“I love our safety officers … and I think they really make Berkeley High (School) seem a lot smaller,” Isabel Eknoian, the student representative for the Gender Equity and Sexual Harassment Advisory Committee said, referring to how she believes BHS' school safety officers (SSOs) make campus seem friendlier. SSOs keep the BHS campus safe by relating to students and resolving any safety issues that come up. SSOs differ from school resource officers, who are trained police officers on campus, in that they primarily enforce school rules rather than the law.
“(Students) might not see 99.99 percent of the things that happen on campus,” Officer Sara Garcia, a safety officer at BHS, said.
Last October, Garcia, surrounded by other BHS safety officers, made a statement at the Oct. 9, 2024 school board meeting. In her statement, Garcia said there are “continuous safety hazards and unsafe working conditions that continue to plague the safety department under the current administration," Garcia added, "we have an ongoing failure in communication and willingness of administration to work hand-in-hand with safety officers — which have led to multiple safety issues just this short school year alone.”
Safety Officer Substitutes
SSOs had previously tried to get the attention of administration before this comment was given — at the beginning of the 2024-25 school year on Aug. 27, 2024, 11 safety officers signed a letter to Principal Juan Raygoza, voicing their concerns about what they considered to be a chronic understaffing of SSOs at school events such as sports games. "There have been multiple attempts to staff overtime assignments with a single officer. There have also been instances where Safety Officers are completely overwhelmed during events without sufficient Safety staffing," a paper copy of the letter provided to the Jacket read.
Raygoza explained he has had conversations with safety officers about substitutes for whenever a safety officer is absent during the school day — it’s easy to get a substitute when they have a lot of advance notice of the absence, though he explained there is an ongoing conversation being had on how there can be substitutes available in cases when SSOs suddenly have to call out.
“If there's a high number of absences we may have some uncovered spots,” Raygoza said, “and so we just have to move people around and make sure that they're there in the most critical supervision areas.”
Understaffing
Understaffing can become a safety issue, since if an incident occurs and one safety officer becomes occupied, they have little to no “backup” and there are either few or zero other safety officers left covering the rest of the campus.
Raygoza noted that, when he first became principal in 2017, safety officers had concerns about staffing and he increased the number of safety officers at BHS from 12 to 14. Garcia explained that when she started working at BHS — about ten years ago — there were 16, which she believes is the ideal number. In emails and in-person interviews, administrators were unable to comment on SSO staffing during this time period.
Additionally, there are certain times during the day that are covered by fewer safety officers. According to Raygoza, there’s one safety officer on campus from 7:30 a.m. (during zero period), two from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., and one on campus until 8 p.m.
Raygoza explained that the school has begun having an administrator on campus beginning at 7:30 a.m., so during safety incidents at that time, the safety officer and administrator can work together.
Communication
When it comes to communication between administrators and SSOs, “we notify safety officers as soon as we have information that we can share with them about any unsafe situation,” Raygoza said.
Some safety officers explained feeling disconnected at times and feeling unaware of safety happenings on campus. “Sometimes we don't always know what's going on,” Walter Mitchell, an SSO, said.
“At times we’re put in situations we don't really understand what it is that we're getting ourselves into, which is the problem … (things) can go sideways if we don't fully understand what's going on,” Mitchell said.
Gun found on campus in December incident
An incident that safety officers have pointed to as an example of lack of communication was Dec. 11, 2024, when guns were found on two students on campus. The students were taken into Berkeley Police custody, according to an email sent out by Raygoza that day, and no one was hurt; however, afterwards all safety officers (except one, who was absent) signed a statement to administration explaining there was little communication with them while the incident was occurring.
“Some Safety Officers received no notification (of the weapons on campus),” a paper copy of the letter provided to Jacket read, “The unsafe actions of administration could have cost a life, one life too many due to their negligence." That same day, NBC published an article about the gun found on campus, including a line about how SSOs had sent a letter to administrators, concerned with various safety issues on campus.
Yorda Weldeghiorgis, the Berkeley Unified School District dean of students explained that, after an incident, often she will share her own ideas on how to address the issue. After an incident in December, she explained, she and others created a document as a space for SSOs to tell her how things can be improved.
“If somebody has brought (an issue) up — whether it's safety officers, or a concern that I have and wanting to discuss it — we try to have a conversation,” Weldeghiorgis said.
Addressing Concerns
“The school is not a safe environment. It's not a safe learning environment, and it's not a safe working environment … we are completely unsheltered, and everyday, we brace and hope that nothing bad happens,” Garcia said. Garcia explained that she feels there aren’t enough SSOs to effectively keep the campus safe.
Weldeghiorgis shared that safety officers have talked to her about feeling unsafe on campus, and her response has been trying to answer some questions about each situation. “What's the specific scenario? What are we seeing in the real time moments?” she said, “If it's a general feeling, it's ‘what's going on to make you think that way?’”
"I am trying to solicit feedback and really get perspective on what seems reasonable or rational, particularly from school safety officers' perspective," Weldeghiorgis said, "They're so knowledgeable, and their insight has been invaluable."
“Safety officers have tried recently talking to admin … Yeah, that's been going on for at least the past 15 years. So it's a constant battle,” Mitchell said, “It's not horrible, but it's not great either … (it’s) something that we constantly work on, trying to make it better.”