There are on the order of 100,000 public schools in the country.
https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84
A police officer makes an average of $60,000/year.
https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/patrol-officer/salary
That doesn’t include the cost to his or her employer for health and life insurance, training (an ongoing expense), vacation, whatever support personnel are required (dispatchers, therapists, car mechanics, etc.). I think a 25% bump to salary is a very conservative estimate of total cost to police departments for each police officer.
100,000 ✕ 75,000 = $7,500,000,000
$7.5 billion.
Take North Carolina.
2500 schools.
https://ballotpedia.org/Public_education_in_North_Carolina
Using the same conservatively-estimated cost figure for police, that’s a total of $187,500,000.
$187 million dollars, just for North Carolina.
Total education budge for the state of NC is around $9 billion.
Assuming that budget goes 100% to teachers (it doesn’t; there are also building payments and maintenance, utilities, school supplies, etc.), that’s enough to give every teacher a 2% raise.
West Virginia just finished a statewide wildcat teachers’ strike over a 5% raise.
Not having a cop in every school gets us almost halfway to giving teachers in NC a 5% raise.
The problem is guns, not how to turn schools into fortresses.
Here’s an article:
Source: My daughter survived Parkland school shooting. Yes, I own a gun, but let’s get real. | Miami Herald
I was mortified when I read my comments the next day online. I didn’t recognize the person in that article. Seventeen dead, and I’m concerned about firearm confiscation?
I realized I was regurgitating a right-wing cable-news talking point I heard a few nights earlier.
….
Politicians have been known to ignore articulate, passionate high school students and they do this at their peril. However, they can’t ignore balding, slightly overweight, middle-aged men, because we vote in large numbers.
Previous administrations have tried, and failed, to muster bipartisan support for reasonable gun regulations, even after such tragedies as Sandy Hook. A few gun control bills were drafted but never passed. I’m reminded of a famous Thomas Edison quote, “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”
We must continue to try for the sake of the young lives that will perish at the hands of the next school shooter. He may be already planning the attack in your sleepy “safe” enclave.
Remember, Parkland is an upper-middle-class community known for its excellent schools, low crime rate and perfectly manicured landscaping.
Here, Read This 