[T]he state deputy education secretary warned senators on Tuesday of the unintended consequences of deploying trained police officers in schools: more suspensions, expulsions and court referrals for misbehaving students.
The Senate Judiciary Committee has set to work this week drafting a school safety law and at the center of the debate will be whether schools should employ someone to carry a firearm on school grounds to respond to school shooters or other safety threats, and if so, who should carry the gun.
Deputy Education Secretary Amy Fowler told senators that while she understood the desire for secure schools, the debate needed to be balanced, with equal time for what she called a restorative approach to classroom misbehavior, as opposed to punitive and exclusionary practices that remove students from the classroom.
“There is little doubt in national research that the presence of school resource officers will lead to increased suspension and expulsions and increased referrals to the justice system for disciplinary action that occur on campuses. And that those tend to follow patterns of racial and economic bias,” Fowler said.
The bill also calls for schools to establish by 2020 restorative justice principles for responding to school discipline problems. The idea of restorative justice is to ensure discipline is applied fairly and appropriately, to decrease exclusionary punishment — such as suspensions and expulsions — and in the event that a student is suspended or expelled, to provide students the means to make academic progress while suspended or expelled.
Sen. Joe Benning, R-Caledonia, asked whether concerns about restorative justice practices should outweigh the thrust of the bill, which is to protect schools from violent attacks, particularly rural schools that might be 40 miles or more from the closest police barracks.
“If we actually believe that our schools are currently in a threatened situation,” Benning asked, “is it not wiser to have the individual school resource officer and give that person proper training on what they are supposed to do, as opposed to saying we should not have them at all because we are violating best practices?”
Fowler said the point was “well taken.” But she asked lawmakers to consider the broader issue of what roles the armed officers would have in the schools, and who would be responsible for insuring the officers are qualified for those roles — the state or individual schools.
“Are they purely law enforcement or should they be considered partially law enforcement and an educator? In which case we would really want to think about what sort of training we would want to give them,” Fowler said.
Rep. Gary Viens, R-Newport, proposed hiring retired police officers as what are being termed “school resource officers.” He said he envisioned the role they would play as similar to that of air marshals on airplanes — indistinguishable from school staff.
“You’ve got this cadre of retired officers who, as long as they are qualified under state law, they could go into these schools,” Viens said. “They could have them do various things: pushing a broom, working the front office, whatever the case may be to blend in.”
Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington and the committee’s chair, said he did not share that vision.
“Your view of what this is is very different than what I intended,” Sears said. “Believe me I wasn’t thinking of an undercover officer who looked like a janitor. I was thinking of a guy or a woman who would be maybe in uniform of some type, so that kids would know who they are.”
Viens said hiring retired officers part-time would be less expensive than partnering with police departments to employ full-time officers. He estimated the cost of employing a full-time working police officer at $60 an hour, while retired officers, who already had benefits, might work for $15 to $20 an hour.
The Senate committee also discussed incongruities in existing law that prohibit anyone who is not a police officer, and even police officers not actively pursuing an enforcement matter, from carrying a gun into a school building.
Benning said that whatever shape the legislation takes, those issues need to be addressed.
“I think school boards that far away from a law enforcement barracks should have the ability to protect their students, and that is top priority,” he said. “So I’m hoping we can clear this up.”
