What's School Safety Worth?

Thursday, 21 August 2008 17:39

Kentucky’s General Assembly is sending a message that school safety is worth only half of what it was in the previous years, after 58 percent of funding for

the safe schools allocation money was cut for the ’08-’09 school year.
Kentucky is among the top in the nation for school safety, but in the wake of a deadly school shooting in Knoxville, Tennessee, it begs the question: How much is your child’s safety worth to you?
School safety is generally a number one priority in most school districts followed by their students’ education, but with a 58% cut in their safe schools allocation money, it has many school administrators making a tough decision between school safety and education.
With the funding, schools can use the money for everything from educational programs aimed at preventing violence, to behavioral intervention plans, to salaries for school resource officers.
Now, many districts have to decide between dropping those programs, or using their general fund dollars to pay for them.
Jon Akers, the executive director for the Kentucky Center for Safe Schools, says, his biggest fear is that we become complacent and assume that because there wasn’t a school shooting in the past year, that the funds are no longer needed.
“I’ve handled two cases already this week of aggressive behaviors in our schools in the state of Kentucky, where principals are afraid that students are going to manifest some kind of very serious behavior,” Akers said. “We don’t need to stop these funds from coming in, we need to keep these funds flowing into the schools so we can protect our kids."
While it is difficult to prove prevention and how many incidents may have been thwarted by these funds, Akers and others say it’s not worth the risk.

For more information, go to Kentucky Center for Safe Schools:www.kysafeschools.org/

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