Forty-five percent of public schools nationwide had at least one SRO in the 2017-18 school year. This figure rises to 70 percent at the high-school level. These officers are not school administrators responsible for counseling troubled students away from misbehaving — they are armed members of local law enforcement. Yet, rather than respond only to the rare violent episode, they are routinely involved in situations that counselors, teachers or social workers are better suited for.
— Elona Wilson, The Hechinger Report
Apart from questions about who should pay for a school resource officer — the school district or the town that employs the officer — a more basic question is whether police should be in the schools at all. SROs first appeared in the 1950s, but in New Hampshire, it was not until the turn of the century that school districts began answering that question affirmatively. With the rise in school shootings, support for SROs increased, as people looked to them as another layer of protection, and today, many find it difficult to picture a school without an SRO.
Yet that support is faltering, with data from the United States Department of Education indicating that minorities are being disproportionally punished by police officers in the schools. It came home to New Hampshire when Change for Concord, a student and parent advocacy group, called for the abolishment of Concord’s SRO program.
“First, we disagree that law enforcement officers, armed with weapons and the authority to arrest, belong in schools,” the letter from Change for Concord stated. “Second, SROs are neither competent educators nor counselors.”
Now Senator Becky Whitley, a Concord Democrat, has sponsored Senate Bill 108, which would prevent students from being arrested at school unless they posed a “substantial and imminent threat to students, teachers, or public safety,” according to an article in the Concord Monitor.
That isn’t the only change schools may be facing from Concord legislators. House Bill 20, the Laconia Daily Sun reports, would establish an “education freedom account program,” allowing families to choose where their children receive their education, with the state education grant following them wherever they go. It is a new take on school vouchers that aims to focus on what’s best for the student, rather than what’s best for the school.
“According to the most recent data from School Digger, a website that aggregates test score results, 23 of the top 30 schools in New York in 2019 were charters,” according to the Wall Street Journal. “The feat is all the more impressive because those schools sported student bodies that were more than 80% black and Hispanic, and some two-thirds of the kids qualified for free or discount lunches. The Empire State’s results were reflected nationally. In a U.S. News & World Report ranking released the same year, three of the top 10 public high schools in the country were charters, as were 23 of the top 100 — even though charters made up only 10% of the nation’s 24,000 public high schools.”
New Hampshire’s education freedom account would require that parents sign an agreement with the scholarship organization administering the program, guaranteeing to provide an education in the core knowledge areas with “an exposure to and appreciation of art and music.” The agreement also requires that the arrangement will satisfy the state’s compulsory school attendance requirements.
Those meeting the requirements, whether public, charter, or private schools, would receive an average adequate education grant of $4,603, minus an administrative fee $460, for net funding of $4,143.
Public schools are understandably fearful of the change because it would send state aid elsewhere, but the legislation notes, “The district would not see an impact to revenue associated with the student until the following year, as adequate education payments are made based on prior year enrollments. It should also be noted, while this bill makes no direct impact to district expenditures, districts may experience reduced spending to the extent there would be one fewer student in its school.”
The argument against vouchers has always been that, although there would be fewer students to support, it does not necessarily translate into fewer teachers needed, and then there are the facilities costs to maintain.
Another concern is the cost of special education. The bill leaves such details to the Department of Education to handle through its rulemaking authority.
Police Department In Transition
We previously noted that Tilton Police Chief Robert Cormier planned to retire, with Captain Ryan Martin serving as interim chief, beginning this month. Martin later changed his mind, and went ahead with his own plans to retire, Town Administrator Jeannie Forrester said.
Meanwhile, the town also saw the retirement of Lieutenant Nate Morrison, and Detective Sergeant Nate Buffington took a job with the Plymouth Police Department.
Their departure comes at an unusual time, since the town just built a new police station after years of advocacy by the department, which has operated out of cramped quarters just off busy routes 3-11.
Retired Belmont Police Captain Richard Mann has agreed to serve as a civilian department administrator on an interim basis, and the town has hired an interim prosecutor to see them through the near term.
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