Luna pitches $500,000 school security request

BOISE — Public schools superintendent Tom Luna on Thursday pitched a $500,000 line-item budget request for a new Idaho school security program modeled after the one used in Texas.

Luna said the potential program would be an Idaho response to the 2012 school-shooting massacre in Newtown, Conn.

“The (school safety) issue only continues to be at the forefront of our minds as we hear about recent shootings taking place in Nevada and Colorado, and just last week at a charter school in Philadelphia,” Luna told state budget writers. “We never want to look back and ask ‘Could we have done more, or should we have done more?’ ”

But Sen. Steve Vick, , a member of the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee, said he would look critically at Luna’s line-item request, just as he would with any potential new program considered by state legislators.

“I take a skeptical look at every new program,” said Vick, a Dalton Gardens Republican. “I think we have enough government in general.”

Vick said he didn’t know the details of the superintendent’s newly proposed security center beyond than what Luna described to the JFAC during his overall K-12 public schools budget presentation.

Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter has recommended spending $300,000 for school security pilot projects. Those would be “for the purpose of testing emergency notification and security systems,” according to a state budget book.

David Hahn at Otter’s Division of Financial Management said “maximum flexibility,” would be afforded the potential appropriation in the governor’s budget for school security, including the possibility of using the dollars for operating expenses and capital outlay.

Luna said state lawmakers appropriated $100,000 last year for an Idaho study of the school security issue.

At the Luna-directed Idaho Department of Education, Matt McCarter said that if the school security proposal ultimately gains funding, roughly $50,000 would be designated for startup costs for a “web-based delivery mechanism.”

“We still need to flesh out exactly what it would look like,” he said.  

About $450,000 would be available for training and paying local people at the school districts for security work, McCarter said.

“The bulk of it would go toward boots on the ground supporting districts,” said McCarter.

McCarter said the potential school security program could be used at the request of the school districts.

He added: “School safety is multi-dimensional, and it’s much bigger than the question of (whether) to arm teachers or not.”

 The superintendent — who proposed on Thursday a 5.1 percent overall budget increase for K-12 public schools — called the proposed Idaho Center for School Safety “the one-stop shop for (school) districts to access training, threat assessment, implementation support, best practices, and research and more.”