An elementary-school-sized hole in Fayetteville, Cumberland schools resource officer plan

I saw that by executive order of its governor, the state of Virginia will limit or ban cellphones in K-12 classrooms.

While I am interested in seeing how the experiment works for our neighbors to the north, I don’t want the same for here — not yet.

I have two children in elementary and middle school, and I do want to help our teachers in their increasingly thankless jobs of keeping students focused and on track.

But I also think about mass school shootings like in Uvalde, Texas; Parkland, Florida; Newtown, Connecticut; and too many other places. In those cases, terrified and trapped students used their phones to call or text loved ones — for some parents, it was the last time they heard from their precious child.

The survivors of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown graduated this spring.

Trump rally shooting at top of mind, too

I was thinking all this even before Saturday — when a gunman wounded former President Donald Trump, killed another man and critically injured two other people at Trump's rally in Pennsylvania.

I believe when American society makes a serious move toward addressing gun violence, my view on cellphones in classrooms may change. Instead, we tend to take a step forward and two steps back, like here in North Carolina.

In 2023, Gov. Roy Cooper implemented the S.A.F.E initiative to encourage safe firearm storage. But the same year, state legislators passed a law eliminating the requirement for a pistol purchase permit through the sheriff's office to buy a handgun. The change decreases wait times for gun purchases, when a recent study shows that states with waiting periods and safe storage laws lower childhood suicide rates in children.

Elementary schools last in line for SROs

Keeping students safe has also been on my brain because of the community discussion over school resource officers in Cumberland County Schools. The city of Fayetteville and the towns of Hope Mills and Spring Lake have had to hurriedly figure out a plan to put SROs in schools in their jurisdictions after Sheriff Ennis Wright informed officials in late spring his deputies could only cover schools in unincorporated areas.

I have been encouraged by the teamwork and communication from our government and law enforcement entities since then. But there is still an elementary school-sized hole in plans, at least for now.

Fayetteville has far and away the most number of schools to cover, and Fayetteville Police Chief Kemberle Braden has a thoughtful plan to provide some officers for schools. But with budgetary concerns plus the same staffing issues that plague the Sheriff’s Office, the rollout of new uniformed cops in schools will take time, and be even slower for elementary schools.

“Braden’s plan, it’s gonna take a full year, he said, for him to get staffed up,” said Greg West, a longtime member of the county Board of Education. “He’s going to focus on four or five, rotating between high schools and then get to the middle schools, and then probably get some floaters for the elementary schools by this time next year.”

He added: “But as a community after the dust settles from this, we really got to fund some for the elementary schools. Where has the trouble happened nationally? It’s been the elementary schools.”

City Council members have discussed whether private security guards can be part of the equation. I don’t see the harm in talking but I’m not sure about that one.

I don’t know that I generally would trust the level of training a private firm might have — especially in de-escalating tense situations involving young students.

Do SROs add to the school-to-prison pipeline?

Of course, some people have the same concerns for uniformed officers.

City Council member Mario Benavente has sought data and guidance on whether SROs can worsen what is called the school-to-prison pipeline, where over-discipline, especially of Black and minority students, can lead to suspensions and eventually dropping out. Both state and federal prisons contain an overwhelming majority of inmates who did not finish high school.

The nonprofit Southern Coalition for Justice sent a letter to the Fayetteville City Council signed by lawyers Jake Sussman and Ian Courts, who are with Justice System Reform.

The lawyers were pretty emphatic: “The presence of police in public schools has dramatically increased since the 1990s. This growth has taken place despite research showing that the presence of School Resource Officers (“SROs”) does not produce safer school environments, results in disproportionate policing of students of color and students with disabilities, and worsens the school-to-prison pipeline.

“On average, shootings at schools with an armed guard ended with three times as many people killed.”

The letter, citing the Journal of the American Medical Association, said the introduction of guns into an environment also introduces the possibility of error: “Even highly trained officers get split decisions wrong.”

Sussman and Courts write: “In contrast to SROs, increasing the number of counselors, nurses, psychologists, or social workers has been proven to keep students — and schools — safer. Yet while the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) recommends a minimum of one school counselor for every 250 students, North Carolina currently maintains a 1-to-343 ratio.”

Metal detectors and more: These are not easy issues

Separately, the school system is scheduled to install metal detectors at the two entrances for every school in the county. The effort grew out of a meeting organized last year by Cumberland County Schools that drew 200 people out to talk about school security.

None of these are easy issues. It is sometimes hard to look past one’s own experience.

We did not have uniformed officers or metal detectors when I came out of Cumberland County Schools. We also did not have regular mass school shootings — the Columbine massacre at a Colorado high school was years after I graduated.

I hope the spirit of cooperation I have seen in these last few weeks by key community partners will help us get to a good place to keep our children safe.

No discussion can be more important. Our children must learn, but they must live first.

Opinion Editor Myron B. Pitts can be reached at mpitts@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3559.