Issue Position: School Safety

Issue Position

Recently, we have seen a number of incidents involving school shootings. There are no words to express our sadness and grief over the horrific deaths, physical injuries and emotional trauma.

We may disagree on the root cause of the violence, but we can all agree that our children must be safe in their schools.

I join with the New York State Sheriff's Association (NYSSA) and many of our state representatives in calling for the state to fund an armed and specially-trained resource officer in every school. It is estimated that the cost would be approximately that of adding another teacher to the school.

Some schools already have resource officers that are paid for by the school districts or local governments, but many others, due to limited funding, do not. We have an obligation to ensure that ALL of our students are as safe as possible in their schools.

The NYSSA, in a press release from February of this year, recognized that an armed resource officer assigned to a school would have "critical information concerning a school's layout and infrastructure, staffing and student personnel." Also, the SRO would be able to "'network' with students and staff, and either head off an incident before it happened or at least be on the scene to immediately respond."

I could not agree more.

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