Butler County, PA school system hires armed school guards - Washington Post [View all]

[LiberalEsto]

This county cuts 75 staff positions because of budget issues, but somehow finds the money to hired retired state troopers to patrol the schools. Where are our priorities?

After Newtown shootings, Pennsylvania county hires armed school guards

By Eli Saslow,

"BUTLER, Pa. — Four hundred miles from Sandy Hook Elementary, a superintendent named Mike Strutt left a morning meeting on Dec. 14 and decided to place his schools on “threat alert.” He was concerned about a copycat attack on the day of the Connecticut shootings. But, as he read reports of the massacre, he started to worry more about something else.

For 20 years, he had specialized in school safety, filling three binders with security plans and lockdown drills — all of which felt suddenly inadequate. In the case of an attack, would a “threat alert” do him any good?

He looked out his office window at the snow-covered trees of western Pennsylvania and imagined a gunman approaching one of Butler County’s 14 schools, allowing the attack to unfold in his mind. In came the gunman, past the unarmed guards Strutt had hired after Columbine; past the metal detectors he had installed after Virginia Tech; past the intercom and surveillance system he had updated after Aurora."

...

"Butler County had cut 75 teaching and administrative positions in the past five years because of a shrinking budget, but now the district of 7,500 students couldn’t hire armed guards fast enough. It had added a new insurance policy and $230,000 to the annual security budget in order to arm and employ at least 22 former state troopers — enough to station at least one guard at each school and every after-school event. In a town where hunting guns hang on the wall of the prosecutor’s office and the rifle team has won championships, the decision to arm guards had elicited a single protest. One family boycotted school for a day before returning the next."

More at link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/after-newtown-shootings-pennsylvania-county-hires-armed-school-guards/2013/01/10/72ba2a6c-5b4d-11e2-9fa9-5fbdc9530eb9_story.html