Az schools are safe, even if they don’t comply with emergency plan requirements

Arizona law requires that nearly
2,000 schools create and implement detailed plans to help staff,
students and first responders be prepared for emergencies. 

But there is just a single employee
at the Arizona Department of Education — who also has other duties —
tasked with helping all those 1,400 district schools and 500 charter
schools design their emergency operations planning. And none of the
emergency operations plans from 47 schools that the Arizona Auditor
General’s Office reviewed last year fully met minimum standards required
by state law. 

Not a single one had been fully
implemented and tested, either. (Until late last year, there were two
people assisting schools with the plans, but the Department of Education
didn’t respond to questions about why there is now just one person
doing the job).

On Tuesday, the Arizona House of
Representatives Education Committee voted 8-4 to send a bill to the full
House that would help with some of the issues identified in the audit —
but not all of them, and not for all schools. 

House Bill 2074,
sponsored by House Education Committee Chairman Matt Gress, R-Phoenix,
would require all school resource officers to undergo training in how to
interact with students who have disabilities. It would also require
schools that receive school safety grants to provide building blueprints and floor plans to local police, fire and emergency services agencies. 

In the 2024-2025 school year, 818
schools received those safety grants, according to the Department of
Education. The legislation expands the authorized uses for those grants,
which were initially intended to hire school resource officers, social
workers and counselors, so that the money can be used to hire retired
officers or to pay for other safety upgrades like locks and training. 

Gress said these changes were spurred
by the $33 million given to schools through the grants that was never
spent because the schools couldn’t find candidates to fill the positions
for which they received the money. The proposal would also put
additional safety assessment requirements on schools that are awarded
the grants, and require charter school sponsors to ensure that their
charters develop and implement plans that align with state regulations.

Student safety potentially at risk

Auditors last year found that
most schools lacked procedures for assisting students who need
additional help — in particular those who have mobility challenges or
who are not proficient in English — during emergencies and for dealing
with emergencies outside of the regular school day or off campus.
Auditors wrote that this “potentially placed students’ safety at risk.”

“Students with disabilities or a limited ability to understand English are among the most vulnerable
during an emergency because they may have limitations in understanding
and responding to verbal commands,” auditors wrote. “Consequently, it is
critical that staff, including substitute teachers…have guidance for
how to help them in an emergency.”

The audit report pointed to myriad
areas of noncompliance with state standards, including lack of
coordination with local law enforcement agencies and failure to conduct
emergency drills. 

These issues leave Arizona’s public and charter school students at risk, according to Auditor General Lindsey Perry. 

But during a presentation about the
audit in front of the House Education Committee on Tuesday, Mike
Kurtenbach, the Department of Education’s director of school safety,
told legislators that schools are trying their best — and that the
department was meeting its statutory requirements when it comes to
emergency operations planning. 

“I don’t believe we have a widespread
problem throughout our state that our schools are unsafe,” he told the
legislators on the committee. 

Kurtenbach is correct about the
Department of Education’s statutory duties. The agency, alongside the
Department of Emergency and Military Affairs, is required to develop the
emergency operations planning minimum standards. But neither department
is tasked with monitoring whether school plans actually meet those
standards. 

Scott Swagerty, director of the
schools division of the Auditor General’s Office, told legislators that
lack of oversight likely contributed to the widespread lack of
compliance with regulations. 

Rep. Nancy Gutierrez, D-Tucson, said
that she believes that schools and the Department of Education take
school safety seriously, but a lack of funding and staffing led to
noncompliance. 

Gress disagreed, pointing out that
the state has spent billions on K-12 education since emergency
operations planning requirements were implemented in 2001 — in the wake
of the Columbine shooting in Littleton, Colorado — and some schools
still aren’t doing the most basic emergency drills that the state
requires. 

“I’m not convinced that it’s a lack of resources,” Gress said. “I think that it has been put to the backburner by some schools.”

For years, Arizona has been one of the states that spends the least, per pupil, on K-12 education. 

Gress also acknowledged that a lack
of staff to maintain oversight played a part in schools failing to build
and implement adequate safety plans. 

“This is the first time the state of
Arizona has taken a look at our emergency operations planning, and I
don’t like what I see,” Gress said. “Hopefully, we have opportunities in
the future to invest in better enforcement, but at the very minimum
schools should keep student safety as the highest priority, before
teaching can begin.”

