Pima County schools get state funding for armed officers, mental health staff

The state is using about $53 million in School Safety Program carryover dollars from previous years for armed school officers and mental health professionals for fiscal year 2027, Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne said in a news release late last month. The money was allocated to the first 560 Arizona schools that requested officers, according to the release.

In the Tucson area, Marana Unified School District is slated to get the most resources from the funding, adding school security officers at nine schools. According to state documents, the schools include:

• Butterfield Elementary School

• Coyote Trail Elementary School

• DeGrazia Elementary School

• Ironwood Elementary School

• Marana Vista Academy

• MCAT High School

• Quail Run Elementary School

• Rattlesnake Ridge Elementary School

• Tangerine Farms K-8

"Over the last decade, through the school safety grant, we've probably brought over $5 million into our district to secure some of our campuses with a blended approach of school resource officers, counselors and social workers, and that blended approach has always been really important to us," said Marana Superintendent Dan Streeter. "The focus of the school safety grant has shifted ... to school safety officers, and we want to take advantage of that opportunity."

A School Safety Officer, or SSO, in Arizona is an armed, certified, off-duty or extra-duty police officer placed on school campuses to provide security, according to the Arizona Department of Education. The department has an agreement with Off Duty Management at schools in six counties, including Pima, through 2026.

A School Resource Officer, or SRO, is a sworn, full-time law enforcement officer assigned to work on K-12 campuses.

"The reality is that across Arizona, our law enforcement agencies are also going through their own shortages of officers, so it's an unfair burden to place on local law enforcement agencies to deploy school resource officers," Streeter said. "We have 20 school sites and between Pima County Sheriff and Marana PD, that's really placing an unfair burden on them to staff school resource officers on each of those sites, so the state shifted to the school safety officer component."

He said the district hopes the off-duty officers will still provide a consistent, relationship-based safety presence on campuses.

"Last year we piloted this at our K-8 and really found some success with the SSOs," Streeter said. "While they were off-duty officers, they kind of maintained a pretty consistent rotation, so they still were able to build those relationships that are so valuable for us."

Amphitheater Public Schools will receive funding for one SRO at Innovation Academy in Oro Valley and for three school counselors or social workers at Helen Keeling Elementary, Rio Vista Elementary and Winifred Harelson Elementary schools in Tucson.

While Oro Valley has leaned into funding school resource officers, the district's efforts inside Tucson city limits have largely stalled, said Amphitheater Superintendent Todd Jaeger.

"Within the city limits, Tucson Police Department has been unable to provide us with SROs," Jaeger said. "We have previously received grant awards for SROs that went unfilled because Tucson Police Department could not fill them."

He said Oro Valley, on the other hand, has been able to prioritize a steady SRO presence on its campuses. The town underwrites a significant portion of the cost to fund officers in schools, while the Pima County Sheriff's Department provides SROs in schools outside town and city limits.

"We are fortunate that we do have a district that overlaps multiple jurisdictions, including most notably here Oro Valley," Jaeger said. "Oro Valley has always made the provision of school resource officers a priority within its community."

He said that while the district receives funding to help cover SROs, it doesn't cover enough to fully fund officers at every school.

"The sheriff, and we're quite grateful for this, is providing officers split between sites but they are fully absorbing the cost thus far," he said.

Three schools in the Sunnyside Unified School District will get SSOs: Apollo Middle School, Challenger Middle School and STAR Academic High School. Sunnyside Superintendent Jose Gastelum said he saw the officers as part of a broader hope for safer schools, stronger relationships with law enforcement and positive community impact.

"We want to make sure that our community has good relationships with law enforcement officers," Gastelum said. "We've always seen law enforcement as our partners in education."

Vail Unified School District will receive funding for two school counselors at Vail Academy and High School and Saguaro Creek K-8, and Sahuarita Unified School District will receive funding for one counselor at Anza Trail or Sahuarita Primary School, according to state documents.

Moving forward

The state funding will cover the new positions for only one year. After that, state lawmakers will have to approve additional money, Horne said.

Local superintendents said they will track how the positions affect their school communities before deciding how to continue funding them, depending on lawmakers' decisions.

"Because of the way that school funding works in Arizona, this would be really difficult for any school districts to be able to continue this funding out of their own maintenance and operations budget," Streeter said. "We would not be able to take on this cost, so as long as the grant is available, we will continue to tap into that grant funding."

Jaeger said the district will likely seek other grants once the funding runs out, since it can't afford the positions on its own.

"We just closed four schools because of declining state revenues," he said. "We would not have the ability to undertake that entirely new cost."