Parents win over administration in plea for security
Officials are expected to recommend that the school district hire full time security guards to patrol and monitor entrances at every elementary school in Santa Monica and Malibu.
Security policies enacted at the middle and high school level would be extended to elementary schools, with guards patrolling the hallways and watching the schools’multiple entrances.
“We need to deal with putting paid people at the gates,” said school superintendent Deasy declined to comment on specifics of the staff’s proposal, which will be presented at next Wednesday’s board of education meeting, saying only that there would be a budget impact.
“There’s a funding factor to take into consideration,” he said. “Depending on what the board decides, will impact the budget differently.”
Parents of children attending Roosevelt Elementary School testified before the school board last week that they feared for their children’s safety. They cited incidences of violent crime in their neighborhood and two recent security breaches at the school as examples.
“Wow, this is great news,” said Mary Beth De Lucia, a parent of a child attending Roosevelt Elementary School. She has advocated hiring security guards at the elementary school level. “This is so cool.”
De Lucia, a local freelance photographer, helped organize and staff the all-volunteer security patrol currently in place at Roosevelt, located at Lincoln Boulevard and Montana Avenue.
“There should be more of a security presence at all of our elementary schools.” — John Deasy
“But it’s too much of a responsibility for volunteers,” she said. “To really protect our kids we need full time guards.”
Last May, a man broke into the elementary school and held a boy in a bathroom stall for 10 minutes before authorities could intervene. Then last December another strange man broke into the school looking for a boy he had “befriended” during recess.
One parent pointed out that nearly 50 sexual predators lived in Santa Monica’s four zip codes and that almost 90 percent of them preyed on children younger than 14 years old.
Another parent, George Rosenthal, was so concerned with safety at Roosevelt, he paid to have a camera system installed to monitor the school’s main entrance. However, there is nobody available to watch the camera at all times.
Currently the Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District posts security guards at the middle and high schools. The city’s police department provides two resource police officers from the Youth Service Division to work in the schools.
De Lucia said after parents approached the school board, administrators asked for her help in researching what kind of security surrounding school districts are provided at the elementary level and in writing grant requests to the state and federal government.
But she said she had no idea her work could make so much happen so quickly.
“This is so great. This is what I have been telling everybody we need to do. I was going to keep going until something was done, but I thought it would take a lot more time,” said De Lucia. “Parents at Roosevelt are going to be thrilled. There is a wide spread anxiety among parents concerning safety. This will be a great deal of relief to them.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 30, 2002. Read the original PDF.