Grant funds for the next three-year cycle of Arizona’s School Safety Program have been approved by the Arizona State Board of Education, but only two of Tempe’s three school districts will be getting them.

 A total $82 million in grants were awarded to districts across the state through the School Safety Program (SSP), a competitive, state-funded grant open to Arizona’s traditional public schools and charter schools. 

Running in three-year cycles, grants support the costs of placing school resource officers (SROs), juvenile probation officers, school safety officers, school counselors and school social workers on school campuses.

The next three-year cycle starts in the fiscal year beginning July 1.

Over $10 million of this cycle’s funds were awarded to East Valley public school districts, including Tempe Elementary and Kyrene. 

Tempe Union High School District applied for funding to place SROs at six schools, but was not awarded any money. 

For the coming fiscal year, the board received applications totaling $181 million for 1,519 positions statewide — more than double the available funding. 

Of the 721 SRO and safety officer positions requested, 323 were funded. Of the 796 counselor and social worker positions requested, 334 were funded.

The School Safety Program is funded at a baseline of $80 million, according to Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne, who has repeatedly called for an increase since last year.

In the 2024-25 school year, schools had a significantly larger pool of $128 million to work with because of the initial appropriation and carryover funds. 

Horne had lobbied the Legislature to pass House Bill 2376, which would appropriate an additional $40 million for the current fiscal year. But that bill passed the House, only to die in the Senate.

Mike Kurtenbach, director of school safety at the state Department of Education, told the board last week, “$181 million in requests, I think it speaks for itself. It shows that our schools are asking for these positions.”

Nearly 1,000 additional positions sit on a waitlist, scored and ready to be funded if more money becomes available through legislation or carryover dollars, Kurtenbach said. 

Board member Jason Catanese said the impossible choices facing schools reflect a broader crisis.

“It’s a hard question to ask schools and school districts to be able to choose between a school counselor, an SRO, a social worker, because all of these different positions are so needed in today’s world to keep our kids safe, and then to also provide the necessary resources and opportunities to allow students to grow in the best possible ways,” Catanese said.

“This is really important for our kids and safety,” he added. “We have incidents across the state this year where a lot of these things could be prevented with counselors and with SROs and social workers, and as someone that is in the classroom and sees how important counselors are, it shouldn’t be this or that. 

“It should be, ‘How can we make sure that we have as many positions as possible to serve children?’”

Board President Katherine Haley agreed, stating, “This is really difficult. It’s like picking your children – who’s your favorite — and we don’t want to do that.”

Tempe Elementary was awarded just over $890,000 to place social workers and SROs across seven schools. One school’s request for SRO funding was not approved.

Tempe El schools receiving funding for social workers are Flora Thew Elementary, Scales Technology Academy, Frank Elementary School, and Getz School. SROs were approved for Cecil Shamley School and  Geneva Epps Mosley and Fees College Preparatory middle schools.

Kyrene School District was awarded about $1.8 million to place school counselors, social workers and SROs across 14 schools. Eight other schools’ requests for school counselors and social workers were not approved.

Kyrene schools receiving funding for counselors and social workers are Niños, Esperanza, Lomas, Milenio, C. I. Waggoner, Paloma, Mariposa and Kyrene Traditional Academy.

All six Kyrene middle schools received funding for SROs.

This story is made possible through grant funding from the Arizona Local News Foundation’s Arizona Community Collaborative Fund.