A bill was filed last week that would require all school resource officers (SROs) to carry firearms. Senate Bill 8 amends a previous law that did not specify whether SROs must be armed on school property.
The School Safety and Resiliency Act (Senate Bill 1) was signed into Kentucky law in 2019 after a shooting at Marshall County High School left two dead and more than a dozen injured in January 2018. This law called for improvements in mental health services in schools, having a resource officer in every school and created the role of a state school security marshal to enforce school safety.
Senate Bill 8, filed by Rep. Max Wise, of Campbellsville, not only requires all SROs to be armed but calls for more psychologists, social workers and other support staff in Kentucky schools.
Owensboro Public Schools and Daviess County Public Schools already have their respective SROs carry firearms while on duty, so this law won’t affect them in that measure. DCPS Director of Student Services Damon Fleming explained that their SROs are deputies with the Daviess County Sheriff’s Office and are trained quarterly to handle firearms. Public Information Officer Jared Revlett said the SROs at OPS have carried firearms from the very beginning.
“The benefit of having deputies with the Daviess County Sheriff’s Office is that they’re all trained with firearms, and they’re all academy-certified,” Fleming said. “It’s different with every school district. There’s a number of districts that have their own specific security officers employed by the school.”
However, Senate Bill 1 requires each and every school to have its own SRO, but there’s a caveat that comes with that requirement.
DCSO currently employees SROs for Apollo and Daviess County High Schools, and Chief Deputy Major Barry Smith said Senate Bill 1 requires all schools to have an SRO “when funding becomes available.”
“Nobody has produced any funding for it,” Smith said. “I don’t know if it will be in the governor’s proposed budget, but I haven’t heard anything about it yet.”
Senate Bill 8’s amendments to Senate Bill 1 include clarification as to which schools are required to have SROs, and Revlett said there are several aspects of Senate Bill 1 that will be closely looked at during the current legislative session.
“Yes, it’s been signed into law, but a lot of [Senate Bill 1’s requirements] haven’t taken effect yet because of budget concerns,” he said.
Revlett said it’s very likely that state representatives and school safety officials will discuss what the SRO requirements will be for schools across the state, and that it could vary depending on geography and other logistics.
“For example, if an elementary school, a middle school and a high school are all on the same campus and in close proximity to each other, it’s kind of silly to pay for three police officers when the schools are all right there,” he said. “Another issue is, you’re taking police officers off the streets.”
Smith said he believes the sheriff’s office could provide more SROs to DCPS, but that putting one in each and every school would be a stretch, adding that placing SROs in a number of middle and high schools would be more doable.
“To have an SRO in every school would be a little much. I think there will be negotiations there,” he said. “There should be a happy medium.”
OPS already employs an additional safety services assistant to monitor its middle schools, Revlett said, though the employee does not carry a firearm and isn’t affiliated with the City’s police department. OPD officers also perform daily checks on each OPS school in the district.
“We’re trying to add an SRO to the middle schools as well, so we’re working to figure all that out,” Revlett said.
