My Priorities · Student Safety

The nightmare that keeps parents up at night is the one I spent my career preparing for

Real protection and real privacy don’t have to be a trade-off. Here’s how we built both into our schools.

Before I ever sat on a school board, I spent 14 years in law enforcement — patrol, a street crimes unit, robbery investigations, training officer, and police detective. Early on, as a reserve officer, I spent a full school year as a campus police officer. That year stayed with me: I saw firsthand what it means for students to know the officer on their campus by name.

Public safety has been the throughline of my whole career. On the San Jose City Council I chaired the Public Safety, Finance and Strategic Support Committee. I served as a member and then chairman of the League of California Cities Public Safety Policy Committee and of the National League of Cities Public Safety and Crime Prevention Committee, advocating for sound public-safety policy in Sacramento and on Capitol Hill. And today I chair the department at Jessup University that runs our criminal justice degree, where I help prepare the next generation of men and women for careers in law enforcement. So when our schools take on safety, I’m not starting from a briefing — I’m drawing on a lifetime of the work.

When I first ran for this seat in 2020, I made a specific promise: a full safety evaluation of every one of our campuses. We did exactly that — rebuilding each school’s safety plan, individualized to the site, board-approved, and reviewed every single year. A promise kept. But a safety plan on a shelf isn’t safety, so from there we built something more comprehensive — and we did it the way I think this work should always be done: with law enforcement at the table, and with students’ rights protected right alongside their safety.

Turning good practice into permanent policy

Our staff were already doing strong behavioral threat-assessment work when I joined the board — the preventive, team-based practice of identifying and helping a student in crisis before anyone gets hurt. That work deserves the credit, and I give it. My contribution was to insist we not leave it as an informal program that could fade when people move on. I pushed to write it into formal board policy so it was documented, permanent, and accountable to the board and the public. We adopted that policy in early 2022.

Then I proposed we take our model to the California School Boards Association and present it as an example other districts could adopt — which we did, ahead of the state later requiring this kind of policy. I also did the hands-on part: I was the only school-board member, from any district, at a regional threat-assessment training led by Roseville PD and the FBI. I didn’t send a staff member. I went.

Cameras that help — without watching your kids

When Roseville PD offered to connect our campus cameras to its Real Time Crime Center, I understood the value immediately. In a critical incident, officers too often go in blind — we all watched that go tragically wrong at Uvalde. This lets the crime center see the ground truth and guide responding officers to the threat and to the people who need help.

But I also had a concern about student privacy, so I asked the board to hold the item while we negotiated a formal agreement with real protections: an audit trail every time the cameras are accessed, no facial recognition of students unless a student is the threat, and activation only during a genuine critical incident. I personally consulted with an FBI agent for an outside review of that agreement. When a hoax threat targeted one of our campuses this spring, that partnership let law enforcement respond and clear it quickly. Real protection and real privacy, by design.

An officer who knows the students

One of our campuses had only ad-hoc, rotating deputy coverage — sometimes none at all. I met one-on-one with county leadership and walked the campus with them so they could see the need firsthand, and I pressed both sides to come to the table and reach a fair, dedicated staffing arrangement — which they did. An officer who knows the students and the campus isn’t just there to enforce; they’re there to build the kind of relationship that makes law enforcement a resource students trust.

“My job isn’t just to make our campuses safe. It’s to make them safe the right way — with experience, sound policy, and respect for our students’ rights.”

Keeping our kids safe is the most basic promise a school makes to a family. It’s a promise I understand from both sides of the desk — as the officer trained to run toward the danger, and as a parent who put five children through these schools. I intend to keep it.

Pete Constant is a parent of five Oakmont High School graduates, a retired police officer and university professor, and RJUHSD’s Trustee for Area 2. See the full Student Safety record →