This is amazing news, a Florida mom gives $11K for armed deputies to patrol her child's school for the rest of the year. Smart mom, great she can afford to do this. Hopefully the schools will start doing it on their own and parents can donate to keep it up or the money allocated through the COPS program will be used. Obama spoke about providing armed security in schools, however, is only willing to fund enough for 1,000 guards and there are around 98K public schools as of 2010 and 28K private schools as of 2003 in America. Not that every school needs armed security or will want to provide armed security, until something tragic happens to them.

The money will help pay for a "rotation of deputies" to patrol the perimeter and hallways of the elementary school through the end of the school year. The program began about a week ago, Willis said.

The school, about 20 miles north of Daytona Beach, has 1,165 students. 

The Flagler County school board is looking into "having deputies at all five of [its] elementary schools," Superintendent Janet Valentine told CNN. A plan to have deputies in all schools will be presented to the school board in February, she said. 

"There's been some indication from the sheriff that they could assist with the cost," Valentine said. The district, which has 10 schools, already employs armed guards at its middle schools and high schools, according to Valentine. 

"In the meantime, when we have a generous donation like this, I don't think we can refuse that," Valentine said of Lauria's offer to pay the $32 per hour it will cost to keep a deputy at the campus. 

Old Kings Elementary briefly "paid for a deputy on campus a few days before Christmas because of what happened in Newtown," Willis said, but this is the first time the school has had a full-time armed sheriff's deputy on patrol. 

"The children are not drawing the connection between Newtown and the guard being here, but that's why he's here," according to Willis. "The children have not responded being upset or hyper about it at all." 

The school says the decision to put the guard on campus was supported by a committee comprised of parents, teachers and community leaders. 

The good news is that while school shootings seem like a large problem recently, according to 2008 statistics from the National Center for Education Statistics the percentage of youth homicides occurring at school remained at less than 2 percent of the total number of youth homicides over all available survey years even though the absolute number of homicides of school-age youth at school varied across the years. However, since the Newtown shooting last month the issue of gun violence and mass shootings has hit a nerve among parents, educators and politicians and more of them want to see better school security in place.

Related:

Guns, guards and posses: Schools try new security strategies

NRA clarifies its stance on arming schools

Editors Note:
The average number of schools has been updated from 35K and corrected based on 2010 stats.
I also added stats on the average number of homicides committed in schools from the NCES.

 

©2013 Patricia Garza

Posted by Patty Garza at 6:47 PM blog comments powered by Disqus    

Labels: Children and Youth, education, Kids and Teens, moms dads parents safety