Peoria Unified community reacts to school shooting
School superintendent ‘committed’ to Peoria safety amid national concerns
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While shots rang out in a Texas school shooting that senselessly killed 19 students and two adults, May 24, the reverberations are hitting home in Peoria.
It is evident that such a horrific event could happen in any classroom, shopping center, or church, so local school officials remain steadfast in being pro-active to prevent such crimes.
Peoria Unified School District Superintendent Jason Reynolds said the school shooting in Texas is an unspeakable tragedy that has prompted the district to pause and reflect on its own safety measures.
In a statemisent released district-wide, Reynolds said the district annually reviews its emergency response plan, training staff and students on crisis response and providing access to community partners that can support the social and emotional health of students and staff.
“While no amount of planning can guarantee that a tragedy will be averted, we are committed to doing everything in our power to keep students and staff safe,” he stated. “As a school district, we stand committed to the safety of our students and staff as our number one priority. Our district has been a leader in the state when it comes to emergency preparation and response and credits our strong relationship with the Glendale and Peoria police and fire departments for playing an ongoing role in the process.”
Although classes are finished for the semester, he said this commitment to safety will continue through the summer, as the district prepares to host summer school and camps and then safely reopen for the 2022-23 school year.
“We hope you will join us in approaching school safety with a calm confidence that our teachers and administrators have our students’ best interest as our number one priority,” Reynolds said in the statement.
Gun Prevention
The shooting has renewed advocacy for gun violence prevention.
PUSD President David Sandoval said no parent should have to fear for their child’s safety when they send them to school, and no family should have to fear for their loved one’s life when they go off to work.
Schools and districts across the nation continue to be placed in adverse situations due to the discussions around responsible gun ownership prioritizing political considerations versus humanity, he said.
Too many lives have been lost and continue to be lost, he added.
“It is unacceptable that greed and individual political gain are more important than the lives of our most valuable assets, our youth and the lives of our most valuable leaders, our teachers and staff,” Sandoval said.
Emergency Operations Plan
Peoria Unified has a comprehensive Emergency Operations Plan that addresses school crisis situations like the one in Texas.
Peoria Unified administrators and educators have been trained and drill on each type of emergency situation – with and without students present, according to the PUSD website.
Those trainings include monthly evacuation drills, two lockdown drills, two shelter-in-place drills and two bus evacuation drills per year.
However, specific details within the Emergency Operations Plan are not shared with the public.
Prior to 2020, the public could access the Emergency Operations Plans, excluding a few sections that were classified.
Kelly Carbello, a mental and behavioral health advisor as well as emergency preparedness consultant, said this was one way for the public to know how prepared the school was or if they were prepared at all.
“This is important because there is no oversight and there never has been. Once the school or school district has written their plan, it goes to the governing board for approval and that’s where it stops,” Carbello said. “There is no system to monitor compliance. There is no system of enforcement if a school or school district is out of compliance. The public has no way of knowing. This is problematic. Especially for parents of students who have disabilities.”
However, Carbello added that prevention is not to be confused with security — all physical security measures are put in place to prevent casualties and do nothing to deter a mass shooter from wanting to shoot.
The most effective way to prevent a shooting is to report concerning behavior. And for those who say people just have to live with school shootings, Carbello said prevention is possible and backed up by research.
In order to report concerning behavior, she said, two things have to happen — you must know what concerning behavior looks like as well as know how and where to report a concern.
“First and most obvious is that there is an understanding of what concerning behavior looks like. This is much easier to determine if you know the students in your community. The expectation is not that you know all of them but at least you know the ones who are nearest to you. The second is knowing how and where to report the concern,” she said. “One critical piece of this is that both students and adults need to trust the authorities to whom they are reporting the information. That’s a tall order.”
But she added that’s where the EOP can come into play because making a plan can bring the community together to foster empathy between students, staff, parents and community members. This improves school climate, she said, which can make school shootings less likely.
Planning is an opportunity to leave politics at the door and establish trust and mutual respect, Carbello said.
“Improving school climate gives parents and community members a chance to connect with the school in a positive way. I haven’t met anyone yet who doesn’t want to keep our kids safe,” she said.
Concerning Behavior
Concerning behavior can play a big part in shooting prevention.
