Scott Henson writes about the recent talk of cutting school police officers out of public schools budgets in his blog Grits for Breakfast. The blog is based on facts from an article that states that public schools employ as many non-teachers as teachers and that spending per student has increased by 68% in the past decade.
Scott Henson then goes on to say that he feels as though school police should be the first to be cut as Texas schools were just fine without them for many years before. I tend to disagree with his point because even though schools throughout Texas’ history have been fine without police, they have grown exponentially over the years. Teachers in themselves are not prepared enough to handle a rogue student as well as take care of the rest of their class. Also, the fact that there is a police or two on campus does prevent a lot of crime from happening as police are much more intimidating than a security guard for instance.
Henson then brings up the fact that Attorney Don Dickson said that in his school they had a nutritionist, not a policeman and that with the obesity rate being so high it would be more beneficial to have a dietician on campus instead of a police officer. I do agree that having dieticians at school would be a nice luxury; however, I am compelled to think that if one needed to review their diet they could go and consult their doctor outside of school whereas if an incident were to occur on campus a policeman would be extremely necessary. That being said I do not agree that a nutritionist is more necessary than a police officer.
Lastly Henson says that the Senate Criminal Justice Committee are thinking about cutting back the amount of tickets that they write on school campuses and that he sees no point in having school cops at all if they cannot write tickets. In conclusion I feel as though campus police officers do more than Henson is giving them credit for, even if it is just preventative measures. Also I think that if the bill to allow concealed carry weapons at school gets passed then I feel some people may be changing their minds about this budget cut back.
