To the Editor,

Parents are thinking the summer is over and its time for school supplies and new clothes.

Kids are thinking where did the summer go, but excited to see old friends.

Our leaders are not thinking. Where is the school security? Where is a law enforcement officer in every school?

The governor of Ohio put aside 300 million to give to public and private schools to expand law enforcement officers in schools. Texas requires panic buttons in every classroom and an armed guard in every school. Arizona approves funds to bring law enforcement to schools. Michigan puts aside 25 million to fund officers in schools. Tennessee governor signs legislation to fund full time armed resource officers in every public school. And the list goes on and on.

What has Rhode Island done?

Rhode Island passed legislation to study the impact of safety drills on students and whether the time and dates of those drills should be given to parents in advance, so to prepare the students, because those drills can be traumatic. Like the saying goes, you can’t make this stuff up.

Voters need to remember that there was legislation to give each public school in Rhode Island 100 thousand dollars to implement security. Hardly enough to protect our students and staff. None the less, it was tabled in finance for further study. Makes me wonder who is studying it and why? Your elected officials thought other expenditures were more important to spend taxpayers’ money on. Remember, they go to work every day protected by security while our kids go to school unprotected. Seems hypocritical to me. For less than 24 million dollars Rhode Island can put a law enforcement officer in every school.

School Safety Now is a non-partisan, non-profit organization made up of parents, caretakers and all community members who are concerned about gun violence in our schools. This diverse group has and welcomes members from all political parties, all ethnicities', all sexual preferences, and all beliefs. We respect the ongoing debates of gun control, 2nd amendment rights, mental health advocacy, assault weapon bans, right to defend, right to bear arms, and all such debates. We also realize that those discussions are time-consuming and complicated and are long standing and far from being settled.

We need our schools to be safe now for all students and teachers while those issues are debated, litigated, voted on and eventually settled.

Therefore, we are advocating the placement of a law enforcement officer in every school, every school day. We need to get serious about protecting our kids.

Tim Colgan,

Warwick

SchoolSafetyNow.com