North Raleigh Today

The Wake County School Board had the foresight, even before the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, to evaluate the effectiveness of having police presence on school campuses, giving it a nod of support to continue.

As part of a review of practices, the Board weeks ago had requested an assessment of how effective the School Resource Officer (SRO) program is. Board members heard the overview at a meeting this week before they voted to keep SROs in place, giving Raleigh, Apex, Cary and Garner police the go-ahead to station staff at schools next year.

"I'm not going to armchair quarterback what happened down in Texas. If something happens at one of our schools, there's going to be multiple responders,” Russ Smith, senior director of the Wake County Public School System’s Office of Security, said in summing up the status, according to a WTVD report that aired Tuesday. “And typically the agency whose jurisdiction it is is going to be taking the lead. So if it happens in Raleigh, then most likely Raleigh is going to take the lead." 

The practice of having a police presence at schools doesn’t make everyone happy, however, with some groups calling for using that money to pay for counselors and social workers instead.

"We've seen multiple times, that student resource officers don't improve the safety of our schools. They don't stop school shootings,” Kris Nordstrom, of   N.C. Justice Center said. "We’ve seen that in Texas. We've seen that in Florida. Instead what they do is increase the number of suspensions and arrests of students, particularly Black students.”

Although the SRO program will remain active, that’s not all schools are doing to improve a sense of security. The Board is also considering a suggestion to check every school visitor against a sex offender registry, the report said.