Smaller class sizes and better working conditions for teachers are worthy priorities for Denver Public Schools. But they’ll do little to make the city’s schools safer from armed attack – despite the “findings” of a survey by the local teachers union.

As reported by The Gazette this week, the Denver Classroom Teachers Association says it polled its members – schoolteachers and other staffers – who said they wanted smaller classes and reduced caseloads for school mental-health counselors. Presumably, it would mean hiring more teachers and counselors. Which suggests the union’s survey is really about positioning itself to negotiate its next collective bargaining agreement.

As far as actually addressing the crisis itself – school violence, particularly in the wake of a March 22 shooting in which a student seriously wounded two deans at Denver’s East High School – the most effective response is already clear. DPS must bring police school resource officers back to campus permanently and secure school entrances with metal detectors.

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It’s the same way elected officials secure themselves in so many public buildings. If it’s good enough for politicians, it’s certainly good enough for our children.

The need for such enhanced security is all the more urgent following a revelation dug up by The Gazette’s news staff this week. It turns out more than 350 DPS students so far this school year have gotten a “threat assessment,” and at least 42 of them required a pat down for weapons the same week the East High School student shot the administrators. The student had been expelled from another school district on a weapons charge and was being frisked as part of his regular safety plan at East High when he pulled out a gun and opened fire.

The discovery that so many students are deemed enough of a threat to be checked for weapons is of course alarming. And it’s all the more troubling that there had been no Denver police resource officers regularly stationed on DPS campuses since the 2021-22 school year, thanks to a reckless decision by Denver’s school board in 2020 to oust the police.

The good news is Denver police – already back at some DPS campuses on an interim basis since the East High School shooting – now appear to be part of a long-term plan for enhanced security at the district. Metal detectors could be in the works, too.

That’s the upshot of an early and evolving draft of a district safety plan released this week by Superintendent Alex Marrero. Taking the lead from the feckless and inept DPS board, Marrero is proposing to spend $9 million next year on safety measures recommended in the plan. Those measures include “weapons detection” systems, cameras and safety officers.

That’s progress; let’s keep it on track and implement it ASAP. No less than our children’s safety is at stake.

Meanwhile, the board itself deserves little if any credit for the district’s turnabout toward smarter thinking on safety. Under public scrutiny in the aftermath of the East High shooting, the board only grudgingly approved even the temporary return of school resource officers – a move Marrero already had set in motion in the hours after the shooting.

The board still doesn’t get it, but fed-up parents do: Campus cops and metal detectors could make all the difference in heading off the next crisis.

Denver Gazette Editorial Board