Arizona education dept. suggests retired law enforcement as school resource officers

PHOENIX (3TV/CBS 5) — Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne is looking for new ways to fill certain school positions across the state.

Earlier this year, the Arizona Department of Education announced more than $100 million in grants to put school resource officers on more than 300 Arizona school campuses. But since then, Horne says it’s been a challenge to find the people to fill those spots.

Nationwide, there is an officer shortage and that is being seen here in Arizona as schools struggle to fill SRO positions. Horne has a few different ideas for how to fix this problem, and it includes leaning on retired police officers to fill these jobs.

The education department’s school safety task force met on Thursday for the final time to discuss their recommendations, some of which would require changing state laws. Horne says there would need to be legislative change to remove barriers currently in place to then allow retired law enforcement to work as SROs.

The team also talked about using funds to add more school psychologists and school safety officers in addition to the current positions. SSOs are essentially the same as SROs but are not assigned to a campus full-time.

Horne says that right now, 138 schools are without an SRO because they cannot find someone to fill the spot.

“It’s not a funding issue, it’s finding people to fill these positions,” said Mike Kurtenbach, the Arizona Department of Education’s director of school safety. “That’s the challenge.”

“When they (law enforcement) retire, they lose certification and legislation says you need to be certified so we need to change that,” Horne said. “We need to have some kind of licensing situation where (right now) if people retire, they are no longer certified, but they can get re-certified for the purpose of being a school resource officer. Right now, they can’t do that and that’s irrational. That should be an easy yes from any reasonable legislator, I would think.”

Horne says they would then look into the training needed for those retired officers to work in a school environment to bring them up to speed.

The task force also talked about increasing mental health training. They also spoke on looking into AI technology to bring to schools that can detect a threat quickly. Some of the recommendations will be further discussed in January during the upcoming legislative session. Horne’s team says they are working on getting bill sponsors now.

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