Pay raises, more staffing may be in the future for CCSD’s beleaguered security monitors

By Hillary Davis (contact)

Thursday, May 11, 2023 | 2 a.m.

Anthony Boone said he found his passion again when he became a campus security monitor last fall at Jesse D. Scott Elementary School.

He came to the North Las Vegas school after nine years as a security monitor at a high school, and he finds the younger children — or “the babies,” as he calls them — to be a breath of fresh air.

But even though Boone said grade-schoolers have lower-stakes drama and are more respectful of authority, he’s the sole security monitor for all 650 of Scott’s students, and he can’t be everywhere at once.

And, notably, “We’re all not bulletproof,” he said.

It’s not a figure of speech, as campus security monitors were soberly reminded this week when a stray bullet from gunfire in the neighborhood struck one of their own at Ed Von Tobel Middle School. The monitor was wounded Monday while he was outside the building, and nobody else at the school was hurt.

Jessie Rios, 18, has been charged with four counts of attempted murder with intent to promote or assist a criminal gang, four counts of discharging a gun into an occupied structure, one count of battery with a deadly weapon and 15 counts of discharging a gun within a structure in a prohibited area, according to court and jail records.

Though they are unarmed civilians who complement Clark County School District Police officers, and about 20% of their positions are unfilled, campus security monitors are first responders at schools, said Jan Giles, president of the Education Support Employees Association, the union representing CCSD support staff.

The duties they perform often put them in harm’s way, Giles said.

They find weapons and drugs on students and break up fights at the risk of absorbing blows. In Boone’s case, he was inadvertently hit with police pepper spray when helping break up an incident while previously assigned to a high school.

The security monitors build relationships with students with the idea that kids will come to them with tips so they can prevent brewing brawls or other dangerous situations.

When police follow up on a report of a student possibly having a weapon, a security monitor goes into the classroom to pull the student out and hand them over to a waiting officer, Giles said.

Generally, security monitors patrol school grounds inside and out throughout the day, keeping their eyes and ears tuned to student behavior and for anything or anyone suspicious or disruptive. A lengthy job posting on the district’s website says monitors check doors, windows, gates and closed-off areas, approach people entering campus, and intervene in disruptive situations. They assist with lockdowns, fire drills and similar emergency response operations, operate surveillance cameras, and are expected to be liaisons between students, educators, parents and law enforcement. They must be certified in cardiopulmonary resuscitation and the use of automatic external defibrillators, as during medical emergencies they may give CPR or defibrillator shocks.

They do this for an average annual wage of about $22,000, Giles said.

That wage should be changing.

ESEA and CCSD administration have hashed out raises that, pending School Board approval today, could increase monitors’ hourly wage from a range of $14.66-$20.63 to $21.67-$30.51. The raises were worked out before this week’s incident.

Additionally, a bill working its way through the Nevada Legislature would require at least one monitor at each of CCSD’s roughly 350 schools and calls for each school to have at least three security monitors for every 1,000 students.

CCSD enrollment data show that the district’s larger high schools have between 3,000 or more students each, and middle schools of about 1,000 are also common. Even some elementary schools in growing parts of the Las Vegas Valley have about 1,000 pupils. Yet the high schools typically have only four or five monitors, Giles said, and many have fewer.

As of last fall, 22 of CCSD’s 50 high schools and 37 of its 63 middle schools had just one or two monitors, the support staff union said. Of 232 elementary schools, 17 had a monitor.

As of April, total staffing had increased to 412 monitors, but there were still 80 vacancies, Giles said.

This is separate from the armed, certified CCSD Police officers who may be on campus, though they are also limited in number. Most district high schools have at least one officer stationed on campus all day, middle-school campuses may share an officer and elementary schools don’t have dedicated officers, according to the Clark County School District Police Department.

The proposed security mandate is part of a broader bill, Senate Bill 148, that would enact several amendments to laws governing CCSD’s decentralization of administrative authority. The bill passed the Senate in April and is pending votes in the Nevada Assembly.

Fred Horvath of Teamsters Local 14, which represents some CCSD support staffers alongside ESEA, said at a Tuesday hearing for the bill that the Von Tobel shooting was “an incredibly tragic coincidence.”

Horvath also told the Assembly Education Committee that he didn’t know what the consequences would be if CCSD couldn’t recruit enough people to meet the mandate, but he was confident that the district would deepen its security monitor employee pool.

“We know that no one can prevent a stray bullet from being in the area of a school, but we can definitely be prepared for an attack on students in a school setting,” Giles added.

Boone says the proposed raises are long overdue, and he’s grateful. Because of his seniority, he earns at the high end of the scale — just under $19 an hour, for seven hours per day, nine months a year. Giles said these hours are typical for a campus security monitor, following the length of a standard school day and year.

This is about what he was making working in the convention and meeting rooms at Strip resorts 10 years ago, but he loves the children and staff at Scott, he said.

Several security monitors met with CCSD Superintendent Jesus Jara last fall to discuss their work conditions. Coincidentally, the talk happened at around the time a security monitor at Rancho High School was assaulted when a man came onto campus to steal his backpack. The Rancho monitor suffered a badly battered face in the mugging.

The incident at Von Tobel further “proves our point, basically,” Boone said. “Not trying to say it doesn’t mean anything, but everyone in the district in a certain position, they know what we go through because we expressed it to Dr. Jara himself.”

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