SFPS proposes safety initiatives

Student, staff readiness, mental health services are district’s goals over adding costly technology gadgets

Santa Fe Public Schools administrators on Tuesday put forth a series of recommendations to upgrade safety and security for the district’s 12,000 students — initiatives that largely prioritize enhanced mental health services and student and staff preparedness over costly infrastructure and technology improvements.

Mario Salbidrez, the district’s newly appointed director of safety and security, presented the proposed changes to four members of the five-member school board Tuesday night after analyzing input from public and student forums over the past few months. Board member Lorraine Price was not in attendance.

Superintendent Veronica García described the board’s discussion as a “toe-in-the-water conversation.”

“A lot of these items may not come to fruition for a year, two years,” Salbidrez said. “But what they do is start setting the foundation for later on.”

The recommendations come in the wake of school shootings from coast to coast — incidents that spurred a nationwide conversation about gun control, school security and mental health.

Enhanced behavioral and mental health services topped administrators’ list of priorities. The district already has allocated an additional $350,000 to hire five full-time social workers this upcoming school year. The staffers will float from school to school based on student need, García said.

As part of a ramped-up mental

health plan, Salbidrez also recommended increasing the number of threat assessments — evaluations of and support for students perceived to pose a threat.

Salbidrez floated adding two additional lockdown drills at each school, on top of the 13 emergency drills the state already requires. Of those 13, nine are fire drills, two are shelter-in-place drills, one is a lockdown drill and one is an off-site evacuation.

The two add-on drills would be conducted between classes or at lunchtime. Salbidrez said students requested the additional training.

“This is answering a concern the students were having about — ‘What do we do between classes or doing lunch or recess or et cetera?’ ” he said. “So this is to kind of help them with that.” Other recommendations included:

Producing age-appropriate educational videos to prepare students for active shooters and other emergencies.

Requiring educators to sign an acknowledgement that they understand and will uphold school policy in the event of an attack.

Licensing a mobile safety app that automatically connects to 911 and allows staffers to send emergency alerts. The app’s recurring cost ranges between $30,000 to $40,000, in additional to a one-time, $10,000 setup fee.

Salbidrez, a former Santa Fe Police Department deputy chief, advised the board against purchasing metal detectors or pricey protective gear — bullet-resistant whiteboards, blankets or backpacks, or bulletproof windows.

In addition to being cost-prohibitive, those purchases simply don’t make sense, Salbidrez said.

Metal detectors, he said, are logistical nightmares and are easy to breach. Bulletresistant backpacks and blankets are exceedingly heavy. Board President Steven Carillo agreed. “These blankets and these backpacks to me are just silly,” he said, adding that it’s unrealistic to expect a small child to carry books, a computer, “and a 35-pound thing in their backpack that only covers their backs.”

Lower on the list of priorities, Salbidrez recommended contracting school resource officers — armed officers stationed in schools.

After some back and forth, Carillo recommended holding a separate discussion session in August to entertain the idea.