Cutting SRO positions is a bad idea
Bee Editorial
Remember when two gunmen paraded into Columbine High School and killed 13 students and faculty members and injured 21 others? Remember the shock and devastation the rest of the world felt watching images of children fleeing from what should be a safety zone - their school - as those gunmen randomly opened fire on anyone who crossed their paths?

It's that terror, which can happen even in our most sacred of sites, that reminds us of why schools and police departments around the country began to team up and assign on-duty officers to school grounds. Those men and women, who patrol the buildings inside and out, lend their ears as counselors and confidants to teenagers and work as investigators, are called school resource officers.

They are the very positions Gov. Eliot Spitzer has proposed be cut from his executive budget for 2009.

A meeting was held on the safety of public schools Feb. 7 at Iroquois High School, at which state Sen. Dale Volker addressed the audience of local government and school officials to express his concerns over Spitzer's proposal. He said the idea of having a police officer on a regular basis was unheard of before Columbine. Now, the idea is very common and very accepted. Volker said that having an SRO is "critically important" and that if the position is eliminated by Spitzer's proposal, the rate of crime in schools could skyrocket.

We agree with Volker. The idea of taking away such a valuable school and community resource is unconscionable. We live in a post-Columbine world. Sad as that may seem, we'd rather pay up by whatever means necessary to keep on-duty officers in our schools.

During his congressional delegation meeting this past week," Spitzer criticized President Bush for having "misplaced priorities." Spitzer said his priority is making New York the best place in the world to live, work, and raise a family. If you want to keep your figurative children safe, Gov. Spitzer, that might mean shelling out the money to protect schools.

Just as we need to keep our colleges and universities safeguarded against terrorism, we need to keep our early learning centers free from dangerous situations and people, too.

We realize that school resource officers are not a perfect solution to the ever-increasing dangers in our schools, and that one lone police officer cannot deter those most determined to do harm. However, what kind of message are we sending our children if we take away their sense of security or, in some cases, their sounding post? Are we telling them there is a price for their lives?

Reconsider your priorities, governor, before a New York school goes down in history for something terrible.