The anti-cop kooks on the Phoenix Union High School District board don’t want to learn

Another Phoenix Union High School District student bringing another gun to school has many parents (and teachers) wondering if that district’s governing board will change their mind about cops on campus.

I doubt it — but crazier things have happened.

After responding to a report of a student with a handgun, Phoenix Police Sgt. Brian Bower says officers arrived at Linda Abril Education Academy, located a little north of Thomas Road on 19th Avenue, to find that staff had already “separated” the 18-year-old student from his weapon.

I thought it was the job of the police to disarm suspects. But because the police weren’t there already, school staff had to do the job of the police.

The lack of officers being stationed on campuses is thanks to the Phoenix Union High School board’s lame take on campus safety (which I’ll get to in a second) but first, Sgt. Bower suggests us parents use this story to talk to our kids about what to do if they find out about an armed student on their campus.

“Have those difficult conversations with your student that, if they hear or see something at school, please speak up [and] let the administration know about it.”

And, so they don’t become the kid with a gun on campus, he says: “If you believe that your student may be involved in this kind of stuff, check their backpack before they go to school.”

Our kids being “involved in this kind of stuff” may be as simple — and sad — as a bullied kid deciding to take matters into their own hands.

Police need cooperation from parents and students and staff in order to keep schools safe — but the Phoenix Union High School District Governing Board doesn’t seem interested.

After 2020’s summer of anti-police protests (spurred by the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis Police officer), the board voted to remove school resource officers from their campuses — the officers stationed directly on each campus.

Then, guns started showing up — including a student who shot another student while trying to sell him a gun in a school bathroom and a student caught with an AR-15 rifle on campus. And the parental pressure to bring cops back on campus proved too much: After rejecting their own safety committee’s recommendation to bring back SROs, the Phoenix Union High School District Governing Board voted in June to (kind-of) return cops to their campuses.

Rather than go with the proven program of SROs (proven — except amongst police-hating progressives), the board hired six “Regional Response Officers” — RROs.

This new model provides less than a third of an officer for each campus and response times that have exponentially multiplied beyond how fast an SRO can respond. 

Bad math embraced by the people in charge of teaching our kids. 

But what do you expect from a school board that seems determined to never learn a lesson?

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