Republicans in House of Delegates plan to increase funds for school resource officers

On Thursday, Republicans in the wise and unideologically driven Virginia House of Delegates made public their intention to increase funding for additional “school resource officers” (i.e., local law enforcement officers) in the Commonwealth’s elementary schools[1].

According to a House Appropriations Committee member, Del. Beverly J. Sherwood, 80% of Virginia’s high schools and middle schools have full-time school resource officers. Surely, then, Virginia’s elementary schools can get a piece of that pie.

In a public statement, Sherwood stated, “Unfortunately, only about 25 percent of elementary schools have assigned school resource officers, many of which serve multiple schools.”[2] Unfortunate, indeed! If only I had grown up with an armed guard in my school, how much safer I would have felt!

School resource officers are certified local law enforcement who are stationed at public schools around the state to ensure a false sense of security. But honey, there’s an armed guard at the school, everything is going to be alright!

But aside from the logic of using local law enforcement at elementary schools to supposedly stop another Sandy Hook from occurring, this is yet another example of Republican Party financial hypocrisy at its finest.

[Fictional account with House Speaker William J. Howell] Speaker Howell, can we increase funds for more special education programs in Virginia’s schools? No, that’s socialism, but we should add more funds to pay for increased law enforcement at these schools!

Ah, so government funding isn’t so bad after all, at least when it comes to projects that Republicans, in all of their wisdom, find justifiable.

In another vein, however, putting one local law enforcement official at elementary is little more than putting a band-aid over a gaping wound. In one sense, if a gunmen armed with four semiautomatic or automatic weapons chooses to shoot his or her way into a school, it shouldn’t be expected that one armed guard will stop this. And this is only one of many reasons why this supposed solution isn’t much of a solution at all.

As I’ve argued before, armed teachers or installed armed guards in elementary is hardly the deep solution that we as a country need to be searching for and finding. These solutions are akin to using radiation therapy once the cancer has already been found as opposed to stopping the cancer before it starts.

But it is a perceptibly easy solution and thus one that will probably pass, at least in the house. Meanwhile, the legacy of Sandy Hook and all of the lessons that should have been learned will be left to linger, in vain.

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[1] http://www.timesdispatch.com/news/local/government-politics/va-republicans-want-more-money-to-fund-school-resource-officers/article_d80530fe-59fa-5ce7-991d-337a4176396d.html

[2] http://www.timesdispatch.com/news/local/government-politics/va-republicans-want-more-money-to-fund-school-resource-officers/article_d80530fe-59fa-5ce7-991d-337a4176396d.html