PHOENIX — The school year has already started for some Arizona school districts, and according to the Arizona Department of Education, there may be more officers on school campuses as hiring improves.
It’s been a hurdle for police agencies to hire, which made it even more difficult for school districts to get resource officers.
“We had a decline last year,” said Stephen Dieu, the president of the Arizona School Resource Officers Association.
Last year, the Arizona Department of Education (ADE) tried out a solution: hire off-duty police officers from different agencies and put them in other schools. Those officers contracted through the company Off Duty Management, receive a shorter amount of training to be in schools. These are called School Safety Officers or SSOs.
Dieu said they’ve seen some good results from the SSO program.
“From my interactions with officers who take those SSO positions during their off-duty hours, there’s a lot of renewed interest,” Dieu continued. “I can speak in the Chandler Police Department, when we opened up the selection process, the application process for our school resource officers, we had more applicants than we’ve had previously.”
The numbers from the ADE also show improvement.
In Fiscal Year 2024, ADE said there were 214 SROs only. A spokesperson said they did not have the numbers for SSOs last fiscal year readily available. For Fiscal Year 2025, there are an estimated 301 SROs and 697 SSOs that will be in schools this year.
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“We’re positive about the future because the hiring has improved, the deficiency in staffing has diminished,” Dieu said.
No matter the title between SRO or SSO, officers on campuses are seeing similar safety issues. Those issues and solutions have been discussed at the National Association of School Resource Officers National School Safety Conference in Phoenix over the past few days.
Nearly 2,000 law enforcement leaders, officers and school leaders came from across the country. Dieu said nearly 300 of the people in those industries are from Arizona. Topics from school shootings, threat response, drugs and fentanyl, vaping and many others were discussed over the course of days.
“It’s a lot of peer pressure and the bullying. That’s what a lot of kids are facing right now in the schools,” said Estevan Roman, an SRO with Phoenix Police. “We go into the classroom, talk about vaping, bullying and that type of stuff to educate the kids and bring them together and talk about stuff like that.”
Vaping has become a big issue, Dieu said. Some school districts added vape detectors to deter students from using it. More districts are also adding weapons detection systems on school campuses, hoping to stop weapons from getting onto campus.
Dieu added that fights are also an issue fueled by social media. Officers are constantly trying to learn new trends among students.
“Some of the challenges we face is what’s popular on social media and makes it appear to be safer based on what might be a popular TikTok or Snapchat going around,” he said of certain drugs. “That’s where education and continued education needs to move forward.”
