All of us are saddened by the recent tragedy that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., and no one wants to see that kind of event occur again.
I do think, however, cooler heads need to prevail when we start talking about spending a million dollars a year to put a resource officer in every school in the county.
There is just no way to protect children or anyone else from every possible misfortune that could happen to a human being in this world, and no amount of money will change that situation. Where will it stop — an officer on every school bus?
One armed guard in a school with 300 or more kids is not going to stop a determined crazy person from committing mayhem, especially when that person doesn’t expect to live through the ordeal anyway.
And yes, I have grandchildren in elementary school.
On another note, I noticed the Carter County schools are considering a consolidation plan. This paper published the current student/teacher ratio and the average appears to be around 12. I was astonished to see a number that low.
We should be producing geniuses and not barely getting kids out of high school.
JON LINK
Johnson City
bakerjw writes:
February 15, 2013
9:29 AM
How many hundreds of millions have been spent since 9/11 strengthening our airport screening processes? It is a hard number to compile. We have no way of knowing how well the efforts have paid off, but we've not had any plane hijackings since. The reason? We've made access more difficult. The first step needs to be strengthening access points to our schools because many of them are soft targets.
SROs might not be a perfect answer, but they certainly provide a deterrent. The shooter in Aurora first went to a couple of theaters that were not gun free before going to one that was posted as being a gun free zone.
We provide security for our politicians, celebrities, banks, etc... Why not our children?
Terrorists that want to do our country harm don't just sit in caves across the ocean oblivious to what happens in our country. Our media points out soft targets to them all the time and once identified as being soft, they are a potential target.