On Friday, November 15th at 5:30 P.M., Principal Estrella, around 45 parents, and a team from KGUN9 came together in Sahuaro’s auditorium to discuss the wild week of threats that just happened. It gave a town hall-esque feeling, as no microphones were present and Principal Estrella never stepped foot on stage, merely choosing to walk around the perimeters. Jeff Coleman, the Director of School Safety for TUSD, also made an appearance. They began taking parent questions and statements.

Many parents had similar ideas and opinions. One parent said, “The communication is not equal between the students and parents. When there was the bomb threat my kid was texting me asking, ‘What have they told you?’ and I didn’t know what to say. By blocking our kids from information, it is causing more anxiety.” Estrella responded by saying that there is no platform other than voicemail to communicate to everyone at once. Parents continued pressing the need for everyone to be informed at once and Estrella said that some had good ideas and that he would look into them.

The topic of heightened anxiety among the student body also came up multiple times because of the rumored shooting threats on the Friday night football game, during school on Tuesday, as well as the bomb threat on Monday. One parent called for an informational meeting for students to calm everyone down.

However, amongst all these parents, a student arose to the occasion and spoke on behalf of the student body. Gianni Martinez, junior, attended this meeting alongside her mother and a small amount of other concerned students. The difference between what Gianni had to say and what the parents were saying soon became a solution to the problem instead of pointing out the obvious reasons why our school had such a difficult week.

“I suggested that we come up with a student-run safety committee in hopes of bringing the fear and worry to a low and the grades and academics to an all-time high. This committee would consist of students who can take information about the ins and outs of our school and find new ways to make change happen,” Gianni remarked.

At the end of the day, her main goal is to reduce the amount of fights and increase the amount of  interactions within peers without using our fists, but instead using our voices. An example of this could be more interactive clubs and activities, however Gianni believes, “We must start small and grow as a community to achieve these goals, and to facilitate this we have to look at the numbers.”

Therefore this Friday, November 22, 2019,  she and a few selected members will sit down with Principal Estrella and see the statistics of our school incidents to determine what solutions can be found. Not only will they talk about numbers, but we will also be discussing how we can reduce the anxiety levels of our students by providing peer-to-peer assistance. This will allow students to reach out to one another and provide help that might not be given by teachers or parents, but instead by a fellow peer who understands the situation and will do their best to reduce the fear and anxiety one might feel when walking onto campus.

This will allow students to know how well we can work as a community to limit life threatening incidents as well as show our peers and parents just how much we really care about the safety of not only our school, but our students.