n October 2022, DPS Superintendent Alex Marrero attended a national gathering of large, urban school districts and found himself sitting through mundane briefings and wondering when someone was going to have the nerve to broach the topic of gun violence. When no one did, he spoke up. “After an awkward silence,” Marrero says, “people were like, ” Marrero thought he had to: DPS was finding far too many guns in its schools. (In the 2022-’23 school year, DPS found 16 real firearms—and 42 fake guns—on its campuses.) As other districts admitted that they, too, were struggling with guns, Marrero decided DPS would pioneer a new safety plan that could become a national model. spoke with Marrero about the plan and the problem of guns in local schools.
