Arizona's superintendent of education wants $180 million budgeted for school safety.
But speakers at a school board meeting Thursday in a Phoenix district recently hit by violence are against more security.
The Phoenix Union High School District includes Maryvale High School, where a 16-year-old student was fatally stabbed by a classmate, despite the campus having a weapons detection system and a police officer.
Superintendent Tom Horne is formally asking lawmakers to spend more for police in schools.
Student Genesis Camacho wore a shirt saying "Student Over Surveillance" to Thursday’s Phoenix Union school board meeting.
“I ask you to invest in students feeling seen and heard and not watched and feared,” Camacho said.
Camacho added that schools are made safer by having counselors and designated places for students to express themselves.
“Metal detectors and policing do not build trust. They build walls between students and the adults who are supposed to support them,” Camacho said.
Horne said the arrest of a man with a gun at a school in Tucson earlier this year proves the value of having armed officers on campus.
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