November 27, 2009
Friday

This is so obvious it is hard to imagine that anyone cannot see the value of a SRO (school resource officer) assigned to Ketchikan High School! Especially when that officer is well disposed to forming a trust relationship with, and really cares about working with, our youth to make our schools safe.

I am not going to repeat the many, many, diverse stories I have heard about how our youth are in risk here. (Call me if you want to hear some of them. I am in the phone book.) That is not the point. The point is not to level blame on the schools or assign all the responsibility to them to reduce this risk.

When I first starting traveling up here and was getting to know the community's youth, about 15 years ago, a high school student told me he could point out 11 or 12 student drug dealers in the school. Another one told me about the number of students who were homeless. Guess what, we still have these situations today.

The safety of our students is a community problem and we need to work together to fix it. One of the fixes is to provide a police presence that kids can count on. Thank you Mayor Kiffer, for talking about a GOOD use of a "bully" to get our governments to make school safety a priority in their budgeting process. (I am referring to the Mayor's quote in Tuesday's paper [Ketchikan Daily News] where he inquired if the City Council and the School Board needed a school bully to "bang their heads together" until they came up with an agreement about assigning a KPD officer to the schools.) It's a no brainer.

Bobbie McCreary
Ketchikan, AK

Received November 26, 2009 - Published November 27, 2009

Viewpoints - Opinion Letters:

Webmail Your Opinion Letter to the Editor

SitNews ©2009
Stories In The News
Ketchikan, Alaska