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Dear Friends,
Happy first week of school! I hope everyone had a great week getting back into the classroom and the routines the new school year brings. Personally, it has been great to have my youngest join me at the middle school this year!
I wanted to send a quick update regarding the student resource officer (SRO) issue that you may be hearing about in the news. Below are a few important details about this issue:
- Last session, Democrats passed expansive changes to student discipline in their education omnibus bill. Part of these changes were around ?prone restraints and certain physical holds.?
- ?Prone restraints? have not been used in schools for years, so this part of the bill did not raise a concern for me at the time. Keep in mind, school staff do not want to touch, much less restrain, children.
- As a building principal, I have extensive training in researched based practices to establish and maintain a safe learning environment for students and staff.?The concerns raised by myself and educational colleagues around these discipline provisions were disregarded by House Democrats and they chose to listen to advocates.
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This provision relating to SRO?s was never brought to the public safety committee in the House.?If the provision had been brought to the Public Safety Committee, this issue could have been avoided by working together back in February.?
Simply put, law enforcement was unable to provide input in the House. Across the state and here in Scott County, there are different interpretations of language.?As a result of this change, local police, sheriff?s offices, and their legal counsels have advised their members to consider not working as an SRO. Several law enforcement agencies from across the state announced that their officers will not be working as SROs because of this ambiguous new language. This includes the City of Prior Lake which voted this week to remove their SROs.
Last week, House and Senate Republicans held a press conference calling on Governor Walz to bring the legislature back for a special session to fix this issue. Indeed, the calls are getting louder for a special session. Even the Star Tribune Editorial Board agrees that something needs to be done to clarify the SRO language and keep our students safe. They ran two editorials, which you can read?here?and here, calling for the Governor to act. By the weekend, the Governor was seemingly agreeing that Republicans ?may be right? on this issue.
It is disappointing, however, that some Democrats do not want to see this law changed. Several House and Senate Democrat members released a statement?against a special session. Their extreme, anti-law enforcement agenda cannot get in the way of the safety of our students and teachers. This issue is highlighting why balance in our state government is so important. When one party is in control, even issues that have bipartisan support can become difficult to fix.
As a parent and an educator, I know the important role our SROs play at school. I will continue advocating for a special session so we can keep our students and teachers safe. You can learn more about this issue by clicking my photo below.
Finally, it was great to attend the Celebration of Funding Completion for the US169/TH 282 interchange on Wednesday in Jordan. This project is decades in the making, and I am so glad that we finally have the funding necessary to complete this project that is so critical to our community and region. You can watch my speech from the event here.
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