TUSD security chief talks about armed officers, safety upgrades, priorities

Tucson Unified School District’s security chief says his armed officers haven't withdrawn their guns at any incidents; that the number of officers and monitors at middle and high schools is adequate; that social media continues to be a safety issue; and that buying cameras for schools with recently-approved bond money is a priority. 

Security director Joseph Hallums, in an interview Friday with the Arizona Daily Star, said the district’s armed security officers are trained to use their weapons to defend themselves.

His department is treated like any other private security team, under Arizona law, Hallums explained. The school superintendent has the authority to allow the individuals to carry weapons, he added.

TUSD's armed staff includes 10 school safety officers — one per high school — who help keep an eye on TUSD’s campuses.

They work in tandem with unarmed school monitors throughout the district. School monitors are not hired under Safety and Security’s umbrella, but by the schools themselves.

The two high school campuses with the fewest safety staff members (school security officers and monitors) are Pueblo High School (one staff member for every 289.2 students) and Cholla High School (one staff member for every 281 students), Hallums recently reported to a TUSD budget committee.

The principals of Pueblo, 3500 S. 12th Ave., and Cholla, 2001 W. Starr Pass Blvd., weren't available for interviews, a TUSD spokeswoman said.

Part of the variance is because individual schools are charged with hiring monitors and determining how many, based on school finances and need, Hallums told the Star.

Additionally, a campus’s “footprint” must be considered. Hallums used Santa Rita High School, 3951 S. Pantano Road, as an example.

“You don't necessarily have a significant student population, but you still have that large footprint of an entire high school that needs to be supervised.”

Santa Rita is TUSD’s high school campus with the closest margin of campus safety staff-to-student ratio, with one safety staff member for every 86.8 students.

Often, the monitors hail from the school neighborhoods, making them more connected with students and families, Hallums said.

He called them the “eyes and ears” in TUSD’s hallways.

“Their role is to not necessarily get directly involved in anything, but they can provide those eyes and ears to keep a pulse and provide us with information, being that reporting mechanism between not only school safety, but also the administration.”

Amy Klinger, a national school safety and school crisis response expert, said having those connections is important.

"There can be a silo of the people dealing with it in the hallway, and all the others that could be doing something to fix it or determine the larger issues," said Klinger, co-founder of The Educator’s School Safety Network and a professor at Ashland University in Ohio. "It's really a question of if you want to fix the problem and prevent the problem, or you just want to always be reacting."

There are no “priority” campuses within TUSD, Hallums said.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

“There’s prioritization as far as what we're implementing across the district, but I wouldn't say we have specific schools, although there are some that have just seen more wear and tear on their schools that I would like to get to first.”

The district's governing board granted $2.5 million to the safety and security department in 2022. Hallums said the priorities of that funding have been taken care of.

“Those had to do with installation, additional security cameras and security (glass) film, which is a good thing to have, especially around entry doors,” Hallums said, adding that improving access control was also a priority, specifically departing from physical keys.

Safety and security efforts will be getting additional funding through the TUSD bond package approved by voters in November.

Some of that funding will go towards security cameras, which Hallums called “force multipliers.”

“Being a 24/7 operation, we can't cover 220 square miles in 87 schools with two or three people that we have on at night,” Hallums said. “Allowing the cameras to be able to do that will be huge help to keep our physical infrastructure safe.”

Physical borders around schools are important, too, as shown in early November, when a 44-year-old man tried to gain entrance into Anna Henry Elementary School, 650 N. Igo Way.

According to reports, the school went into immediate lockdown, as did nearby Sahuaro High School.

The man, who claimed to have an explosive device, was arrested on suspicion of felonies including interfering with an educational institution and making a terrorist threat.

Still, Hallums said social media is one of the district’s biggest threats.

“It's difficult to navigate from the security side of things, because there's so much anonymity, there's so many ways that people can hide and the sheer volume that there is on social media,” he said.

Hallums called current efforts “purely responsive.”

“Again, tracking down the individuals that are actually responsible for posting certain things or threatening our schools is difficult to track.”

In September, multiple fights broke out and Tucson police were called to Tucson High Magnet School, 400 N. Second Ave., spurred by social media posts alleging a student brought a weapon to school. The Tucson Police Department later determined the social media threat was unfounded.

The melee resulted in six students’ arrests. One monitor was injured.

Would more security staff members — including monitors — be helpful?

“Of course we would love to have more personnel,” Hallums said. “But anybody that works around me will hear me say any dollar that we spend comes out of the classroom. I always have that calculus in my head.”