McDonnell launches school safety task force; House GOP leaders seek more school resource officers
Gov. Bob McDonnell has issued an executive order to establish a task force to review school and campus safety conditions in response to last week’s school shooting in Newtown, Conn.
The task force will be co-chaired by three McDonnell cabinet secretaries and will include representatives from state agencies, law enforcement, public and private education, health care providers and the private sector. McDonnell said the panel will issue initial recommendations by Jan. 31, so that sate lawmakers can consider them during the 2013 General Assembly session.
The governor first announced plans to create the task force on Monday. His secretaries of education, public safety, and health and human resources will co-chair the group. McDonnell also has established a separate mental health workgroup that will be chaired by Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and Secretary of Health and Human Resources Dr. Bill Hazel.
“I have ordered a detailed and thorough review of school and campus safety to identify areas of needed improvement and critical resource needs at the state, local, school division and college/university levels to ensure that we are doing everything humanly possible to keep our children, young people, educators, administrators and staff safe while they are in the classroom and on our campuses,” McDonnell said in a statement issued by his office.
“We must also have a broader American conversation about personal responsibility, mental health, firearms safety, respect for human life and the need to improve conflict resolution to reduce violence in our society,” the governor added.
McDonnell stirred controversy earlier this week when he told a radio interviewer that he would be open to a discussion about allowing school employees to be armed. McDonnell did not endorse the idea, but his comments drew criticism from some Democratic legislators.
Key Republican leaders in the House of Delegates said today that they will seek funding to put more school resource officers in Virginia’s elementary schools, a response to last week’s school shooting in Newtown, Conn.
House Speaker Bill Howell, R-Stafford County and other GOP leaders said they will push to expand a state grant program for school resource officers during the upcoming General Assembly session, which begins Jan. 9. The lawmakers did not specify the amount of money they will seek or the number of officers they hope to add.
“The tragedy in Connecticut is heartbreaking,” Howell said in a news release. “As the Newtown community begins a healing process that will last longer than we can ever imagine, our thoughts naturally turn to our own children. We must look closely at everything we can to make sure our children, schools and communities are safe. This includes evaluating school safety, our mental health laws and services, and our gun laws.”
Del. Beverly Sherwood, R-Winchester, said only about a quarter of the state’s elementary schools have resource officers assigned to them, and many officers are assigned to multiple schools. About 80 percent of the state’s high schools and middle schools have full-time resource officers, said Sherwood, a member of the budget-writing House Appropriations Committee.
House Majority Leader Kirk Cox, R-Colonial Heights, said resource officers “play a vital role in promoting safety and educating our young people about drugs, violence and a host of other issues.”
“They are often community members whom children look to as mentors and role models,’ Cox said. “Fully-integrated school resource officers are the eyes and ears of our schools. Their awareness and training adds an important safety dimension to our school systems that cannot be understated.”
– Michael Sluss
December 20, 2012 - 3:06 PM
Well, it appears that wiser heads in the Virginia General Assembly are starting to address this issue. Ashame that McDonnell is NOT apparently a wiser Republican head in the Commonwealth at this time…
One thing not addressed in the funding is where will the money come from? I agree that extra resource officer could (key word here: could) help prevent a tradegy from happening again. However, I would like to suggest that perhaps the legistators consider adding funding to have bulletproof glasses installed on ground level windows and doors to buy the school officals time to put the children in safety.
I am not entirely convinced that arming teachers, while an interesting idea, may help in an active-shooter scenario. What if there was a confrontation between a student and a teacher during teaching time, and the teacher was known to be armed, and the student makes a reach for it? In this day and age, teachers are not allowed to even touch a hair on a child head, and if they claim to be acting in self-defense, then the school board and county would be liable for a civil suit. I think this may open a can of worm.
The problem is how are we capable of knowing when someone will go off and go on a mass killing spree? Do we want to live in a society like in the film, Minority Report, where the population lives in a semi-state of fear that even thinking of harm could land them in prison for a crime they have to yet commit?
I recongize that mental health is a hot button issue. I am aware that Virginia has made a distinction between voluntary and involuntary commitment to the mental health hospitals. What I am concerned about is: suppose someone went to a counselor, became judged that the person was a threat to everyone’s safety including himself, and by law, reports it to law enforcement as a person of threat. Suppose several years down the road, this same person is later judged to be no longer a threat, should this person have the right to bear arm restored?
I think the issue is very, very complicated and there is not an easy answer. I’m sure some would say, “Ban all guns outright!” Yet, that will not stop people from seeking ways to maim, kill, and destroy when they are bent on doing that.
I think part of the problem is a spiritual emptiness that have overtaken this country, along with economic and social pressure, and those are some of the powder keg that are ready to explode.
Yes, there have been religion fanatics who used guns to destroy those who they perceived as a threat, but isn’t that part of the mental health issue?
So many issues and it’s like a complicated spider web that can’t easily be unraveled…