Campus safety assistants help protect Fresno schools

Last month, a teacher called Dennis Hebert on a two-way radio and asked him to remove a student who smelled like marijuana from a classroom at Cesar Chavez Adult School in Fresno.

As a campus safety assistant for the Fresno Unified School District for more than 25 years, this was not an unusual task for Hebert. But this time, it landed him in the hospital.

“I go to pull him out of class; I was talking lightheartedly with the kid. I was just going to say, ‘OK, man, go home and clean up.’ But the next thing I know, I’m getting up off the ground. I didn’t realize what had happened until the second blow to my temple,” Hebert said.

According to Fresno police, on Dec. 14, Hebert, 65, was attacked by a 26-year-old student at the school, who repeatedly hit him in the face and head, knocking him to the ground. Hebert worried he had a broken nose, but sustained no serious injuries. The student is facing battery charges.

Amid recent calls from Fresno Unified teachers for stricter discipline policies and more reports of student-teacher altercations, campus safety assistants have been serving as an extra layer of security for the district since the 1990s, when the position first was created in response to the city’s gang activity trickling into schools.

The district employs about 100 assistants whose main job is to help enforce school rules by monitoring Fresno Unified’s middle and high school campuses and making surethousands of students are where they should be. The assistants spend a bulk of their time walking hallways and playgrounds, diffusing potentially dangerous situations, and often are the first person a teacher or student calls at any sign of violence.

“We’re considered the administration’s eyes and ears,” Hebert said. “We’re there to enforce all the rules and regulations of the district. A lot of times we have to put ourselves between students or between a teacher and a student.

“If there’s a situation, we’re called before the principal is. The people who are breaking up these fights – that’s us.”

Keeping campuses under control

The assault on Hebert happened just hours before his final day of work. He retired last week, ending a career that started as part of Fresno Unified’s first cohort of campus safety assistants. Hebert, an ex-cop and Fresno State criminology graduate, fit the part and was willing to take on the challenge.

“It was really rough then, trying to get control of our campuses. We’re talking drug-infested, gang-infested,” he said. “That’s gotten better, but these kids …  you just hope you can get a student to administration without getting your head knocked off.”

Hebert’s recent altercation put him on edge, and even though he has retired, he still wonders what he could have done to prevent it.

“It just blindsided me. I was just so out of it. … I’ve been scared to leave my house because I don’t know this young man,” he said. “If I would’ve known this student, if he was someone I’d spent some one-on-one time with in the halls, it wouldn’t have happened. I really don’t think it would’ve.”

Michael Haynes, a campus safety assistant at Ahwahnee Middle School and president of the Fresno chapter of the California School Employees Association, said their job is crucial, but widely misunderstood. They’re not teachers, but they teach. They’re not counselors, but they counsel. They’re not police officers, but they enforce the laws. They’re hall monitors, greeters and bodyguards.

And it’s not easy. When asked to envision Fresno schools without campus safety assistants, Haynes laughed.

“It would be like a prison without correctional officers. I hate to use that as an example, but we are the ones who keep things under control,” he said. “Our people are assaulted on a regular basis. If we were not there, it would be complete chaos – anarchy.”

New challenges

Haynes pointed to a shift in the way Fresno Unified handles school discipline as a new hurdle for campus safety assistants. The district’s suspensions and expulsions have decreased dramatically in recent years as teachers are encouraged to give students more chances before resorting to out-of-school punishment. Critics say that has resulted in a lax school environment where students are unafraid of consequences.

“Fresno Unified is going to have to take on these things in a different way,” Haynes said. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with now. We really don’t. The people who make the rules, they haven’t done any time in the trenches to understand what it’s like. The district is more worried about the negative image of the school district, so there’s a tendency to sweep things under the rug instead of deal with them.”

Stephanie Vasquez, a campus safety assistant for 26 years, serves as vice president for the Fresno CSEA, and is studying criminology at Fresno City College. Over the years, she has confiscated guns, knives and even grenades from students. She has had to take a leave from work for a shoulder injury obtained while breaking up a fight.

What she has witnessed is part of the reason why she sends her own children to nearby Clovis Unified schools, where suspension and expulsion rates are lower.

Vasquez graduated from Roosevelt High School in 1985 and later worked there as a safety assistant.

“The mentality has changed and the culture has changed. The district is giving students more control. (Teachers) have been told to pull back and so the expectations have gone down. If I don’t feel safe on these campuses – with all my background and training – then you’re not safe either,” she said.

“Back in my day, a school campus was a safe haven for all of us. Regardless of issues at home or on the street, we always knew once we made it through that fence, we were safe. Now, it’s like safety is no longer a priority.”

Fresno Unified recently received a grant to expand its School Resource Officer staff, but Vasquez worries that won’t be enough.

“The officers work a lot of schools. So when things go down, you can’t get an officer there to make an arrest. Only once in a blue moon,” she said. “The front line is us. We get it all. You just never know when things are going to go off and sometimes you’re on your own. It’s a really stressful job.”

But the connection to students keeps Vasquez going. She says students are able to open up to campus safety assistants in a way they can’t with teachers or police.

“We become the social worker. We become the mother, the father, the sister, the brother, the friend. But it’s a fine line – you have to stay an authority figure and fulfill your duties of being an enforcer of policies and procedures,” she said. “Teachers cannot teach and students cannot learn in an environment that’s not safe.”

Armand Chavez, who oversees campus safety assistants for the district, said parents and students should feel safe knowing that these employees are there for extra protection.

“They are the first people you see – the first ones you come into contact with when you enter a campus. They are the first ones out there if there’s a need for assistance,” he said. “They’re there for a purpose, and that’s to make sure the staff and students are safe on our campuses … we just want to make sure everybody is safe, and they work very hard at doing that. They do more than what people may see them do.”

This story was originally published January 2, 2016 at 1:24 PM with the headline "Campus safety assistants help protect Fresno schools."