire campusβs doors with the push of a button.β
The proposal would still need approval of the Governing Board, but Trujillo said he hopes to start installing the new systems as soon as possible.
TUSD, which is facing a budget shortfall this year of between $4.5 million and $6 million due to declining enrollment, could pay for the improvements through its βschool plant fund,β which has nearly $10 million in the bank, but can only be spent in a handful of areas, including capital improvements, he said.
Trujillo noted that while the new technology canβt prevent a school shooting, history shows that no student or teacher has ever been killed during a school shooting while hiding behind a locked door.
βBut again, the scary part of that is these incidents radically change,β Trujillo said, noting that until the recent school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, schools had never seen a shooter pull a fire alarm beforehand.
In fact, TUSD recently changed its policy after that shooting to ensure that teachers take a look around outside the classroom before leading students out on fire drills.
The move comes as TUSD, and schools around the nation, have been seeking to assure the public that schools are safe.
Trujillo recently held a pair of community forums to discuss school safety and policies regarding school threats. He noted every school in TUSD practices at least two βhard lockdownsβ β the same protocol schools would use in an active shooter situation β per year. And heβs considering requiring those hard lockdowns more often.
The additional security measures are just part of the districtβs approach to increasing school safety.
Trujillo also recently called for the district to reduce its student-to-counselor ratio from one counselor per every 500 students to one per 400 students. That proposal, if approved, would cost the district an estimated $890,000 and take effect next year.
Gov. Doug Ducey recently proposed a school-safety plan that includes additional funding for school counselors, among other measures. But Trujillo said while he agrees with much of what is in that proposal and would welcome the additional state dollars, it doesnβt go far enough.
βI think what the plan doesnβt adequately do, and what I would encourage our legislators to start thinking about, is ... more money for school psychologists and social workers,β he said.
While counselors are great mediators and liaisons among students, parents and teachers, theyβre not trained to identify and address the serious mental-health issues that plague many school shooters, he said.
βWeβve seen a lot in this rash of school violence that perpetrators suffer from mental-health disorders and emotional-health issues β now weβre talking about psychologists, now weβre talking about licensed clinical social workers who are trained in addressing mental-health issues,β he said.
And Trujillo, who previously declined to weigh in on the idea of arming teachers, came out against it, saying arming teachers, βwould just create extra workloads, extra obstacles, extra challenges for the organization, which means it wouldnβt be my recommendation.β
