This from
The Courier-Journal:
A statewide school-safety program created after a fatal school
shooting in Western Kentucky has had its budget slashed nearly 60
percent in the past five years.
The Safe
Schools Program has seen its funding plummet from $10.4 million in
2007-08 to $4.5 million this year, prompting the Kentucky Center for
School Safety to drastically reduce its school safety audits and
districts to strain to find other money to pay for maintaining safety
and order in schools.
But
some Kentucky education leaders and legislators are saying those cuts
need to be re-examined in the aftermath of the mass murder of students
and teachers Friday at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
“It’s
something we’re going to have to look at in light of what happened at
Sandy Hook. But we should wait and see what exactly happened in
Connecticut,” said state Rep. Carl Rollins, a Midway Democrat who heads
the House Education Committee. “Our schools are still safe places.”
Jon
Akers, the Center for School Safety’s executive director, said his
agency has reduced its training programs for school officials by about
half and canceled its annual safety conference this year.
Akers
said the center will perform 57 audits of school safety this year —
down from 90 when it was fully funded. In those audits, a team of
experts visit a school to assess its safety needs.
“The
cuts have limited what I can do and what superintendents can do, but we
still try to find ways to make things happen,” Akers said. “We still
provide training, technical assistance and safe school assessments in
the school districts, but not as much as I would like.”
Kentucky
Education Commissioner Terry Holliday said he’s confident the state’s
schools are safe, but he said the funding cut needs to be examined. “I
worry that we’re not able to do as many school safety audits as we would
like.”
The General Assembly
created the Safe School program in 1998, just months after a shooting at
Heath High School in West Paducah killed three students and injured
five others.
It funds the Kentucky Center for School Safety, based at Eastern
Kentucky University. And it provides a stream of state money to
districts dedicated for costs of maintaining order and security.
But
the recession hit the program with a sharp funding decline as Gov.
Steve Beshear and the General Assembly grappled with falling tax
revenues and soaring costs for public pension obligations, Medicaid and
state debt payments.
“This
is symptomatic of a larger problem we have in Kentucky of bearing our
responsibilities to the citizens we’re supposed to serve,” said state
Rep. Jim Wayne, D-Louisville. “Until we face up to the financial crisis
that we’re in, so many important support services for children and
others will continue to erode.”
Beshear
spokeswoman Kerri Richardson said safety in schools is an
administration priority. “As we look toward future budgets, we will look
for opportunities to restore many of the needs in education, such as
professional development, textbooks, and the Center for School Safety,”
Richardson said.
When
the program was funded at $10 million, Akers said, his center got about
$1 million with the remaining $9 million distributed among school
districts under a formula based partly on student population.
Now, he said, his center gets $830,000 with about $3.7 million going to the districts.
Those
districts, he said, can use their funds for security equipment and
school resource officers — trained and armed law enforcement officers...
2 comments:
So Center for school safety got a 17% cut and the schools received a 59% cut? How does a 17% cut in budget result in a reduction of a 1/3 in your audits when you aren't even having a conference this year? I suspect that the current homeland security/school safety climate could very likely have produced grant funds to have made up the difference. Sounds to me like the schools got the short end of the stick.
Not sure why folks act suprised. The same cuts came to all flexible funds. Yesterday it was low test scores and the state doesn't fund textbooks. Today it is concern for security of schools and the state is cutting funding for that. If you don't have the money, you can't pay for it. Part of it is amount of resource and part of it is how it is appropriated.
Wow about 10-15 million for the center for school safety over the last decade and a half!?! Do we have any direct data how much safer schools are as a result of this investment? Not just how many reports they have written but a direct correlation between safer schools before and after the Center was opened.
Not trying to give Mr. Akers and his crew a hard time but there is always something difficult about having someone come in from the outside to critque your house. I appreciated their visit and specific insights about the school but I don't think you can get a real feel for a school's culture and operation on a very limited parents survey, a handful of interviews and some walk throughs in one day. Always kind of bothered me because there is this one size fits all perspective. When you get your report, you just have to sit back and take it because if you try to make an opervation you appear argumentative and their counter argument is always, "That's what they said at Paducah/Columbine". Then once they document it, you have the liability of fixing it per their recommendation or risk looking neglegent, even if the recommendation doesn't fit your school's conditions. I do genuinely appreciate their expertise and mission but there is something about folks who come in and tell you that Johnny is trapped in the old mine and then just walk away and leave you to deal with it regardless of your resources or circumstances.
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