A boy bringing an assault rifle to high school shook this Phoenix district into action

Guns in schools:

Rising threats, growing fear| 2 kids, 2 police calls| Why kids make threats | Unsecured and lethal

A 15-year-old boy, believed to be armed with a gun, sat in a chair in the front office of Bostrom High School.

He refused to move his hand from his waistband. The vice principal tried to talk to the boy to distract him from the situation.

When Phoenix police officers arrived, they found a disassembled AR-15 assault rifle and loaded magazine in the boy’s pants. In his backpack, officers found a Spider-Man lunchbox, an orange ski mask and a device that would render the weapon fully automatic if installed, according to police and court documents.

The documents paint a fragmented picture of a day in which one of the most feared scenarios for school communities became real: an armed student on campus.

The May 2023 incident, at an alternative school in the Phoenix Union High School District, ultimately ended peacefully, thanks to good timing and an anonymous tip.

But it shook the school district community to its core. Teachers and administrators shared their lingering unease during governing board meetings.

It also influenced an already tense debate over school safety. Phoenix Union’s monthslong community engagement effort to determine whether to bring full-time school resource officers back on campuses was concluding as the incident took place.

Dr. Chad Gestson served as Phoenix Union’s superintendent at the time. He addressed the threat at a district board meeting in June 2023 — on the first day of National Gun Violence Awareness Month. After any tragic incident in Phoenix Union, Gestson said he visited the school the day after.

“I’ve been to over a hundred ‘day afters.’ It was the toughest ‘day after’ I’ve ever been to. … More tears, more pain than I’ve ever experienced in my time at Phoenix Union,” he said.

Anxiety over gun threats is now embedded into our DNA, said Arizona Education Association President Marisol Garcia: “It’s not healthy.”

Garcia taught eighth-grade social studies in the Isaac School District system for about 15 years and has a son attending a Phoenix Union high school. In her first year of teaching, she said she realized guns were a real threat when school staff found a loaded firearm in a seventh-grader’s backpack.

Several years later, Garcia experienced her first lockdown as a teacher and heard gunshots outside her classroom.

In the first few minutes of the hourlong lockdown, she said she tried to keep 30 eighth-graders quiet in a dark classroom. Then, as the room silenced, Garcia said she thought, “Holy crap, what if something happens to me? Who is going to take care of my son?”

Her second thought: “I’m now these kids’ protector. I need to make sure their moms don’t worry about them.”

An anonymous tip, a student walking 'funny'

At roughly 12:35 p.m., a school office assistant received an anonymous tip from a caller of an armed student on the Bostrom campus, according to court records.

Meanwhile, the school's intervention specialist saw two boys “tugging at each other by the waist” and looking “like they were going to fight,” according to a police report. The Phoenix Union website defines the role of intervention specialist as someone who assists in resolving conflicts and provides support to students, staff and families.

The employee began to approach the two boys, but a girl warned the employee that one of the boys had a gun.

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“(The intervention specialist) immediately began telling other students to go inside a classroom,” the report said. “(The intervention specialist) closed the door and that was the last time he saw (the boy).”

Several students later told police they had noticed the boy walking “funny” off the school bus that morning as well as on campus, as if he had something in his pants. Students also reported the boy had told other students that day he had brought a gun to school.

Bostrom High School went on lockdown when the intervention specialist contacted then-Assistant Principal Homar Delgado.

Elizabeth Soto, the school’s lead security official, escorted the boy to the front office, where Delgado tried to distract him until police arrived, an officer wrote in an incident report.

Soto contacted a Phoenix police officer about the situation, according to the report. But the officer was about 20 minutes away from the school. Minutes later, Soto called the officer back to say her boss wanted her to call 911.

At 12:54 p.m., an emergency call for service came out from Bostrom High School.

About 30 minutes after the anonymous call tipped school staff about an armed student, the boy was placed under arrest.

Delgado and Soto’s handling of the situation was praised by Principal Michelle Gutierrez de Jimenez at a June school board meeting.

“I’m grateful that (Soto) brought the student to my office. I’m grateful that (Delgado) stood by my side and never left.”

‘We all want safe schools’: School police return after long debate

As the Phoenix Union community reeled, the district was wrapping up a safety review that had started after student-led protests against school police in the summer of 2020.

Phoenix Union opted not to renew its agreement with Phoenix for on-campus police officers for the 2020-21 school year and promised a participatory process to consider the campus safety approach.

Full-time school resource officers did not return that year. But neither did many students, whose communities were hard-hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. The district was remote for about 75% of the 2020-21 school year. 

As Phoenix Union returned to in-person learning in the 2021-22 school year, it contracted with the Phoenix Police Department to call officers onto school campuses when necessary. In September 2022, the governing board convened a school safety advisory committee.

The monthslong discussions revealed a community deeply concerned about safety but divided over how to reach that goal.

Weeks after the Bostrom incident, the June 2023 Phoenix Union’s governing board approved plans to bring back officers to district campuses under a new agreement with the Phoenix police and to create a confidential safety complaint process for students and staff.

Even as the debate highlighted the supporters of school resource officers, it called attention to the limitations of what they could provide.

Do school resource officers make schools safer?

No significant evidence exists to demonstrate school resource officers' presence prevents school shootings.

A 2019 study in the Journal of Adolescent Health showed no evidence that the presence of school resource officers lessened the severity of school shooting incidents.

