Police in our schools...

There is no doubt in my mind that the urban school districts in our state (MPS, RUSD, Beloit, etc) have a growing problem with violence – but is Racine Unified as bad off as MPS? It was recently reported that the Milwaukee Police Department was called over 11,000 times in the last school year. I know that a similar request to the Racine Police Department and Mt. Pleasant Police Department would not yield the same kind of numbers, even prorated to the smaller population of our community.

But does this mean our schools are safer, or even less violent? No, it means simply the schools are not calling for police to be sent to our schools because the police ARE ALREADY THERE!

Some people do not know this, but JI Case has a full-time police liaison in the school and there are also several off-duty police officers at the school each and every day. These off-duty officers report to Al Days, Unified’s director of Safety and Security. Al Days recently asked the board for increased funding;off-duty police officers don’t come cheap but they are desperately needed. At the recent study session where long-range budget predictions were presented, an extra $200,000 a year was set aside for this program. Let’s make sure that this line item stays in the budget, or RUSD (like MPS!!) will be soon making similar headlines in the paper.