The district has used grants to support a variety of mental health programs through training and social worker interns, including funds from a federal relief package, as part of the federal pandemic relief program, to fund school counselors and social worker positions.
PUSD Governing Board member Cory Underhill said it is so difficult to hear about yet another terrible and senseless tragedy at a place people should never have to consider unsafe — an elementary school.
Of paramount importance is making sure everybody is vigilant about being aware of those in the community with mental health issues, and especially those with access to firearms, she said.
“Students, parents, community members, and staff need to know clearly how/who to contact, if they have a concern about possible violence,” Underhill said. “We must be vigilant together to be on the watch for dangerous situations. And we must demand that our lawmakers ensure that laws regarding access to firearms are in balance with keeping our communities safe.
Asking for Help
The crisis of school shootings is complex, but there are common threads, or “risk factors” and “red flags,” that parents/caregivers, school personnel, student peers, school resource officers and community members can look out for to mitigate the threat.
BLOOM 365 Founder & CEO Donna Bartos said reports have surfaced that the Texas shooter was bullied and lashed out in recent years, which are both a risk factor and a red flag, respectively.
Bartos said students need to feel safe in order to come forward.
“There were several missed opportunities to intervene [in the Texas shooting],” she said. “If a student is thinking about using violence to inflict harm on others, it is important for them to know that they won’t be judged or shamed if they come forward seeking help. Oftentimes, the fear of being perceived as weak or the fear of getting in trouble are barriers to help youth at risk for using violence.”
BLOOM 365 collaborates with the Peoria Unified School District to implement several proven strategies, including a Coordinated Community Response Team, a multidisciplinary team trained in threat assessment and violence prevention that meets regularly to analyze behaviors, risk factors and red flags of students.
“BLOOM 365 offers free and confidential individual and group clinical counseling and behavioral health intervention services,” Bartos said.
Crime Prevention
In the wake of the school shooting in 2018 that left 17 dead at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School high school in Parkland, Florida, PUSD created a team to help prevent such shootings in district schools.
PUSD spokeswoman Danielle Airey said the team conducts threat assessments, connects parents with resources to support the child’s mental health and works alongside school leaders as well as teachers to provide additional training and support.
Airey added the district is steadfast in its commitment to doing everything in its power to keep students, teachers and staff safe.
Looking forward, she said, the district will continue to look at Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, or CPTED, a concept that considers the design of buildings, and the surrounding environment and how they can encourage or discourage crime.
The district has used this concept to try and minimize crime, Airey said.
“We’ve made a number of additional safety enhancements as a result of specialized training, such as CPTED, that allows us to look at the design of our schools to determine where we may have threats and respond accordingly – examples include single point of entry, determining the line of sight from the front offices and specifics of each campus that can be improved to make it safe,” she said.
Local police departments provide School Resource Officers on all seven PUSD high school campuses. In addition to the security their presence provides, the SROs establish relationships at their respective feeder elementary schools, serve as mentors, role models and often counselors, to parents, students and staff.
Philip Haldiman can be reached at phaldiman@iniusa.org, or on Twitter @philiphaldiman.
Meet Philip Haldiman is an award-winning journalist who most recently took first place for investigative reporting in 2023 from Arizona Newspapers Association. He joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in 2015, covering Sun City West his first year. Since 2016, he has covered the city of Peoria. Prior to coming to INI, he was a reporter with The Arizona Republic for seven years, covering numerous cities throughout the Valley. Before that, he was a freelance writer.
Community: Haldiman spearheads the Peoria Independent Hometown Heroes Awards program, honoring local individuals and businesses that give back to the community. He has hosted local candidate forums over the years and is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists. Haldiman also served as a member of the Journalism Program Community Advisory Board at Glendale Community College. Outside journalism, Haldiman served as a member of the city of Peoria Complete Count Committee for the Census, 2019-2020. Lastly, he has served as a member of his HOA governing board since 2021.
Education: Arizona State University with a BA in Journalism and Mass Communications and a BA in Theater.
Random Fact: Haldiman is a fourth-generation Arizonan as well as wrote and produced an autobiographical comic book about his time spent in Hollywood and his life as a cult film star.
Hobbies: He enjoys hiking Arizona’s mountainous landscapes and is currently working on a play for the stage.
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