Policing schools
Horne wants more money … Harvard tops Trump, for now … And the (journalism) kids are alright.
As funding for a school safety program dries up, Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne is asking state lawmakers to pay for a big increase in police officers at schools.
His request comes as Gov. Katie Hobbs says agency directors should prepare for a ”tough budget year,” and it’s likely going to stir up a simmering debate over whether police should be in schools at all.
On top of that, Horne is in a little hot water right now after state auditors said he failed to monitor how previous school safety money was spent.
The state Legislature won’t reconvene until January, but agency directors are sending their budget requests to Hobbs this month.
In Horne’s case, he asked for $180 million to boost the state’s School Safety Program, primarily by adding more police officers at schools. The state already spends about $130 million on the program, along with $20 million from the federal government.
The problem Horne cited at a press conference last week was that state and federal funding for police officers at schools will expire in 2026.
Horne wants lawmakers to boost state funding by $32 million and cover the $20 million that the federal government won’t provide after next year.
Demand for police officers at schools is growing, said Horne, who has pushed for more police at schools for years.
When he took office in 2023, schools in the state had 190 police officers, he said. Today, there are 573 police officers in Arizona’s schools, alongside school safety officers and social workers.
“My nightmare was that a maniac would invade a school, kill 20 kids — as has happened in other states and could happen here — and there’s no police officer to protect the students,” Horne said.
Cause for concern
To buttress his argument, Horne pointed to several high-profile incidents this year.
Back in January, a 31-year-old man entered the campus of Legacy Traditional School, a charter school in Tucson, armed with a gun and a knife.
A police officer who was funded by the School Safety Program found the man talking to himself while sitting on the floor of the gymnasium. The man had been using meth and hadn’t slept in several days. He said an invisible female twin told him to go to the school.
In August, a student at Maryvale High School in Phoenix was fatally stabbed by another student after a fight escalated in a classroom. A school safety officer arrested the assailant.
Last week, a staff member at Mountain Pointe High School in Phoenix found a handgun partially buried outside the school’s entrance. Security footage showed which student buried the gun, and they were taken into custody.
Yet, some officials said they didn’t want any police at their schools, which Horne characterized as saying they wanted to be an “easy victim.”
After the stabbing at Maryvale High School, at least some students didn’t agree with that sentiment.
They called for the district to get rid of police officers and metal detectors, in favor of spending more money on counselors and mental health services.
Many school districts have requested funding for counselors, instead of police officers, to deal with bullying, trauma and other issues.
That’s been a tough row to hoe. Two years ago, more than 200 schools asked for counselors, social workers and mental health staff, but the state didn’t fund them.
Spotty record
As Horne asks for more money, his track record with state auditors has been spotty at best.
Auditors dinged the Department of Education for failing to make sure schools have safety plans and refusing to meet with auditors to design risk-based audits of school voucher purchases.
Questionable purchases in the voucher program have spawned their own controversy and Horne is now fending off accusations of mismanagement from Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes.
Last month, auditors said the department didn’t monitor whether schools were using School Safety Program money correctly. Instead, the department relied on what schools told them.
Education Department officials said they need more staff to monitor how schools spend the money. The School Safety Program has grown rapidly in the past few years, but the Legislature hasn’t provided more money for administrative staff to oversee it all.
One thing the Legislature did do this year was allow retired police officers to work as school safety officers, as well as give schools more freedom to use the money on safety technology and other programs.
That bill, HB2074, was based on recommendations Horne made in 2023.
Horne’s recommendations carry a lot of weight with lawmakers. So do yours! Click that button and start bombarding lawmakers with well-informed recommendations.
University officials across the country watched as Harvard University scored a big legal victory over the Trump administration last week.
A federal judge in Boston ruled that Trump officials violated Harvard’s due process and First Amendment rights by freezing $2.2 billion in federal research funding, supposedly to push the university to fight antisemitism.
Judge Allison D. Burroughs said in her ruling that Harvard “could (and should) have done a better job” stamping out antisemitism on campus, but Trump officials “used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities.”
The matter isn’t settled yet. Trump officials said they’d appeal the ruling and their war with Harvard is being fought on many fronts.
Resolving those other conflicts might not happen anytime soon, the New York Times reports.
The architect of the administration’s strategy was May Mailman, but she went back to Texas last month. Now, Trump officials are split on how to proceed with Harvard. Some advisers want a quick deal, while the ideologues in the White House are pushing to punish Harvard.
“We want nothing less than $500 million from Harvard,” Trump told Secretary of Education Linda McMahon during a recent cabinet meeting. “They’ve been very bad. Don’t negotiate.”
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Student reporters at Arizona State University won a truckload of awards last week.
The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication took home 13 Rocky Mountain Emmy Student Production Awards for reporting, writing, sports coverage and their magazine program, among other categories.
“Watching one student receive an award of this caliber is really gratifying. Hearing the Cronkite name called out over and over for recognition is really humbling and overwhelming,” said assistant teaching professor and Cronkite News managing editor Allysa Adams. “Our students’ talent never ceases to amaze me.”
One reporter, Leah Phillips, won for on-the-ground reporting from Panama, where she interviewed local residents about spreading the economic benefits of the Panama Canal to everyone in the country.