Louisiana bill to create 'school protection officers' deferred
A bill that would allow Louisiana school districts to appoint “school protection officers” that could carry concealed firearms was voluntarily deferred on Thursday after the bill’s author called it “a duplication of what we already have.”
Senate Bill 158 would allow school districts to designate people as school protection officers who would be allowed to carry concealed firearms at the district’s schools. Anyone designated as a school protection officer would have to go through the state’s Peace Officer Standards and Training program required to become a peace officer.
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State Sen. Eddie Lambert, a Republican from Gonzales and the bill’s author, told the Senate Education Committee he wanted to defer the bill after discussions with legislative staff. He said he initially wanted to give schools more options to protect students in the wake of the school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, that left three students and three adults dead.
Lambert said after reviewing the current laws on the books, he believed the bill was not necessary.
“It would be a duplication of what we already have,” Lambert said.
The legislature will likely have further discussions about school protection, particularly with the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education requesting the legislature provide funding for districts to form partnerships with local law enforcement agencies to provide school resource officers.
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BESE’s request came after a wave of high-profile school shootings in recent months. According to Education Week, there have been 14 school shootings in 2023 that have resulted in someone being injured or killed. Ten people have been killed in school shootings this year, including six students or children.
The National Association of School Resource Officers recommends that each school have at least one “carefully selected, specially trained” officer. The organization claims that school resource officers prevent some instances of violence and crimes, citing a 2019 study that Canada’s Carleton University looked at the SRO program in one municipality.
The organization also cites data from the Averted School Violence Reporting System, which is maintained by the National Policing Institute. The data shows that of 55 averted instances between 1999 and 2017, at least 30 had a security officer or police officer on campus.
Education groups, such as the National Education Association, have been more skeptical about officers’ effectiveness.
Data analysis from the Center for Public Integrity and USA TODAY in 2021 appears to back that up. During the 2017-2018 school year, nearly 230,000 students were referred to law enforcement. In 46 states, Black students were referred more often than the student population overall.
Another study, one by researchers at the University of Albany, analyzed data from schools nationwide from 2014 to 2018 and found that “SROs do effectively reduce some forms of violence in schools, but do not prevent school shootings or gun-related incidents.”
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This article originally appeared on Lafayette Daily Advertiser: Louisiana bill that would create 'school protection officers' deferred
