[Brian Pfleuger]

As much as I'd love to have real, badged, ready police officers at every school in America, the finances are simply and completely unrealistic.

It's a nonsense proposition. There's positively no way it could be done. The first two questions to ask are, is it a good idea and, if it is, can we afford to do it? If the answer to #2 is no, it doesn't matter if #1 is the best idea ever.

The small town (village) where I went to school has barely 400 kids K-12, in two buildings. The town has NO police force. They "borrow" state police officers to patrol the town. The state-wide average salary for all ranks of New York State Police is (a staggering) $112,000.

Imagine if we assign the newest, greenest, lowest paid officers who might make half that figure, at $60,000. You'd need two, every day. Two every day means, realistically, four, to cover vacations and sick time and what-not.

That means a cost of $240,000 a year, conservatively. The entire school budget is about $4,000,000. That would means a 12.5% increase in school taxes.

That, and it's assuming that there are actually enough officers on the force to do it, which there aren't. That means hiring thousands of new officers, and training them, a cost of 10s of millions more.

That, in a state that already is broke and already has some of the highest taxes and highest unemployment (particularly of lower-educated people) in the country.

Now, add all this to an event, that while horrific beyond imagination, kills about 15 kids a year, average. There are 52.8 million children aged 5-17 in America. That means that the odds are 0.00002840909% that any given child will be a victim. Yes, 28 millionths of one percent.

There are an average of 600 kids killed every year in "other than bus" school vehicle accidents. Where would the money be better spent? You'd save far more lives and money by buying and running enough buses that no kid was ever transported without one.