Cameras are nothing new at Paso Robles High School.
They've been recording Bearcat faces for a little more than 15 years, but an incident in January highlighted the system's need for an upgrade, according to Curt Dubost, Paso Robles Joint Unified School District's superintendent.
On Jan. 8, a student was rushing to class in a hooded sweatshirt, wearing a mask, and holding an umbrella. But another student mistakenly thought it was a long rifle and reported it. Dubost said the district went through its security protocols. It coordinated with the Paso Robles Police Department, locked down the campus, and started trying to zero in on the student.
"We kept checking our cameras, and some of them were working and some of them weren't," Dubost said. "In retrospect, I'm glad it happened because it highlighted improving our cameras."
During a special meeting on June 7, the district school board voted to approve a $300,000 contract to install surveillance cameras and vape sensors at Paso High and the two middle school campuses—Flamson Middle School and Lewis Middle School. The systems will get installed over the summer, Dubost said, while students aren't on campus.
Those cameras will include facial recognition and license-plate reading technology as well as have the ability to coordinate with the brand new vape sensors in school restrooms to catch students as they come out the bathroom doors.
Dubost said if the school had a newer surveillance system, administrators would have been better-equipped to identify the Paso High students who stole a pride flag from a classroom earlier this year, defecated on it, and then posted the incident on social media.
"If we had better cameras, we would be better able to identify who was where, and who was where they shouldn't be," he said.
He indicated that recent incidents at Lewis Middle School show that it's time for the district to put cameras on junior high campuses, which haven't had surveillance cameras before. At the end of the 2021-22 school year, three separate events over a short period resulted in police action, Dubost said.
On June 2, two former students allegedly graffitied and attempted to set fire to several areas of Lewis's campus. They were successful in setting one fire in a special education classroom and caused $100,000 in damage. The students were caught and arrested in connection with felony arson charges.
On June 3, Dubost said, a student brought some toy weapons to school, including military-type equipment, a fake grenade, and a knife, "ostensibly to be used off-campus." And on June 5, as a prank, a student posted a weapon online and indicated that it would be used on-campus the next day.
"It was a pretty wild three days, and, of course, everything going on with the national news at the same time," Dubost said, alluding to the May 24 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. "I remember being in junior high and being stupid, but you would think that people would realize that this just isn't funny."
District Student Services Director Tom Harrington said Paso's middle schools are starting to see some issues that in the past were associated with high school students—shenanigans, harassment, and unsafe activities.
"It seems like the pandemic has caused a lot of stress for our students. Some of that time where they would have been socializing with their peers and their teachers, they didn't," Harrington said, adding that schools all over the nation are experiencing the impacts. "We are seeing the percentage of students that do exhibit poor behavior, that number is increasing. And that's sad."
For instance, Harrington said, as students returned to campus after the COVID-19 pandemic, "we discovered that students are vaping in even greater numbers than they were beforehand." Using vape sensors, the district can pinpoint the students who might need help with nicotine addiction issues through a series of interventions such as counseling and online classes and by connecting them with resources.
While in the past students caught smoking may have been suspended, Harrington said, research shows that suspension doesn't necessarily correct student behavior.
"There's a lot of things that we can use other than suspension and punitive methods to change behavior," he said. "The research, it just indicates that suspension doesn't work. It does alleviate you of the problem for a day or two, but we're still a public school—the kid's still going to come back to school, come back to class, and does the kid have the skills to make a different decision next time?"
But, Harrington added, the best way to prevent bad behavior from happening is to identify the risk factors that can lead to it. The district has increased the number of therapists and mental health counselors available to students and is hiring a social worker. Harrington said the district wants to put people in place to enable them to screen the students, have students check in with them electronically or physically, and talk about some of the things that they've been experiencing.
"Students didn't go to school for over a year, and there's a lot more anxiety," Harrington said. "We are able to process these students and get them the resources they need. But we need more resources, because our current counseling staff is just stretched to its limit. But the nice thing is we do have funding at both the federal and state level that will allow us to hire personnel that will allow us to assist our students." Δ
Reach Editor Camillia Lanham at clanham@newtimesslo.com.