It’s not just about preventing another Columbine-style school shooting. Handheld radios in schools help employees manage difficult parents or help students get to school when the bus breaks down.

But it’s the cost of setting up radio communications to first responders that is stopping many school districts from making that happen, and this week, Republican Sen. Don Coram of Montrose presented a bill that will take care of some of that.

Coram is one of two sponsors of Senate Bill 158, which would put $7 million per year for the next five years into providing the training and last leg of communications between schools and police or fire departments.

It’s not like the General Assembly hasn’t been working on this issue, but the funding remains the sticking point. The legislature has passed laws twice in the past decade to improve coordination between agencies on school incidents. But the measures passed haven’t provided enough money to schools for the hardware, software and training on the equipment.

For those school districts that haven’t yet set up those links, the bill as introduced would set up a grant program in the Department of Local Affairs. It was amended in committee to put that program into the Department of Public Safety.

Coram told the Senate Education Committee this week that the bill started with a call from southwestern Colorado on concerns over safety for children. “The problem is we ran out of money before we got it done, and that corner of the state got left out,” Coram said.

Ed Smith, superintendent of Pueblo School District 70, said his district has put a radio program in place. He told the committee they looked at other ways they could keep students safe. That included restricting access, weapons on school grounds for staff and guards and/or metal detectors. All of those things get “huge pushbacks” from the community because parents don’t want schools to look like prisons, he said. “I don’t either.”

Radio communications with the sheriff’s department don’t get that same kind of pushback from parents, Smith said. Funding has been the only problem and they’ve covered the cost of their equipment through grants, district money and bond money.

In the Pueblo district, teachers and office staff have radios in their classrooms and offices, and they’re also placed in buses. The radios are then connected to the district headquarters. Greg Keasling, who handles school safety issues for the Pueblo school district, told the committee is that they’ve learned that “we use this stuff everyday, not just for some bad guy walking in the front door,” for things such as bus breakdowns, snow roads and  “mad parents, which seems to be quite a topic these days.”

When the district bought the equipment, Smith said, “we were preparing for something like a Columbine situation…But we have issues every day: angry parents who have to be escorted out of the building, students stopped on the side of the road” with a stalled bus, for example.

“It seems like a big investment, and it is,” Smith said. But it’s important for the safety of the students, and with 3,200 miles in the district, it’s been a huge help.

One witness testified about the difference in time between having a radio and not in an active shooter situation. In simulations, without a radio, finding the shooter took one hour and 40 minutes. With a radio, it was four minutes.

In an emergency situation, landlines and cell phones don’t help because the phone lines to 911 get clogged with calls. Kathy Morris, *school safety and security coordinator for the Durango school district brought the issue to Coram’s attention. She told the committee that handheld radios provide students with a level of comfort in a crisis, because students know the teachers are talking to someone who can help. 

“Our staff recognizes it is a tool we need,” Morris said. But to get the system in place, they need funding for training and the equipment to connect to the first responders.

Jim Pavlich, assistant principal at Montrose High, spoke on behalf of the district and the area Board of Cooperative Education Services. His school has those radios, but the rest of the district doesn’t. In the past several months, there have been two incidents for which those radios were critical in helping get first responders to the school quickly. In one, a student was having a seizure; in the other a suspect pulled a knife on three students. “We need to be able to save time in emergencies. What’s holding us back is the money to get them into the other 13 buildings,” Pavlich said. 

The bill carries a $7 million cost for five years, beginning in 2018-19, but lawmakers seem to be less hesitant about carrying bills with big price tags in 2018, due largely to an expectation that the state will have a $1 billion surplus available in 2018-19.

Senate Bill 158 passed the committee unanimously and now heads to Senate Appropriations.

Correction: Kathy Morris’ title corrected.