The Tempe Union High School District Governing Board approved a comprehensive safety plan that retains uniformed officers on campuses while emphasizing data-driven practices and addressing students’ social and emotional well-being.
The plan culminates over a year of surveys and focus groups involving students, families and other community members that will continue so that the district can effectively train staff annually in addressing problem behaviors and safety issues early and effectively.
“We sometimes think that our administrators are the sole persons who will take care of any problematic issues that happen at a school site,” said Assistant Superintendent Sean McDonald, who led the plan’s development.
“But the research suggests we also have to have teams,” he continued, to “address the disciplinary actions and also coming up with procedures to address the different disciplinary actions that may come up – and not just disciplinary actions, but also the school safety issues as well.”
The plan's adoption comes about 18 months after a couple board members tried to eliminate school resource officers.
That move created a district-wide debate in which parents, staff and students fiercely debated their value.
Opponents said they intimidated students and often treated students of color more harshly while proponents contended SROs not only prevented major tragedies, particularly school shootings, but also helped students in a variety of ways outside the classroom.
One unnamed member of the group involved in developing the safety plan wasn’t happy with the retention of SROs and sent questions to the board members.
One question that individual asked was, “What measures will the district take to ensure that having SROs on campuses do not inadvertently unnecessarily result in students being introduced to the criminal justice system?”
That person also demanded the district review any arrest “with the aim of ensuring that the student was treated fairly, that any circ*mstances that could be prevented in the future are identified and action taken to do so.”
Those questions provoked Superintendent Dr. Kevin Mendivil to say he trusted “implicitly the work of our professionals who worked so hard on this” plan.
“In some ways it's a bit insulting (to think) that we would not factor in the inclusivity the diversity, the equity, the fairness in our decision making as we move forward,” Mendivil said, “and so I'm hopeful that that wasn't the intent behind that email and some of those questions.”
Over 50 people comprised the Model School Safety Committee that helped develop the plan, which stresses the “creation of physical and psychological safety to advance learning and growth,” “positive relationships among students, families and staff” and is “centered in equity” that “incorporates and ensures inclusion of people who are BIPOC, LGBTQ+ and people with disabilities.”
It also stresses SROs “are a part of the district’s multi-tiered systems of support.”
The plan calls for “shifting the paradigm for how everyone in school communities views, defines and achieves safety” in a way that stresses “reconnecting with fundamental principles of of being human.
“Through this shift,” it states, “the paradigm of safety is not about exclusion but about belonging…Safety, therefore is not just an absence of harm and violence but the creation of systems that acknowledge humans’ inherent indispensability, connectedness and dignity.”
McDonald told the board that paradigm shift means “that the social-emotional and academic and psychological – they're all interdependent of each other. They no longer will work in silos.”
The plan emphasizes restorative practices in disciplining students, noting:
“We must be able to understand and address the causes of behavior, resolve conflicts, repair the harm done to self and others, restore relationships and reintegrate students into the school community.
“Additionally, particular attention and intervention support shall be produced" for students and their families," it states.
Restorative discipline is not new to Tempe Union, as it has been practiced for at least several years and has come up from time to time in board meetings for discussion.
The plan notes the relationship involving school safety, discipline and overall campus atmosphere, stating that as the district prepares to “navigate the 21st century social complexities that impact our schools,” discipline must be “consistent with students’ sense of dignity and worth that creates a school climate which is conducive to learning.”
Board member Berdetta Hodge, who also is a Tempe City Council member and who two years ago helped stop the board from adopting a resolution that aimed to dump SROs before the coming school year, praised the plan.
The district’s efforts, she said, have “always been about physical safety but emotional safety is part of what physical safety is.”
“This is really about bringing the whole child, the whole student, the whole person together,” Hodge said.
McDonald also stressed the importance of connecting more closely with families, noting that focus groups indicated the district didn’t do a very good job of communicating with them.
Conversely, he said the district also needs to better understand students’ home life to better know the students themselves.
“They're sending their students to us every day and they expect their students not only to learn but to be safe and we need to know what that conversation is like back at home,” McDonald said. “So, engaging them is going to be very important.”
The plan also calls for “eliminating all forms of bias,” stating “this includes conscious and unconscious forms of bias and actions that disproportionately affect particular groups of students.”
The plan also stressed physical environment as a component of school safety and indicates site assessments are needed to “identify existing vulnerabilities and mitigate harm should an incident occur.”
The board’s adoption of the plan hardly means Tempe Union has completed its work on school safety.
One of the big tasks ahead is developing systems to collect data that will reflect how well each component of the plan is working and accurately guide district officials in fine-tuning it to address unexpected issues.
McDonald also indicated there were some security-related measures that should not be publicly disclosed and that he would brief each board member individually on them.
