Within two days of the new legislative session, the Arizona House Education Committee met for the first time, mostly talking about bills that pertain to school safety.
When Phoenix-area mother Omega Peralta sends her two girls to school every day, she feels nervous about what could happen.
“Every time that we pray at night, we always end it with 'protect our children',” she told ABC15.
Peralta tells ABC15 she feels schools and the state could do more to help with school safety.
Before the new legislative session started, ABC15 sat down with the chairmen of both the Senate and House education committees. State Representative Matt Gress already had several proposals in place for school safety.
“The school safety package that we've proposed provides more flexibility to the dollars we give to schools for school safety,” he said in late December.
The state has a school safety grant that allows schools to apply for funding for resource and safety officers as well as school counselors. Gress wants to expand that.
“There's a shortage in all three areas. So, what our bill does is if you have leftover money, I would use those dollars to improve your campus with locks, cameras, fencing, you name it,” he said.
Another proposal from Gress is ensuring schools follow the state’s minimum standard with their emergency operations plans (EOP), adding an emphasis on students with disabilities. EOPs are blueprints and plans schools need to have in case of any type of emergency. The plans could include details on how often they do drills, relocation sites, discussions with law enforcement, emergency contacts and more.
In December, the Arizona Auditor General released a report regarding school safety and its audit of some schools’ emergency operations plans. Their results found that none of the schools they reviewed met the state’s minimum standards.
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“Dismal results all around. None of them completed all aspects of the emergency operations plan in terms of annual reviews signing off, talking to local law enforcement,” Gress said. “There are some major gaps here, and I'm very concerned… So, this is going to this bill is going to bolster our expectations for LEAs to do a better job with emergency planning.”
Another bill proposed and discussed in the House Education meeting included one sponsored by Representative Selina Bliss that would create a state program that would allow eligible schools to let employees carry and have firearms on school grounds with certification and training.
ABC15 reached out to Governor Hobbs about this bill for comment but has not heard back.
One solution Peralta wants to see in all Arizona schools is including metal detectors. However, in reporting different safety measures schools have, local school boards have control over what they want to be implemented on their campuses and are not required to have certain measures.
In previous reporting by ABC15, some school leaders say schools are educational institutions and want their campuses to be a welcoming place.
“The point here is to protect our children. We protect adults in the courthouses. We protect ourselves when we travel. Let’s protect our children in public schools,” Peralta said.
