None of the legislation proposed does little to address the immediate threat upon the students when it occurs. Again what has been proposed is a knee jerk feel good legislation. People trust the teachers and administration every day with the lives of their children, so why wouldn't you allow responsible, qualified and certified personnel of five or six people at the scene when an incident occurs?
A solution to an immediate or imminent threat that is economical is to have a team of qualified/certified teachers and/or admintrative personnel within the building when the act occurs. At that time, the action toward the threat can be mobilized into an effective solution with whatever force deems necessary.
While this team of people handling the threat is occurring, 911 are called and police units are now enroute, which can take anywhere from a few minutes to 10 minutes given the county and school vicinity. Hitting a crisis button in the administrator's office does little in response time when something is happening. School resource officers are too expensive and one is not effective if he/she goes down.
The legislation that was proposed to increase or allocate funds to the school for necessary expenditures toward student safety is only as good as the viable solutions it pays for. Solutions like paying this special task force within the school for certification and a slight pay increase to accommodate their efforts.
Solutions like Sen. Dave Lawson proposal to construct safety windows or doors to allow students to flee the threat instead of being boxed within a classroom. An increase of fines and penalties are only as good when a logical person understands them. We are dealing with criminals. Criminals do not obey the laws, criminals don't care about fines and penalties and criminals that want to inflict harm will do it no matter what the weapon or circumstance.
You solve the problems, you don't Band-aid the problems. We have enough Band-aid legislation already on the books.
Lacey Lafferty
Lewes
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