Denver Public Schools back to class with safety precautions

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DENVER (KDVR) — Monday was back to class for Denver Public Schools, and more than 88,000 students at over 200 schools returned to the classroom.   

DPS safety teams ready for new year

The safety team staff at DPS have been training for weeks ahead of the start of school. 

There are three different types of safety teams at Denver Public Schools: CSOs (campus safety officers,) DPS Patrol Officers and SROs (school resource officers.)

There are about 110 CSOs district-wide in each middle and high school. They are school-based and not armed, but they are there to help with discipline. 

There are 22 Denver Public Schools patrol officers that work around the entire district, they are armed, and their job is to oversee the grounds 24/7. 

There are 14 SROs, which are sworn Denver Police officers, who are stationed at high schools. They are also armed and are there for criminal activity.   

A new radio system this year has the goal of ensuring every officer is on the same network and on the same page. The radios use the city of Denver’s existing public safety infrastructure that police, paramedics and firefighters use.   

“So, it is all-encompassing. With the new radio system, they can reach out directly to Denver Public School Safety dispatch as well as the Denver police dispatch center should an urgent need arise,” said Gregory Cazzell, chief of climate and safety for Denver Public Schools “[The pros of new radios are] better connectivity, immediate response. Denver 911, talking directly to the officer at the school, getting that information firsthand and sharing it across all first responders.”  

Safety audit 

At the end of the last school year, the district did a complete safety audit of the buildings and used an outside safety expert. They sent someone into every building to look at everything safety-related and find issues ranging in severity from critical to low.  

They came back with 300 critical issues district-wide, which means life-saving issues, such as fire extinguishers and AEDs, and made sure they were all working properly and were in the right places. 

Those crucial issues were resolved by June 30.  

Now, they can move on to high-level priority items like broken gates or fences. 

“Ensuring, again, that the door’s quality is right, that it shuts when it’s supposed to, that it latches closed, and bringing those to our maintenance teams so they address them,” Cazzell said. “We have some very old buildings; we have historic buildings in Denver Public Schools. So, we always want to make sure that. despite that being a historic building, that there is safety infrastructure in place to make sure that that building is safe and welcoming.”

Other items they are improving throughout the school year include making sure parking lots are well-lit.

Montebello High School was not finished before this safety audit was completed, but the school said with it being a new building, precautions were put in place during construction.   

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Carly Moore

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