PHOENIX — School safety continues to be at the forefront of families’ minds as scares and threats continue to pop up across Valley schools.
The Phoenix Union High School District’s new student safety committee held its first meeting on Saturday, following the shooting scare at Central High School and reports of a gun on Betty Fairfax.
The Governing Board requested this committee come together before those incidents. The committee is tasked to specifically look at district safety plans including the use of law enforcement.
While senior Yuvixa Dominguez attends Maryvale High School, she still felt those two stressful situations.
“You try not to think about it, you try not to be like, ‘Oh, this bad thing is going to happen.’ In a way it's kind of normalized, so in a way, it's like, ‘Oh, here we go again,’” she told ABC15.
The meeting Saturday was for introductions, but also a look at the use of school resource officers in other parts of the country. PXU did not renew its contract with the Phoenix Police Department for resource offers in 2020. School leaders decided to use the budget to create its own safety division. Back in 2020, the superintendent said it was time to rethink school safety as the nation “deals with two pandemics: racism and COVID-19.”
Committee and community member Gladiela Lopez-Felix still does not want SROs on campus, saying they aren’t needed even with all the recent school threats.
“Yeah, we do need safety plans. We do need plans in place if situations like that happen, but our goal is to avoid that as much as possible having cops on campus, SROs or whatever you want to call them, hasn't done anything to avoid those situations,” she said.
Yuvixa also does not want police on campus, saying she feels better with the district’s campus security. Both Yuvixa and Lopez-Felix feel students were “criminalized” with SROs on campus and felt officers brought more harm to students and the community.
PXU mom and committee member Renee Dominguez feels differently about the situation. She and a few other group members expressed the decision to remove SROs happened quickly and without much conversation from parents. Though, the district said it was a conversation since 2019 and that they did receive parent feedback.
“I feel that we have the need there,” Dominguez said of wanting police on campus. “With all the, you know, everything going on in the world, we need the officers on campus.”
She feels that the number of threats could decrease with officers present on school campuses.
Dominguez added that the conversations on Saturday were helpful. She said change will not happen quickly, but applauds the involvement of staff, parents and students.
“We need a little broader input from everyone and I'd like to see parents come to the meetings and speak out and give us their opinion,” she said.
The committee will be meeting again at the end of September and will start having public input as they look at a safety plan. The committee is expected to give a recommendation for the board to consider sometime in December.
For more information on how to give public input or attend a meeting, visit the PXU website here.
