Schmidt has better plan for school safety than Gov. Kelly
Every mom wants the same thing for their child. We want them to have every opportunity to succeed in life, which means providing them with a great education and keeping them healthy and safe.
In Kansas, we’ve been proactive about making our schools a safe place for kids to learn. We can and should do more, but we need the right leadership.
Gov. Laura Kelly has been missing in action. Attorney General Derek Schmidt, who is our Republican nominee for governor, recently proposed a strong public safety plan.
In 2018, the Legislature created and funded Safe & Secure School Grants at $5 million per year to help schools improve security. Applicant schools that dedicated matching funds were awarded the grants.
In the first two years, 153 districts and 169 districts received grants.
Despite success, Kelly eliminated the program through budget allotments in FY 2021 and FY 2022.
In fact, the governor has not included the expenditures in any of her budgets since 2019. In 2021, the Kansas State Board of Education denied our request to use federal money for safety grants. Again this year, the Legislature included $5 million for safety grants, not dependent on state board approval.
Schmidt calls for doubling the grant funding to $10 million so more schools can use the program to make security upgrades and hire more School Resource Officers.
Kansans recently saw firsthand how important well-trained SRO’s can be for school safety after Officer Erik Clark saved potentially countless lives by preventing a shooting at Olathe East High School from spreading beyond the office.
Schmidt would also expand the program we created in 2018 to establish Mental Health Intervention Teams in Kansas schools. By next year, 50 to 60 schools across Kansas will have MHITs.
So many of the attacks on schools are committed by individuals with mental health issues, so continuing to grow this program until every school across our state has an MHIT is an excellent aim.
One of the easiest ways we could provide additional funding to schools at no additional taxpayer cost is to unlock existing COVID relief funds. U.S. Senator Roger Marshall is leading the national effort to free up the more than $150 billion in unused COVID money that is currently restricted for only a limited number of uses, school safety not being one of them.
In Kansas alone, schools have around $1 billion available for our kids. Schmidt, Marshall, and the other members of our federal delegation will work together to cut the red tape so schools can decide for themselves how best to allocate the funds.
Many who commit these mass killings exhibit clear warning signs - including in Uvalde, Texas. Ensuring those warning signs are noticed and reported would go a long way to reducing the chances of these attacks being carried out. In addition, ensuring basic safety protocols are followed, along with annual staff training, are important steps that must not be overlooked.
Kansas has a Suspicious Activity Reports program that was launched in 2019. Parents, students, and teachers have the ability to file a report online. In that time, 38 reports have been classified as school threat tips.
Schmidt’s plan calls for additional partnerships with public and private schools to promote the program so that it becomes widely known enough so anyone with information about potential threats will use it.
Finally, Schmidt is renewing his call for the passage of the Reduce Armed Violence Act, which would require that convicted felons who illegally possess a firearm and use it to commit new violent crimes receive an enhanced criminal sentence. Schmidt rightly wants to target criminals, not law-abiding gun owners, to reduce violence.
Like on all issues, Schmidt is leading with real solutions. We know from firsthand experience Gov. Kelly doesn’t have answers on school safety. That’s why it was no surprise when her campaign told reporters she was “not yet addressing this issue publicly.”
This story was originally published June 21, 2022 at 12:00 AM.