A 2019 U.S. Secret Service analysis on school violence found most attacks were stopped without outside intervention.

In a 2020 report, researchers Denise Gottfredson and others found that SROs did not improve school safety and that their presence increased “out‐​of‐​school suspensions, transfers, expulsions, and police referrals.” The increase in suspensions was especially acute for Hispanic and Black students.

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A 2021 study by the American Medical Association found that more people were killed when an armed official was present. This study examined 133 school shootings and attempted school shootings from 1980 to 2019. Its analysis showed armed guards were not associated with a significant reduction in injuries; in fact, the rate of deaths was nearly three times greater in schools with an armed guard present.

However, the 2020 “School Resource Officers: Averted School Violence Special Report” from the U.S. Justice Department determined that SROs can play an important role in preventing violence and intervening when identifying concerning behavior because their work goes beyond responding to critical events.

“They mentor and educate students and build trust, which may have a profound impact on the school’s ability to prevent targeted violence and other maladaptive behaviors,” the analysis stated.

How prepared is Phoenix Union for campus threats?

In an August 2023 statement, Phoenix Union said the district conducted emergency response drills quarterly, which could include lockdown drills.

In partnership with the Phoenix police and fire departments, the district participates in annual safety assessments that include feedback for improvement, district spokesperson Richard Franco said.

Phoenix Union’s governing board also voted to buy new lockdown kits for its schools, including privacy protections for students who would have to use the bathroom in classrooms under lockdown.

A weapon detection pilot program was launched at Bostrom and Maryvale high schools. In February, the district board approved extending the pilot program through the school year to test its effectiveness. Skeptics warn that weapon detection technology can require choosing between heightened sensitivity and false alarms or possibly missing weapons.

Addressing some of the personnel-related needs has proved challenging for the district, which has 24 campuses.

The district has tried to address the call for more mental health resources by those who took part in the community engagement process. The district employed a dozen full-time psychologists for the 2023-24 school year — two more than the year before, according to Franco.

The district also employs two intern psychologists, one lead psychologist, 31 social workers, 12 intervention specialists and three health and wellness specialists, Franco said. Bostrom added a behavior coach position this school year.

Staffing for police officers is a struggle in Arizona and across the nation. According to a 2023 Police Executive Research Forum survey, agencies are losing officers faster than they can hire new ones, making it hard to find people for specialized positions like school resource officers.

The plan called for hiring as many as six officers, with four officers coming from Phoenix Police Department. According to Sgt. Phil Krynsky, a police department spokesperson, two officers currently are dedicated to Phoenix Union.

Through the Arizona Department of Education’s safety grant program, additional school safety officers were assigned to campuses in the district. The number varies depending on how many officers are available to work off-duty, Krynsky said.

‘That is the job of the police. Not school staff’

If schools are able to secure both a school resource officer and a social worker or mental health worker, they’re lucky, psychologist Paula McCall said.

McCall is a state-certified school psychologist — unaffiliated with Bostrom High School — and president of Semicolon Society, a Chandler-based nonprofit that focuses on mental health education.

The key, she said, is for both stakeholders to work collaboratively.

“I’ve always found it to be one of the most powerful collaborative teams that I’ve ever worked with,” McCall said.

Recent state-led efforts to give schools the option to fund additional support staff show a clear interest in mental health.

In 2022-23 applications for the state's school safety grant program, the majority of schools requested mental health support staff: 301 school police officers and 566 school counselors and social workers were approved under the program, which runs in three-year cycles.

What works best is for an officer to act as a liaison between police departments and school districts, according to advocates and school resource officers. They say school resource or security officers should create a relationship with students but not overstep into school discipline or other interactions that may escalate a discipline situation.

Bostrom High School Principal Gutierrez de Jimenez addressed the board on June 1 to say she understood both sides of the argument on SROs but that the community needs to work together.

“No staff, teacher, faculty, office, admin, security should be in a situation where they have to deescalate an individual that has a weapon,” she said.

“That is the job of the police. Not school staff.”

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Student’s fate slowly unfolds in juvenile court

In August 2023, the Bostrom student accused of bringing the gun to school remotely called into his hearing with Maricopa County Superior Court’s juvenile department.

The hearing was set to discuss whether the student was mentally competent to face the impact of his actions.

The experts were split.

The presiding commissioner requested a third expert to weigh in, but by the time of the next two scheduled hearings, in September and October 2023, the appointed mental health expert had not connected with the family. The student’s mother said she was a truck driver, making her ability to pick up the phone during work hours limited.

The commissioner set the next hearing for December to afford the 15-year-old more time for the third evaluation.

The third evaluation report, dated in January, determined the student was not competent for trial but that restoration was possible through treatment, therapy and medication.

A restoration hearing to check in on the student’s progress was scheduled for May.

Part 3: What's behind gun threats in Arizona schools? Emotional distress, bullying top the list

Have you been affected by gun violence or gun policy? Reach breaking news editor and reporter L. M. Boyd at LMBoyd@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on X at @lillianmboyd1.

Free mental health resources are available to anyone in Arizona. A statewide mental health crisis line is available at 844-534-HOPE (4673). Another resource for 24/7 help is to dial 988, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. 

Teen Lifeline is for kids to call and get free, confidential and anonymous help from trained peers at 602-248-8336 (TEEN) or 800-248-8336 (TEEN) outside of Maricopa County.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Guns at school: An assault rifle on a Phoenix campus shook district