This school year of 2023-2024, Franklin has hired some new CSAs. If you don’t know what CSA stands for, it stands for Campus Safety Associate. A lot of people don’t know who the CSAs are or what their job is about. Many only know that the CSAs are supposed to look around the school, stop fights, and tell people to go to class, but no one knows who they really are as people, and what they do. I am here to tell you what I have learned from talking with this year’s team of CSAs.
First, let me tell you about what their job really is. There’s a lot more behind being a CSA than just being a lookout for the school. There is training, not only for the protection from outside dangers to the school but also to protect students once they’re inside of it. The CSAs are trained to defend the school from anything dangerous going on outside. On the inside they help many staff and students with difficult obstacles happening currently in their lives.
I talked with Danielle Bell, our Campus Security Lead at Franklin, who’s been a part of our community for over a year now, about what specifically her job is. She said, “I would say that the biggest part of my job is to build relationships with the kids and to keep the building safe. I love talking with the kids and being around them. Being around all the different energies and personalities keeps me on my toes.” Beyond building relationships, Bell adds how their role to keep the building secure includes “making sure that there aren’t any propped doors, checking the bathrooms for smokers/drinkers, [and] ensuring transients aren’t on campus throughout the school day.” Her point of view of the job, especially as a lead of the CSAs on campus, gives us more of an insight on what their job is and how CSAs watch out for things we don’t normally think about in order to keep our school safe.
One of our new CSAs is Giovanni Munoz. He actually graduated from Franklin in 2014 and used to work security at Lane Middle School for about two years before coming to Franklin. He has just started as a Campus Safety Associate and is also one of our head football coaches for the JV team, and also helps with the Varsity team here at Franklin. “Being on the job has shown me a lot of patience between being at a middle school, high school, and [working as] a coach,” explained Munoz. He continued to discuss how his work has changed throughout his career, stating: “it’s different [at Franklin] because at Lane I was by myself, here at Franklin I have a team to work with.” He highlights how here at Franklin, the CSAs do everything as a team to make everyone feel included and make everyone feel at ease.
Miah Dougherty has never worked for PPS before, but she has worked at Franklin for about eight months now. She loves the staff, students, and supporting the games at Franklin— especially when we win. I’ve asked her what some of the most important things to know about the job are. “I would say to have thick skin, the job may sound easier than what it really is but there are those students who may have a lot of other issues going on in their life so they don’t know how to interact or communicate the correct or respectful way.” Dougherty explained how she has learned to brush off the hurtful comments that can be made against CSAs as students struggle with communicating and their own issues. Dougherty highlighted how she tries to remember that “we all have things going on and we are all human.”
Dougherty also discussed the challenges of the loss of students, finding that it can take a huge mental toll to learn that a student she had built a relationship with has passed away. She advised from her experience as a CSA, “knowing when to take a break from the job and knowing when you need to ask for mental support is very important.”
I lastly talked to Devonte Isom, who has just started the job for about a month now. Before this job, he used to work at a nutrition warehouse at PPS and is also going on to his third year coaching the youth football team for Jefferson. “A big highlight of the job is mostly interacting with kids and getting [to earn the] kids’ respect,” Isom says. I also asked Isom if having the experience of coaching younger kids brought him any skills coming into the job of being a CSA. He agreed on the impact coaching youth has had, stating, “being a youth coach helped me understand kids more, being able to talk in big groups, to be able to calm kids down, [and] talk to kids period.” Isom explained that while the jobs require similar mindsets, they also have differences. Isom highlights how being a coach has its limits for kids because you only see them on the field and it’s more at ease, compared to campus security being more structured and restricted, trying to get kids to class and stay focused in school.
The school security industry has been growing for many years. Security is ordered to help protect the campus, students and staff against the risk of gun violence, intruders, and physical or verbal actions— no matter the cost. This can be a lot of pressure and responsibility, and yet our CSAs show up every day to keep the Franklin Campus safe, including our fifth CSA, Eric Welter.
The new and current CSAs don’t always have it easy but clearly love their job, and they work hard despite challenges. They are trained to see and do things differently in order to protect people and keep the school safe. Bell summarized the emotions that come along with security and working with students, stating, “I love my job. It does cause me to have to self regulate and self soothe after intense encounters but building those relationships with staff and students and having that sense of support and family makes it all worth it.”
