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School safety measures an unfortunate, but necessary step

Schools are supposed to be welcoming, comforting places, a home away from home for our students who spend many of their waking hours in classrooms, our teachers who spend the better part of their day teaching, and parents who bring their kids to and from school and volunteer with school activities.

It can’t be that way, anymore.

Now, as News staff writer Julie Riddle reported recently, schools have to be hardened, near-fortresses where visitors have to get buzzed in to interact with their schools.

It’s an unfortunate necessity in the times in which we live, in which school shootings have become all too common.

The state needs to step in and help.

Many schools have hardened their buildings through bond sales or property tax increases, but some schools haven’t been able to do everything they want or need to do, in some places because ballot proposals didn’t pass.

We call on state leaders to develop a program to help harden schools, to install secured entrances and to fund school resource officers.

Our schools have to become less welcoming to keep out the people we don’t want in those buildings.

And no school should be denied that opportunity.

The state, which is sitting on billions in additional revenue, needs to look at the ways it can help schools secure their buildings to protect our kids.

— Alpena News

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