While Gress’ bill does address some
of the problems auditors identified in many of the schools’ emergency
operations planning, it does not put any entity in charge of oversight
or allocate additional funds to pay staff to ensure the plans are in
compliance with state standards. 

Arizona has so far been spared from
the kinds of tragic mass school shootings that happened in places like
Uvalde, Texas; Parkland, Florida; and Newtown, Connecticut. But school
safety is still a major concern because of the increased frequency and
lethality of school shootings across the country, auditors wrote in the
report. 

The report also made clear that such
an attack is possible in Arizona. In 2024, a Phoenix high school student
was arrested for bringing a gun to school, and guns were found in
backpacks belonging to a Mesa high school student and a Phoenix
elementary school student. 

“The school EOPs we reviewed were
missing numerous critical components that could impact schools’
readiness to respond to emergency situations,” Perry wrote. “For
example, emergency response times may be unnecessarily delayed at
schools that did not clearly specify how to activate their EOPs during
emergencies.” 

Three of the charter schools that
were evaluated had no formal emergency operations plan, and told the
auditors they were unaware of the minimum standards or didn’t know they
were required to create a different plan for each school. 

The audit found that nearly 60% of schools reviewed, 26 out of 44, met fewer than half of the minimum standards they tested. 

“EOP requirements need to be more
clearly communicated to charter schools, and all schools could benefit
from increased outreach, guidance, and training on emergency planning,”
Perry wrote in the report. 

In addition, auditors found that some
of the standards are too vague, may be impractical, or lack a clear
purpose. They recommended a comprehensive review and update to those
standards to ensure they are all necessary and clearly explained.

The Department of Education and
Department of Emergency and Military Affairs just updated the standards
last year, with help from stakeholders, but auditors found they needed
more work. 

The Auditor General’s report advises
the two agencies to work together to evaluate what additional guidance
is needed to help schools comply with the standards and provide
assistance to schools in doing so. 

But the Department of Emergency and
Military Affairs’ response to the recommendations were combative. DEMA
responded that it had complied with its statutory obligations and should
not have to do more than that. 

The department wrote in its response
that it did not agree with the audit’s findings because it didn’t get to
review the unredacted report before it was published, something that
the Auditor General’s Office said was standard practice. 

Gabe Lavine, director of the Arizona
Division of Emergency Management, a division of DEMA, told lawmakers on
Tuesday that seeing the unredacted report didn’t change the department’s
stance on the audit findings. He added that DEMA didn’t agree with the
auditors putting it in a position of potential oversight of emergency
operations planning, which he said was a more appropriate job for the
Department of Education. 

Gress told Lavine that he found DEMA’s responses to the audit “somewhat evasive.”

“I look forward to seeing you work
very closely with ADE as you continue to update the EOP minimum
standards,” Gress told Lavine. “I think that link needs to be
strengthened.” 

Auditors recommended that those
updates include a clarification of what part local law enforcement
agencies should play in helping schools to develop their emergency
operations planning. 

Law enforcement officials told
auditors that they provide school safety guidance when requested, but
some agencies do not have the staff to work with all the districts and
charters in their boundaries. Some said they didn’t know they were
required to work with schools to develop the plans. 

“Since law enforcement and emergency
response agencies are among the first to respond to school safety
emergencies, it is important that they be familiar with area school EOPs
and have information from the plans to help facilitate their response,” auditors wrote. 

Charter schools

Auditors recommended that charter
school sponsors help ensure their charters meet the statutory
requirement to develop and implement school safety plans — a proposal
included in Gress’ bill — but the state’s two major sponsors, Arizona
State University and the Charter Board said that they didn’t have the
staff or resources to do so. 

“While ASU does not have the capacity
to independently monitor adherence to EOP Minimum Standards, we
strongly advocate for a centralized, specialized agency to oversee this
critical function,” ASU Sr. Vice President James Rund wrote in response
to the audit. 

Other states

Auditors recommended that Arizona
follow the example of other states that have established better
compliance and monitoring processes for their emergency operations
planning. Those other states also contribute more resources to school
safety than Arizona. For example, Texas employs 16 people whose sole
focus is oversight of school safety plans. 

Creating and implementing a better
process will require additional resources, auditors acknowledged, but
without it school might not be prepared for emergencies. 

Auditors recommended that the
education department look into staffing needs and costs necessary to put
into place a process to regularly monitor compliance with the emergency
plan standards for all district and charter schools and to communicate
those needs, along with a monitoring plan to Gov. Katie Hobbs and the
Legislature.