Arizona Department of Education wants to spend $15M on police officers for schools

PHOENIX — Arizona’s education department is spending $15 million to push more police officers into state schools.

Tom Horne, the state’s superintendent of public instruction, said the millions in carryover dollars will pay for the additional officers through the School Safety Program.

“We’re making the $15 million available,” Horne told KTAR News 92.3 FM on Thursday. “Every school that asks for a police officer will get one.”

Any leftover money will fund school counselors and social workers.

Why Horne wants more police in Arizona schools

Although the announcement came in the wake of a spate of threats against Valley schools, Horne said those didn’t cause him to make this move.

However, he said the trend makes him feel his desire to amplify the presence of police in Arizona schools is well-founded.

“It’s certainly made more important by the fact we’ve had so many students bringing guns to school, so many more student making threats on the internet, that kind of thing,” Horne said. “It’s really a scary situation.”

Two students were arrested just this week for alleged school threats in the West Valley.

On Sunday, a 12-year-old Buckeye girl was arrested for allegedly making a terroristic threat against a school in Wisconsin.

Last week, a teenage boy was arrested for allegedly making mass shooting threats against 12 Phoenix-area schools and a 12-year-old Apache Junction girl was arrested for posting a school threat on social media.

“My fear is that some maniac is going to go to a school and kill 20 kids in a way that’s happened in other states,” Horne said. “If there’s no police in there to protect them, the parents of the students killed will never recover from it.”

How will process to boost presence of police in Arizona schools work?

Horne’s hopes to bring an influx of SROs to schools across the state depends on the Arizona Department of Administration.

His team asked the department to waive a part of state law that needs six weeks of public notice for grant application requests.

If their waiver request gets an approval, the Department of Education will speed up the grant process, which would allow schools to apply for a school resource officer (SRO) starting on October 21.

Furthermore, upon approval, the State Board of Education would grant the awards in December. This means schools could have new SROs by January 2025.

“This is a three-year cycle,” Horne said. “After the third year, the Legislature will have to renew it.”

KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Balin Overstolz McNair contributed to this report.

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