BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) — The Louisiana Department of Education will invest $21 million to make school campuses safer around the state. However, some teachers believe the threat is not outside the school but inside.
“If we can have single points of entry, it’s going to be really helpful for the student and employee safety,” claimed Cade Brumley, Superintendent of the Louisiana Department of Education. “The Louisiana Department of Education will invest $21 million to upgrade school safety at 42 schools across the state. Working on locks that could be minor reconstruction. That could be surveillance cameras. That could be metal detectors.”
According to Brumley, schools will have to apply for the grant.
“At around $500,000 apiece. And so we know that there will probably be more needs than our funds allow, but we definitely believe by doing this, our schools will be safer,” he expressed.
Director of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers, Cynthia Posey, believes the threat is not outside the school but instead inside.
“We applaud any measure to make our schools safe, but I think that not only do we have to look at what might come into the schools, but we really need to take a hard look at what is actually happening in our schools to make them unsafe,” she explained.
After a huge brawl broke out at EBR Readiness High School, and in a separate incident, an officer was stabbed on school grounds, teachers are feeling unsafe based on a survey.
“Over half of respondents said that student-on-student violence is a problem. Roughly half said that faculty and staff are victims of student violence,” Posey emphasized.
This week school leaders received information about the applications. For schools that get the grant, all security upgrades are expected to be completed by the fall.
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