The Kentucky House passed a bill Tuesday aimed at taking another step toward assigning police officers to every school campus; a policy objective since a 2018 school shooting.
The measure would require Kentucky school districts to have an officer assigned to each campus by August. But House lawmakers included a provision recognizing that many districts are struggling to meet the standard because of insufficient funding or law enforcement understaffing.
Under the bill, those districts would work with the state school security marshal to work out a plan to achieve the expectation of having a school resource officer at each campus.
“We all know that there’s a shortage of officers and funding,” Republican Rep. Kevin Bratcher, the bill’s lead sponsor, said during the House debate.
More than half of Kentucky’s schools do not have a resource officer, according to an August report from the state school security marshal.
Currently, Grayson County Schools employs two school resource officers: Ian Renfrow is assigned to Grayson County High School while Seth Payne serves at Grayson County Middle School. Both men are Leitchfield Police Department officers.
The bill, which cleared the House on a 78-17 vote, advances to the Senate. It’s a follow-up to a sweeping school safety measure passed by Kentucky lawmakers in 2019. That bill was intended to bolster police protection and counseling at schools. It came in response to the 2018 shooting at Marshall County High School that killed two students and injured more than a dozen others.
Funding has been a chronic problem in implementing the 2019 law.
The new bill sparked a long debate Tuesday in the Republican-dominated House.
The measure’s critics said it isn’t the answer to making schools safer, noting that shootings occurred in schools where armed officers were assigned. What’s needed, they said, is a more comprehensive approach that includes sustained funding for mental health professionals in schools.
Democratic Rep. Mary Lou Marzian spoke of the challenge of assigning one officer to a large school, saying, “How’s that going to stop a shooting if that armed officer is at one end of the building?”
Another Democratic lawmaker, Rep. Josie Raymond, asked what supporters would say to a child who is scared to see “a gun on anybody’s hip in their school building?”
GOP Rep. Jason Nemes later replied: “I would say, ’thank God that officer is there to protect you.”
The Associated Press
