This letter is in response to the article “Residents divided over armed school cops” in the July 12 issue of The News.
As noted in the article, the chances of a school shooting are incredibly small. The chances of armed police in the schools making any kind of difference in the event of an incident are smaller still.
In the middle schools in town, we are now at close to 30 students crammed in each classroom.
Each guidance counselor has a case load of hundred of students. If the district has money to spend on armed guards, the money would be much better spent to increase the number of counselors in the schools and decrease the class sizes.
Instead of having retired police officers act as “informal guidance counselors to students” as indicated in the article, perhaps we could hire formal guidance counselors who actually have a whole lot of training and experience to take on this role with this age group.
— Karen Clark, West Windsor
