Officials address security at Albuquerque schools, cooling in classrooms: What you need to know

Ahead of the new school year, Albuquerque Public Schools leaders addressed concerns, including potential air conditioning issues, campus safety and the possibility of Immigration and Customs Enforcement coming onto campus.

“Even just talking about this sends chills down my spine, because there’s nothing like the first day of school, and it’s going to be great in Albuquerque,” Antonio Gonzales, deputy superintendent of operations, said during a news conference Tuesday. “We are ready, and we are prepared.”

School starts for most APS students Thursday, when temperatures are anticipated to reach the high 90s. In hopes of not having systems fail on the first couple of days of school — as they have in the past — the district has kept many schools’ cooling mechanisms on during the summer.

But there are limitations on how effective some of the district’s cooling systems are. Swamp coolers are often found on older campuses, which only lower the temperatures by some 15 degrees without humidity.

“The first day of school, for example, is going to be a very hot day with high humidity, and we know that the vast majority of the cooling units in Albuquerque Public Schools are evaporative coolers,” Gonzales said. “Therefore, they work as best as they work under the conditions, but they work, is my message.”

According to district spokesperson Phill Casaus, there is at least one campus — Adobe Acres Elementary School — with cooling issues, but he said that portable coolers have been deployed there in the meantime.

Another issue on the minds of some is firearms on campus, and APS, like many urban districts, has seen an increase in guns brought to campus since the pandemic. While there weren’t any shootings on campus during the 2024-25 school year, 15 guns were recovered on campuses across the district, including at two middle schools and one K-8 school.

The district is banking on investments in security, a crime reporting partnership with the Albuquerque Police Department and increased mental health services provided by a team at APS. However, the district’s police department is facing an officer shortage.

“There are some vacancies, but we’re better staffed than we’ve been in years. And I got to say that I’m really happy to say that,” APS Police Chief Steve Gallegos said Tuesday. “Not only police officers but campus service aides as well. We’ve recruited quite a bit, we’ve hired quite a bit. Matter of fact, we’re processing some today.”

Gallegos said he wasn’t sure how many vacancies the department had. There is one posting for a campus police officer on the district’s website.

In January, the Trump administration rolled back a Biden-era policy that barred Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids from taking place at specific locations, including schools. APS said Tuesday it has procedures in place for staff to shield undocumented students if federal agents come onto campus.

“If that were to happen, the staff and principals at schools have been trained to call school police. That’s one of the first things they’re going to do, is call school police,” Gallegos said. “We’re going to respond, we’re going to review what documents are being presented, and then we’ll contact the superintendent, of course, and our legal team to decide what happens from that point on.”

Gallegos side-stepped a question on whether campus officers are instructed to cooperate with federal agents and said they are trained to “get hold of legal and then kind of go from there.”

He added that APS has not had a situation where ICE agents have come to campus.

A Stanford University study released in June found a 22% “increase in daily student absences” at schools in California’s Central Valley as fear looms from federal policy changes and increased attention on deporting undocumented immigrants.

If a similar trend were to appear in APS schools — there are an estimated 20,000 undocumented immigrants in Albuquerque — it could worsen the issue of chronic absenteeism, which both Gonzales and Superintendent Gabriella Blakey cited as the most prevalent challenge facing the district in separate interviews with the Journal this week.

“I think the biggest issue that I see is having our students in school, and I think that is truly the communication that I’d like to humbly share with our community, that we need our kids in class every day,” Gonzales said in an interview with the Journal on Tuesday. “The other thing that I would like to say in relationship to HVAC or security or ICE is we are prepared to deal with any of these situations. We have plans in place.”