EVANSVILLE— A bill proposed in the State Senate may give public schools in Indiana millions of dollars to beef up school security.
Sponsored last year by state Attorney General Greg Zoeller, the bill began as a modest program to fund the placement of school resource officers in schools that could not afford them. But after the December school shooting in Connecticut, the bill took center stage on the Senate floor as legislators searched for ways to help vamp up school security.
This issue is so important to legislators, it is now Senate Bill 1.
That “shows how important this issue is to the legislature,” said Zoeller during a visit to Evansville Thursday. “This bill is seen as a vehicle to move something more quickly.”
Although the contents of the original bill are likely to change — the Senate may add more school safety programs besides school resource officers and allocate more money for their implementation — Zoeller said his initial bill would provide schools with the security legislators are seeking.
School resource officers are police officers assigned to a school. They have an office in the building and work closely with staff members and students.
The school resource officer “knows more about what is going on in that school than just about anyone else,” Vanderburgh County Sheriff Eric Williams told reporters at a news conference announcing the new bill. “We need that to stay ahead of the game. We need to focus on prevention.”
The Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp. already partners with local law enforcement agencies to have officers on school campuses. Other nearby schools, including MSD North Posey, North Gibson School Corp., South Gibson School Corp. and Warrick County School Corp. all have school resource officers on campus, paid for through a Safe Schools Healthy Students grant, which will expire in four months.
Williams said Vanderburgh County law enforcement officers already do work to prevent violence at schools. Among other actions, Williams instructs his deputies to regularly during down time drive and walk through school grounds, thus keeping a uniformed presence at the schools.
“We’re doing what we need to do,” he said. “We just need more help from the state.”
Turning from the podium and aiming his remark at Zoeller, Williams said, “Dollars.”
Zoeller laughed. He plans to push for local school districts and police agencies to have freedom to use the state money provided in the proposed bill as they deem necessary for local safety issues.
“Indiana has a strong history of being a home rule state,” he said. “We should leave the decision-making up to local schools and law enforcement. It’s better that way. There’s a difference between rural and urban schools.”
The attorney general’s office initially championed the bill after conducting a “needs assessment” in the winter of 2012 on “the prevailing attitudes and dispositions of Indiana’s school resource officer concept.”
The assessment concluded the officers make schools safer and additional funding for them would benefit schools.