LOUISVILLE, Ky. — There's a renewed effort underway in Frankfort to make Kentucky schools safer by getting armed security in each facility.
On Thursday, State Senator Max Wise (R-Campbellsville) filed Senate Bill 2, which in part would create the 'Kentucky Guardian' program to help assist school districts that have struggled to hire enough school resource officers (SROs).
SB 2 proposes allowing former military, federal agents, retired state troopers and other former law enforcement officers to be an added layer of protection in schools.
Wise believes expanding the field of candidates would help alleviate staffing problems.
"Maybe this helps fill the gap," Wise told WHAS11 on Friday. "Right now, we're facing a staffing issue, a workforce issue."
According to Kentucky law, every public K-12 school in the state is required to have a trained school resource officer on campus. The problem is many districts, including JCPS, have had trouble attracting enough applicants to fill the spots.
Wise helped get that law passed in 2019. He's penned this bill "School Safety 2.0."
These "guardians" would be armed employees working alongside existing SROs, but they wouldn't hold the authority to make arrests.
"Maybe the SRO is assigned at the high school or the middle school, but the elementary school doesn't have anybody there -- so this would allow that person to then step in," Wise said.
Wise said they would complete the first of three levels of state SRO training, which specifically teaches how to interact with students.
"How to deal with young people -- it would deal with awareness, it would deal with students with special needs," he said. "We narrowed it down to who they can be, [but] they still have to go through all the appropriate examinations."
The bill allows school districts to decide whether they need or want to make these hires. It doesn't provide any funding for them, but Wise says school districts can use dollars set aside for SROs in the state budget for this effort.
JCPS officials told WHAS11 Friday that as of the week of Feb. 11, they have 25 armed school security officers (SSOs) -- with the intention of hiring an additional 7 in the next few weeks.
That's a sizable increase from last fall, when JCPS' new police chief put the total at 14 SSOs in Oct. 2023.
At his State of the District on Feb. 20, JCPS Superintendent Dr. Marty Pollio said he believes his team "got it right" in their safety efforts, including the move to put unarmed safety administrators at every middle and high school.
"Our police officers are educators too, and they must be trained to be educators," he said.
If passed, Senate Bill 2 would create a school mapping data program for better communication and quicker responses in campus emergencies. It would also double down on trauma-informed care, increasing collaboration between school psychologists and security.
Wise told WHAS11 he's confident the bill will "travel very fast" through committee and see success on both the Senate and House floors.
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