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RESPONSES TO QUESTION OF THE WEEK

Should more funding be provided for school resource officers?

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Legislation that would have funded school resource officers or constables in all Delaware public schools was recently rejected by the House of Representatives’ Education Committee. Do you agree or disagree with the move? Can the presence of a law enforcement official at an educational facility help students and staff? Or do you believe in the “school-to-prison pipeline” theory, which claims that such policing increases juvenile arrests?

  • I fully support the state funding officers in all our public schools for the reasons shared in the article, plus the protection they can offer to our students and staff should someone come to the school with the intention to harm them. — Doug Van Rees
  • If children fail or, God forbid, a violent incident occurs, everyone in hindsight would want school resource officers in our schools! Best regards. — Pete Peno
  • A horrific incident will occur, then we will be a day late and a dollar short. — Jimmy McConnell
  • One of the dumbest things to happen with education. School resource officers serve a very important need within the school community. Without these folks, you have no first line of defense if a safety issue should arise. — Howard Gaines III
  • The issue is that most of these “school safety issues” that arise are caused by students who have been pushed around until they finally push back, and in that case, the first line of defense was supposed to be the school administration and the school counselors, in that they are supposed to be there when students have any kind of problem. But they failed to do their jobs. I had several teachers ignore my problems when I was in school, and the first one who actually helped me later became the principal of one of the Dover schools before moving overseas. — Kyle Hendrix
  • I bet, if you try, you can get volunteers. — Bob Hice
  • The real question should be, how are we going to get these officers and how do we pay for them, since people always seem to forget that the legislative budget is coming from the taxes we taxpayers pay into it? Now, having a school resource officer in every school is not a bad thing, but people seem to forget that, just five months ago, the state “reassessed” everyone’s property, so they could increase the tax rate. So, are the people ready for it to happen again? The government needs to stop and remember they are supposed to be asking us before they make decisions. — Kyle Hendrix
  • Legislatively, they don’t need to ask you anything at all. Voters hired them to represent their districts, but the only accountability is their next election. Delaware voters are particularly fond of reelecting the same people, so perhaps that is where the fault can be traced. — Greg Doyle
  • Actually, they do because people keep getting it wrong. This country is not a democracy; it’s a constitution-based republic, and how it was founded was that the federal level would ask the state-level delegates what their states wanted, and those state delegates would ask the people. Then, the answer would be given to the state, which would send a messenger to the federal level. — Kyle Hendrix
  • There isn’t a tax problem. There is a spending problem. — Richard Kerchevall
  • The tax problem is because of the spending problem. They spend too much, so they tax us more to get it back, just to spend more, which leads to never-ending higher taxes. — Kyle Hendrix

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