10.9.22 – New Orleans City Business
Education officials told state lawmakers Tuesday that fewer than half of Louisiana schools have an armed police officer on campus.
The Louisiana Department of Education administration revealed the statistic during a meeting of the House of Representatives Special Committee on School Safety. The department recently conducted a school safety survey that found that 47% of 1,300 public schools statewide employ at least one school resource officer.
“It’s kind of amazing when you look at all the schools across the state of Louisiana,” said Rep. Patrick Jefferson, D-Homer.
Assistant Education Inspector Ernise Singleton told lawmakers she expects the number to increase as the state receives more federal grants.
School resource officers are often deputy community sheriffs or local police officers who maintain campus security and serve as the first line of defense against intruders. During the May 24 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX, there were no Auxiliary Officers on campus when the gunman first arrived. The police agency responsible for security at the Uvalde schools had just six officers responsible for the district’s eight schools, according to the Washington Post.
However, research shows that armed security officials have not led to a decrease in campus shootings. The University of Albany and RAND Corp. have teamed up for a study examining data from 2014 to 2018. It showed that while resource officers prevented some school incidents, they did not reduce the number of shootings or gun-related incidents on campus.
Education Superintendent Cade Brumley told lawmakers that he believes there are four things “most important” to making Louisiana schools safe.
First, he said, all schools must create a culture in which students feel comfortable reporting suspicious threats or activity to authorities. “We need to have a speak-up culture,” Brumley said.
The second concerns the standardization of security infrastructure across schools with features such as single points of entry, access control, double doors and functioning locking systems. Louisiana receives $20 million from the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which Brumley says he wants to use for this purpose
“We need to strengthen our borders,” Brumley said. “Our schools must not be soft targets.”
Rep. Jefferson said medics or firefighters might have trouble getting through a single entrance into a school crowded with students trying to evacuate.
Brumley’s third goal is to expand psychiatric services for students. He said the department is using federal grants to add more social workers and counselors in schools.
Finally, Brumley said, schools need more coordinated emergency training with local law enforcement, mental health workers and other first responders. About a quarter of schools statewide did not conduct active target practice in the past year, according to the DOE survey.
One safety feature schools can implement for free is the Rave Panic Button mobile app, which can alert 911 about an active shooter or other emergency with the push of a button. The system is available to any public or private school through the Office of the Governor for Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (GOHSEP). The office uses state grants to install the system in Louisiana schools.
GOHSEP Director Casey Tingle told lawmakers his office has already rolled out the system in 674 schools across the state. Another 455 schools are in the process of implementing it, while around 100 schools have dropped out of the program for various reasons.
Most schools that have decided against it already have a similar system, Tingle said.