The Los Angeles Unified School District plans to make more than 1,000 new hires to bolster security at hundreds of campuses in a move some critics have called “security on the cheap.”<\/p>\n
More than 400 LAUSD elementary school campuses are slated to receive 1,087 campus aides – a minimum of two on each campus – as early as March 1, LAUSD school board president Monica Garcia told the Daily News on Friday.<\/p>\n
The $4.2 million plan comes a month after the Dec. 14 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. that killed 20 first-graders and six adults.<\/p>\n
“Another two people on each campus can help us maintain a safe environment that can ease the minds of our employees, parents and students,” Garcia said. “This way we can focus on reading and writing, teaching and learning.”<\/p>\n
But Scott Folsom, a Mount Washington Elementary School Parent Teacher Association member and state PTA board member, said it’s “all smoke and mirrors.”<\/p>\n
“What they’re doing is security on the cheap,” he said. “I fear that we will end up having a person with a roll of yellow stickers and a sign-up sheet.”<\/p>\n
The campus aides will be unarmed but equipped with two-way radios and vests “for high visibility,” according to a memo dated Jan. 23 from Senior Deputy Superintendent Michelle King. <\/p>\n