What Next - Why There’s a Cop at Your Kid’s School
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3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 21 June 2023
⏱️ 21 minutes
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Summary
It’s been one year since the Uvalde school shooting – and while Texas hasn’t passed any gun control legislation, it has passed a measure aimed at “hardening schools.” Last week, Governor Greg Abbott signed HB-3 into law, requiring every public school to have an armed officer on campus. The legislation comes even as a former sheriff’s deputy is on trial in Florida for failing to protect students when a gunman opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018.
Do school safety officers stop school shootings? And if they don’t – what do they do instead?
Guest: Anya Kamenetz, education reporter and author of "The Stolen Year: How Covid Changed Children’s Lives, And Where We Go Now."
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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme and Rob Gunther.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This episode is brought to you by Nike. |
| 0:04.2 | It's packed to school season, and you and your child might be feeling a bit anxious. |
| 0:09.0 | As a parent, you're the best team mate for your mini-me, and together you can use sport |
| 0:13.2 | to help overcome anxiety. |
| 0:15.6 | Try something new as a family and celebrate even the little wins you achieve on the journey. |
| 0:19.9 | Create long-lasting memories that will take your kids from class to court and beyond. |
| 0:25.5 | Go to Nike.com, forward slash kids to get school ready. |
| 0:30.0 | If you walk into any public school in New York City, even an elementary school, you'll |
| 0:40.8 | be greeted the same way, not by the principal, not by a teacher, it's so funny, right, |
| 0:47.0 | because it's going to be a police officer. |
| 0:53.2 | Anya Kaminits is an education reporter. |
| 0:56.0 | She lives in Brooklyn, just like me. |
| 0:58.8 | I remember when I first sent my kids to school in New York City, I was kind of shocked |
| 1:04.1 | that there was a police presence inside them, and that the police presence was so evident, |
| 1:08.0 | like the second you got in. |
| 1:10.4 | And I sort of assumed it was a city thing. |
| 1:12.4 | Yeah, but that's actually not true. |
| 1:14.1 | It is really common, and it's very much a product of the sort of like the age of Columbine. |
| 1:20.5 | I called Anya up because I wanted to talk about this police presence. |
| 1:25.0 | Thousands of thousands of schools now have what they call student resource officers, which |
| 1:29.4 | is a nice way of saying police officers who work in schools. |
| 1:33.9 | Many of them carry guns, and after every school shooting, the clamor for more of these officers |
... |
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