Armed ‘sentinels’ in schools? West Ada proposes upgrade to its safety plan
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- West Ada proposes plainclothes campus sentinels who would carry concealed firearms
- Sentinels require law‑enforcement certification, background checks and annual training
- District also proposes wearable alert buttons to help staff call for help in emergencies
The West Ada School District may soon employ current or former law enforcement officers who can carry concealed weapons on its campuses as part of its proposed safety plan.
The enhanced campus safety plan — which the district said was put together after a year-long review with law enforcement — would add what the district is calling campus sentinels in an effort to improve safety and security in its schools. Under the new plan, the district also would give staff members wearable alert technology to make it easier to call for help in emergencies.
The sentinels would be permitted to carry concealed firearms on campus, but would “maintain a low profile” to “increase the deterrence value provided by strategic ambiguity,” according to the district’s proposed policy. The new positions would supplement the presence of school resource officers, armed police officers in schools who wear standard police uniforms and gear.
It’s unclear how much the program would cost.
SROs can’t be everywhere, Meridian Police Department Lt. Shawn Harper told the school board Monday night. In West Ada, SROs are assigned to specific middle and high schools and rotate between elementary schools, he said.
“The sentinels will be able to fill those gaps, fill those voids where we can’t be,” he said. “I can tell you, not only as a parent, but as law enforcement, I have heard time and time again of the importance that all of our schools have some sort of capability to protect children.”
Over the past few decades, schools across the country have added safety and security measures in response to threats and school shootings. These include locked doors with controlled access and additional security staff or SROs. Lockdown drills are also commonplace.
According to data compiled by the Washington Post, there have been 435 school shootings since two gunmen killed 12 students and one teacher at Columbine High School in 1999 in Colorado. More than 398,000 students have experienced gun violence at school, according to the Post. Administrators said campus sentinels would serve as deterrents.
“The one thing that keeps me up at night is the thought of a preventable tragedy happening on one of our campuses,” Superintendent Derek Bub said in a statement.
Sentinels would undergo ‘robust’ training
The district would require that all campus sentinels be current, retired or former officers in good standing who have gone through Peace Officer Standards and Training Basic Certification, which involves graduating from a law enforcement academy or other approved program and doing field training, according to the proposed policy.
Sentinels would also have to go through a background review, fingerprinting and criminal records check, along with psychological and medical evaluations that test their stress tolerance, emotional stability and fitness.
If selected, candidates would then have an annual training regimen that involves responding to school-specific security issues and familiarizing themselves with the district safety and security plans. They must also go through advanced pistol marksmanship and first aid training.
Harper said, day to day, campus sentinels would be dealing with medical emergencies and behavioral issues — not active shooters. But they would be prepared for the worst, he said.
“We are going to expect a lot, because if we’re going to put people in our schools protecting our children and our faculty, we have to make sure that we have a very robust training program and an ongoing training program,” Harper said.
Under the program, only campus sentinels would be allowed to carry concealed weapons on campus.
Sentinels are extra ‘set of eyes and ears’
Sentinels would also be an extra “set of eyes and ears” to interact with and welcome students, monitor behaviors and improve safety by moving throughout the school and watching school perimeters, Harper said.
They would be West Ada employees, wear plain clothes and have the same badge all other staff members wear. They would also rotate school locations and would have a sash they could use to identify themselves in emergencies.
SROs are employees of a police department, wear a police badge and carry a duty-issued firearm and dispatch radios. They are assigned to specific schools and respond to incidents inside and outside the district.
Because SROs are active law enforcement officers, they have distinct powers and responsibilities.
During the meeting, trustees asked what roles sentinels would have and in what ways they’d engage with students in certain situations, such as a school fight. Trustees also questioned whether there was data to show these types of positions have helped nationwide in cases with active shooters, but Harper said that the data is difficult to parse.
“One thing that’s true across the nation is after a tragedy, people respond, ‘What are we going to put in place to prevent this going forward?’ ” Vice Chair Rene Ozuna said. “I really appreciate that we’re looking and talking about these things before we’re in that situation.”
The district hasn’t discussed how many sentinels it would hire if the policy is approved, but it could be, in part, tied to the number of people who apply, spokesperson Michelle Edmonds told the Statesman. The sentinels could be full- or part-time and would be paid hourly.
New tech to help in emergencies
Under the plan, all staff members would also be given a piece of wearable technology with a button they could use to call for help. Trustees approved a bid Monday night for the technology, which is estimated to cost about $1 million in the first year.
If a staff member pushes the button three times, it signals a medical, behavioral or mental health emergency. It would alert the school safety team, which includes administration, security and health services and tell them exactly where in the building the emergency is. If a staff member pushes the button eight or more times, it would signal a “high-level security alert” and initiate a school lockdown. In those cases, the push would alert the district and school safety team, students, staff and local law enforcement.
The board will discuss the campus sentinel policy again at future meetings before voting on it. The district also sent a survey asking people to rank how comfortable they were with the wearable technology and campus sentinels on a scale of one to five. So far, results showed most respondents were comfortable with the technology, but slightly less so with the campus sentinels, which received about a 3.5 on average, said Marcus Myers, the district’s chief academic officer.
“We live in a different society than we all grew up in,” Harper said. “Parents and grandparents have fears that they’ve never had before just sending their kids to school.”
