As the new school year is well underway, more and more school resource officers are serving and protecting Kentucky students and educators.

Expanding school resource officers, or SROs, was one goal of the School Safety and Resiliency Act, passed by the Kentucky General Assembly in 2019.

State Senator and Majority Leader Max wise sponsored that legislation and sat down with our Emily Prince to discuss the state of school safety in the Commonwealth.

Here's more from our capital studio in Frankfort.

So I want to give our viewers some background just so to make sure that we're all on the same page here.

So back in 2018, student at Marshall County High School opened fire in the school building, killing two students and injuring more than a dozen others.

And that really did seem to be the catalyst for that legislation that came about in 2019.

So give us a refresher there.

What were some, maybe some lessons that we learned from the Marshall County shooting?

That kind of played out.

And we saw these in the 2019 reforms.

That's a great question.

And I think we also we need to even peer back a little bit further than that, 1998, when we established the Kentucky Center for School Safety.

And so just so viewers know, a little bit of broader history, too, of how far back we have looked at this issue.

And then Senator Mike Wilson in 2013 also passed a piece of legislation that focused on drills and the types of training and things like that that happen in schools.

But you're exactly right.

2018 the tragedy that occurred in Marshall County High School for the for the Holton Culp families down there.

And then what we were able to do is not have a knee jerk reaction.

In 2018, the speaker and the president of the Senate both came together and reformed a task force that would study school safety.

We traveled all corners of the state from 2018 through 2019, when we gavel back into session of making sure we were listening.

And that's sometimes the role of a legislator.

Many times it's act, act, act.

But it needs to be listen, listen, listen.

We wanted to make sure we had a state school safety marshal of someone that was overseeing all this.

You got the center for School Safety, but the school safety marshal was going to be overseeing the SROs, the school resource officers.

We wanted to make sure there was a mental health component with that.

Also, we listened to our mental health service providers, but one of the biggest things was increasing school resource officers.

We've increased since 2013, 240 to about 947 school resource officers.

That's 290%.

That's quadrupling the number of SROs.

We're making sure now that every school system that they've got, the resources provided, every campus can have a school resource officer and even those that do not.

We made sure the financial investment was done just last year in the 2026 biennial budget, to increase that to $46 million to $20,000 per SRO for.

Folks who might not be familiar.

Because for some of our viewers who are watching, they say, well, maybe we didn't even have those at all when they were in school.

What is the role of an SRO, and how is it different from, like we said, maybe a guidance counselor or even a principal for discipline?

SROs are not just there to be.

Police officers are in schools.

They're also there to provide mentorship.

Now is the job of the road to be that level of protection?

Absolutely.

They're armed.

They're carrying a firearm in the school.

They're working as of maybe a deputy sheriff, the former Kentucky state police officer, a trooper.

They may be a city police officer.

Or a school district may form their own police department.

And they're hired from within that school district.

But the training they go through is extensive.

I mean, they're going through multiple weeks of training that's been done by Department of Criminal Justice Training in Richmond.

We're making sure that they know about student behavior, that they know about bias.

They know about situations of what can occur in schools.

They know about cyber bullying.

But I tell you what, I was in Adair County schools just yesterday, the SRO to near county middle schools.

Joshua Brockman, the former sheriff of Adair County.

Josh is a young guy.

Yesterday when I walked the hallways meeting with the superintendent of Adair County.

Josh comes down the hall and he's high five and students, and he is loved in that community.

I wanted to ask you a little bit more specifically about the funding.

So like you said, the General Assembly provided $46 million for fiscal year 27 and 28, specifically for school resource officers.

You mentioned 20,000 for each officer.

Can you tell me more about how that money is being distributed?

So is it going to existing officers?

Right.

So previously and what the governor wanted was $20,000 per qualifying campus.

Well, we thought it'd be better if the school districts had some flexibility because they can pick and choose what maybe school campus building needs more protection.

We made sure that that $20,000 is per full time certified SRO.

And one of the thing that's different and we different with this with the governor, we thought nonpublic schools should also be able to dip into this as well for SROs.

Listen, children or children?

I don't look at a child just goes to a parochial school or a private school or whatever it may be.

We're making a commitment with the financial commitment that this is for protecting children, teachers, staff at all Kentucky schools.

So are there some nonpublic schools right now who are?

I would have to get the data from the center for School Safety, as well as our state security marshall, to make sure.

But there are trainings now that are being conducted.

I know that there's Owensboro Catholic schools have conducted with the SROs in Owensboro and Davis County, because we need to have a regional approach on this.

We need to make sure that those schools are doing that.

Let me ask you one more thing about SROs.

Is there any particular region of the state or any school district that you think maybe they've particularly had trouble in recruiting an SRO that you would like to see?

One the.

One area that we really had to push and nudge along with Jefferson County Public Schools, they were hesitant and their school board was hesitant.

They wanted to have our SROs that would be in a neighborhood vicinity or in a parking lot and not within the school building.

I've got a problem with that.

And we had a problem with that as the legislature.

If we're going to have SRO are going to be within the school walls, they're going to be on the campus and not a half a mile away or in a neighborhood patrol.

They also didn't want an armed SRO in their schools as well.

We had to pass legislation.

We've had to do this a lot for Jefferson County schools in terms of trying to drag them along, but this was one in particular.

We're going to say there is no difference between a county school and independent school, a rural school, suburban school, or an urban school.

You're going to follow the intent of the law.

And they've worked and they've done a much better job of where they are today than where they were years ago.

If I can throw one more follow up at you, based on what you were just saying, how can we measure the effectiveness of the school resource officers?

Well, I think you got to look at overall, you know, what's what's the climate of the schools.

I think if you do surveys and you can ask everybody within the school, how's the SRO performing in your school district?

I think you'd be able to get some really good responses back.

I've got a snapshot of one district, but I think you could look across the board at other things we're doing, you know, are we going to be 100% full safe from preventing any attack?

I don't think anyone can ever say we're always going to be 100%, because we know if there's an intent there, we know that we may have every layer of protection lined up with something could fall within the cracks of something.

Something could happen in the parking lot outside of the school.

But I will say this the SROs are the ones that are truly putting themselves every day to better protect kids and protect the students and staff.

And I think the relationship building that's going on is even more important also than just being a protector.

As you could tell, I'm passionate about this, but this is something that I'm so proud of, what we've done as a legislative body.

Well thank you.

Absolutely.

And certainly want to see our students and our educators be safe.

So thank you so much, Senator Walz, for sitting down with us.

So thank you for the questions today.

Senator wise said nearly all of Kentucky's public schools are in compliance with safety mandates.

That's based on the latest data from the Kentucky Center for School Safety.