Albuquerque Public Schools
Grateful for Our Staff and Students
In her weekly message, Superintendent Blakey acknowledges the decisive actions students and staff took to keep their campuses safe.
Wednesday was a difficult day for several of our schools, but I want to take this opportunity to celebrate our staff and students who took immediate, decisive action to keep everyone safe and recognize that our layered security approach worked.
It goes without saying that a single gun on any one of our campuses is too many. To have four guns found on students at two schools on the same day, and a fifth student arrested with a gun near another one of our campuses, is deeply troubling.
The sad fact is that this problem is bigger than APS. Something is broken in our society.
We’re working hard to provide emotional support for our kids, give them the tools they need to make good decisions, and intervene and help those exhibiting troubling behavior. One of our top priorities is giving our students a sense of belonging and making sure they have at least one adult at their school with whom they can connect.
We’ve also invested in redirectors at every elementary school. Redirectors are specially trained educational assistants who work with students exhibiting inappropriate behavior to understand why they’re acting out and change their behavior.
At the same time, we’ve invested more than $60 million on fencing, cameras and alarms, door locks, card access, secure vestibules and other safety infrastructure at schools. We even have the ability to share live camera footage at school sites with local law enforcement.
We’ve done a great deal to bolster safety at schools, including:
- Installing locks on all 6,900 classrooms in the district to allow staff to lock doors from the inside.
- Implementing ALICE training, which encourages students and staff to evacuate and run from danger when possible.
- Instituting a site safety plan at every school that students train for and follow. This includes active shooter drills.
- Zero tolerance for any student caught with a gun on campus. That means an automatic one-year expulsion, arrest and criminal prosecution.
One of our more recent additions is the Centegix alert badge that allows staff at all of our schools to institute ALICE protocols and summon APS Police by clicking a button on their badge multiple times. It relays the exact location of the person who activated the badge to school officials or even APS police, depending on the situation.
A teacher at West Mesa High School used that badge on Wednesday to summon police and activate ALICE protocols after he was told one of his students was seen with a gun in the bathroom. That teacher was able to sound the alarm discreetly. A school resource officer and West Mesa administrator responded immediately. Within minutes, they had the student in custody and the weapon secured.
There’s no question this was a frightening situation for everyone in that classroom, but I’m grateful students in that class and in that school are safe. And I’m glad that this teacher was able to use his Centegix badge to summon the help he needed.
I also want to applaud each of the students who came forward and told a trusted adult at their school that one of their classmates had a gun. Our See Something, Say Something messaging is working, and we need to continue to encourage students to report dangerous situations they encounter.
Finally, I want to acknowledge our amazing school staff, campus security aides and police officers who acted quickly upon being informed there was a dangerous situation at their schools. These individuals didn’t hesitate when they learned that there might be a firearm at their school. They followed up on the information, detained the students and secured the firearms. They kept their campuses safe! And in the Del Norte High School situation, they prevented a gun from getting onto that campus.
These were unfortunate situations, but our staff rose to the challenge and did what needed to be done. I am grateful to them and to each of you for all you do to nurture our kids and keep them safe.
Have a good weekend.