A Security camera in the courtyard of Desert View High School watches students walking to lunch. Desert View, with eight cameras around its campus, is one of a handful of schools in Pima County that have them. A security company owner wants the cameras' presence greatly expanded.

James S. Wood / Arizona Daily Star

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Thirty-three security cameras in five local schools are keeping close watch over school grounds — and your children.

Officials at the Catalina Foothills, Sunnyside and Vail school districts installed cameras conspicuously in recent months to curb vandalism and to keep students safe at their middle and high schools. Already, they say, they're seeing a slight drop in problems.

But privacy advocates worry that students are losing a right they probably never knew they had — the right to not worry about the government intruding on their private lives, even when spending the days in government-run buildings.

"People don't seem as alarmed these days as I think they should be about the invasion of their privacy," said Dawn Wyland, interim director of the Arizona affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union. "Young people today, they don't even realize they've lost it. I think to them it's a given that they know there's a camera watching them."

Cameras soon may be watching a lot more Tucson students, too, if the owner of a local security company gets his way.

Ken Ross is trying to convince school administrators that — in the name of safety — it's best to put cameras on all 230 public school campuses in the county, using donations from businesses to buy, install and maintain the cameras and train schools to use them.

Putting cameras in schools would follow a national trend to make schools safer with such measures as metal detectors at entrances and safety officers patrolling campuses, especially since the rash of school shootings in the past six years and the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Better to be "hands-on"

Before security cameras became a high-tech — and often low-key — addition to school campuses, school administrators enforced the rules and kept kids safe the old-fashioned way: by training teachers and other adults to watch for problem students and outsiders.

The human eye and brain are better weapons against vandalism and other school crime than relying on an image on a monitor that can be unreliable, said Tom Mulligan, who oversees security officers for the Tucson Unified School District.

"When you have a lot more hands-on problem solving, you have less grief," he said.

Wyland said the money Ross hopes to collect for his county-wide security plan — about $8 million — could be better used. She gave a list of options, including building a park, hiring new teachers or giving educators a raise.

Districts might be so attracted to the word "free" that they don't fully examine other options, said Lisa Soronen, staff attorney for the National School Boards Association.

"Getting free cameras could be nice, but, given a menu of options, it's not the one I would want," she said. "Just because it's free doesn't mean it's something you want to do."

She said parents and officials should consider metal detectors and community safety meetings, which could prevent crime just as well as cameras could.

Ross, who owns and operates Wildfire Security, already has support from Sahuarita and Vail officials, who signed contracts to test his security system this summer. Sunnyside also is considering testing his cameras. Governing boards would have to approve the plan before the cameras are installed.

Before even talking to Ross, Sunnyside spent $70,000 to install its own cameras at the two high schools and at Apollo Middle School. All activity is monitored by district employees, said Gene Repola, Sunnyside's assistant superintendent for operations and facilities planning.

He estimated there was $30,000 in vandalism damage at the three schools the past year.

"They help us span the parking lots to see if anyone came on the campus that wasn't authorized," he said of the cameras. "We've had some problems with people breaking into cars."

He said he likes Ross' idea and thinks putting cameras in every district "wouldn't hurt."

While some Desert View High students feel the cameras could help curb problems, they believe other things should have been addressed first.

"I think that it's a good idea that they put them up, but at the same time the money could have been used for something else," senior Thalia Revilla said. "I know our math department doesn't have enough textbooks for kids to take home."

Sophomore Gilbert Bujanda said, "Kids are still going to fight whether there's a camera or not," and added that school conduct wasn't so bad that cameras were needed.

But Marta Gonzalez, who has two nephews at Desert View High School, said she doesn't mind administrators having a bird's-eye view of the campus, as long as they don't abuse it.

"It's great for knowing when intruders come to the school," she said, "but I guess I'd be worried if there's someone watching kids around the halls. At least they don't put them in the bathrooms."

Catalina Foothills, Sunnyside and Vail have had cameras on their campuses only for a few months, but report a slightly decreasing number of problems in that time. For example, four calls were made to the Pima County Sheriff's Department from Catalina Foothills High School in December 2005, down from nine in December 2004.

But the cameras that hang near the school's rooftops don't leave facilities director Basil Callimanif entirely at ease.

"Everything's gravitating to where everyone's eavesdropping," he said. "I wouldn't want to look over my shoulder and know there's a camera."

Ross, 36, has heard the arguments before.

He says it's been hard convincing the community to accept his idea, despite his admittedly unending persuasive speeches about crime reduction and proper training for those who will monitor the cameras.

Ross came up with the idea six months ago, after an incident involving a student with a gun across the street from his home, at Booth-Fickett Magnet School, where his wife is a teaching assistant and his daughter is in third grade.

Since then, he's talked to security personnel in every county school district and asked large and small businesses for money to pay for the endeavor.

That's the selling point, he said. Not a cent comes from the district budgets to put a camera on a roof or install monitors in offices. Plus, the extra money left over would go into a scholarship fund for all grades, to be distributed annually.

And businesses win, too. The money they'd pay, about $250 each, would be a tax write-off.

Ross concedes his idea is a little far-fetched and will continue to draw ire from detractors. Mostly, he said, many will just wonder why someone would want to devote so much time to such an expansive project.

"Because I can," he said. "Because somebody has to."