John Hult/South Dakota Searchlight – Concerns about staffing, costs and local control combined Thursday morning to spell defeat for a bill that aimed to force schools to employ armed guards.
The 4-2 vote in the Senate Education Committee followed more than an hour of debate on Senate Bill 34, sponsored by Sen. Brent Hoffman, R-Hartford.
Hoffman’s proposal and his approach to crafting it were met with considerable gratitude by committee members and opponents, with each in turn noting the level of outreach and research he’d put behind it and thanking him for broaching the topic of school safety.
In the end, uncertainty on the bill’s practical application caused the committee to send it to the 41st day of the 38-day session. That effectively defeats a proposal unless a third of the Senate or House of Representatives vote to “smoke-out” the bill and retrieve it for debate.
After the hearing, Hoffman told South Dakota Searchlight he has no plans to push for such a revival this session.
“I respect the decision of the Education Committee,” Hoffman wrote in an email. “On behalf of concerned parents, I gave it my best effort to improve school safety statewide and will continue to pray for the safety of our kids.”
Sen. Tim Reed, R-Brookings, said just before moving to reject the bill that school safety “is something we should be talking about every year.”
Sponsor: Locks, armed guards can prevent tragedy
Locked doors and armed response staff are critical in the prevention of and response to mass shootings, Hoffman said, citing guidance from the National Association of School Resource Officers.
Not enough South Dakota schools follow that guidance, he said.
The bill’s sponsor told the committee he’d surveyed schools to find out how many have state-certified school resource officers from local law enforcement agencies or school sentinels, who are trained, armed employees without police credentials.
Without disclosing details on the schools themselves – he said he’d promised confidentiality to obtain the information – he said fewer than 25% of schools have an armed officer or sentinel.
“We can do better,” Hoffman said, citing a host of mass shootings in schools that have taken place across the country in 25 years since the now-notorious tragedy at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. “We must do better.”
The bill would have required locked doors and an on-site monitor during times that school doors are unlocked. It also would have required all school buildings to have armed staff, either in the form of a salaried sentinel or a sworn law enforcement officer, as well as created an anonymous tip line to report threats. Costs would have been shared by schools and local law enforcement.
Hoffman acknowledged that there are multiple ways to address school safety. He also said he knew that costs would be an issue, but that the topic is too important to do nothing.
“If you think there’s a perfect solution or bill, I’d like to see it and read it and give you some feedback on it,” Hoffman said. “But there isn’t.”
Amy Bruner, whose children attend school in Sioux Falls, testified virtually to support the bill. She told the committee she mourns for the mother of 11-year-old Ahmir Jolliff, shot to death in a Perry, Iowa, mass shooting seven days before the hearing.
“Without an armed protector in our schools, our students are vulnerable to attacks,” Bruner said.
Another Sioux Falls parent and the superintendent of the Oglala Lakota County School District also spoke in support.
Schools: Proposal unworkable
Lobbyists for multiple school associations lined up to oppose the bill.
Doug Wermedal of the Associated School Boards of South Dakota said the bill is “a genuine representation of the concern for student safety,” but questioned its practicality.
School doors open and close all day long, he said. Schools that install security cameras and hire officers when and where they can are still vulnerable to shooters who hide weapons or could miss threats while dealing with other issues, he said.
“The standard the bill calls for is almost omniscience, not vigilance,” Wermedal said.
He also talked about costs. If all schools needed school resource officers, he said, it could cost $18 million or more “at a minimum.” Training teachers or other staff to serve as sentinels would cost far less, he said, but that would still carry additional costs.
Those costs don’t factor in potential spikes in insurance premiums, which he said are higher for schools with armed staff on site.
“Underwriters in these other states have, in many cases, stopped writing any policy for schools where armed responses exist,” Wermedal said.
More than one opponent pointed to the difficulty of finding qualified school resource officers.
In Pierre, “they’ve been trying for two years to hire an SRO and can’t because that person is needed in law enforcement in the community,” said Diana Miller, a lobbyist for the large school group.
“If we can’t hire people, and we’re actively looking, how can we meet a mandate in state law?” Miller said.
As far as sentinels go, the opponents argued that most teachers would be unwilling to serve.
“A sentinel program places an educator in the position of being a caring, nurturing and stable presence in the lives of our students, while also being prepared to take the life of any of those students,” said Ryan Rolfs of the South Dakota Education Association.
The opponents also said it’s unworkable to set up a system whereby failure to staff a school with a sentinel or officer would force the doors to close.
“Schools have difficulty finding substitute teachers sometimes,” said Rob Monson, director of School Administrators of South Dakota.
Committee: Proposal needs work
In his rebuttal, Hoffman argued that the costs are minimal if they save lives. He then pointed to a host of projects that have cost the state more than $18 million – a figure he said was unsupported by thorough analysis.
“We spent $29 million on a livestock and equestrian center complex last year for the State Fair. We spent $13 million to dig in a couple of additional caverns in the Sanford Underground Research Facility. The Sioux Falls School District alone is receiving $1.5 million from the DOE this year to address absenteeism,” Hoffman said. “If school safety is the highest priority, shouldn’t it be funded accordingly?”
Sen. Tom Pischke, R-Dell Rapids, and Sen. Steve Kolbeck, R-Brandon, expressed concerns about costs, but said they were hesitant to vote down the bill without an official cost estimate. Pischke suggested the education committee send Hoffman’s bill to the Appropriations Committee without an official endorsement.
“We don’t have to say that we like or don’t like it,” Pischke said. “We can just say, ‘Hey, we need to have more information from a fiscal standpoint.’”
Pischke and Kolbeck were the only committee members to vote against Sen. Reed’s motion to send the bill to the 41st day.
Sen. Shawn Bordeaux, D-Mission, voted to defeat the bill, but described his position as a “soft no.” Bordeaux lost his wife and unborn child in a drive-by shooting in 1997.
“When gun stuff comes up, it kind of triggers a little bit of something within me,” Bordeaux said. “It puts me on a little more alert than the average person.”
A discussion with Hoffman the night before Thursday’s hearing, Bordeaux said, almost had him convinced to vote for the bill. Like Reed and the other three senators who voted to send the bill to the 41st day – Sioux Falls Democrat Liz Larson, Burbank Republican Sydney Davis and Scotland Republican Kyle Schoenfish – Bordeaux told Hoffman that the issue of school safety should be subject to vigorous and frequent debate.
Some ideas in the bill, they said, are worthy of consideration.
“What I really appreciate about it also was the exploration of evidence-based thinking, and especially around the school entryways and exits,” Larson said. “I find that that is very low hanging fruit that is both evidence-based and could be strengthened across our communities at almost no cost.”