The Bossier Parish School Board voted to add four additional resource officers to serve the elementary schools in the district on a rotation basis. Middle schools and high schools in Bossier Parish already have resource officers assigned to them.
I have heard discussion both pro and con. I come down on the pro side. One of the arguments that I have heard against the measure is that we have had no shootings in our schools. While that is true, and hopefully will remain true, I’m sure the people who have suffered school shootings could have said the same thing. While there is no guarantee that an armed guard could stop a shooter, he has a much better chance than unarmed school staff.
I have a granddaughter who is in first grade in a Bossier school. I asked myself whether I would feel better if the school had an armed person on campus or not. I believe that I would feel better about it.
While it is a shame that it is necessary, I believe that erring on the side of protecting our children is better than the alternative.
Arming trained teachers is another question for another day. Right now, we’ll deal with the situation as it is.
A sad day that it has come to this. Reality bites. All for it.
ReplyDeleteI was actually surprised to find out that we did not have a Resource Officer in our elementary schools. I guess I was absent that day...but since we moved back to Bossier about 16+ years ago, there have been Police Officers on duty in the Junior High & High Schools. (Trust me...I've dealt with some of them, due to my poor parenting skills...) ;)
ReplyDeleteI guess I just missed the fact that we didn't have them at the elementary schools until recently.
I'm all for it.
I worked with the teachers at T.L. Rodes my senior year of High School for six months. It surprised me that all High Schools and Middle Schools have School Resource Officers while the elementary schools had none. All of the School Resource Officers that I knew of were former police and Sheriff's Deputies.
ReplyDeleteOn a related note, state Representative Barbara Norton says she will introduce a bill to have armed guards at all elementary schools. The biggest problem is finding funding for it.
Sounds like the school board should contact the NRA. I haven't looked completely into what LaPierre's announcement included, but it's a start.
ReplyDeleteA 'resource officer' has traditionally been posted at high schools to respond to unruly students who caused problems with school authorities. In other words, problems from within. Elementary school children usually are more responsive to discipline than the unruly high school students that are learning that there are no repercussions for disobeying. The direction of trouble has now changed to protecting the children from threats from the outside.
ReplyDeleteFunding would not be a problem if we would post a police substation outside of every school. Not big ones, just two or three officers, one or two cars, and get rid of the large, centralized stations that remove officer interactions from the general public, fostering alienation and abuse by the very people who are hired and paid by us to be a service to us.