ANNAPOLIS, Md. — In the wake of the mass shooting at a Florida high school last month, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said he wants each and every school in the state to be a safe place for kids.
Hogan said he wants to give schools $125 million to improve security, but he doesn’t want schools to feel like bunkers.
“I don’t like the term ‘hardening’ the schools because that seems like a military term,” Hogan said.
Hogan said the $125 million he would funnel toward securing school facilities would go for things, such as electronic access and more secure entry points.
“We don’t want to turn our schools into places that feel like scary places to go,” he added.
He said that an additional $50 million could be issued as grants to fund things like mental health counseling.
“A lot of schools don’t have the capacity for that,” he said. “When kids are troubled or having issues, we want to help catch that early.”
Funding could also be used for security in the form of paid positions for school resource officers.
Hogan said the state would not try to wrest local control from school districts — some of which have memorandums of understanding with local police departments to provide school resource officers.
Hogan said he was alarmed by a report in The Baltimore Sun that found varying levels of security at 18 schools in the Baltimore area.
“Right now some of our schools are very safe,” Hogan said, but was worried that in some schools “anyone can walk in any door anytime they want.”
Hogan said the money for assessing how security practices are carried out would be corrective, not punitive.
“We’re going to try to set some basic standards and provide the funding to help them accomplish what they need to do,” Hogan said. “We’re not going to try to take away their authority.”
