Saturday, February 23, 2008

School districts worry about safety budget cuts following recent Shootings

FRANKFORT, Ky. -- After five school shootings across the country in the past two weeks, Kentucky officials are grimacing at the prospect of a 58 percent cut in funding for school safety in the governor's proposed two-year budget.

"I don't want to play Chicken Little," said Jon Akers, director of the Kentucky Center for School Safety. "But … if we start pulling back our services in how we work with kids, we might be having some more problems here."

Gov. Steve Beshear's budget calls for $4.3 million for the safe-schools program each year, down from $10.4 million this year.

Akers said the cut in Beshear's proposed budget would virtually undo the work done by the center, which was established by the General Assembly in 1998 after a 14-year-old killed three students and injured five others at Heath High School in Paducah....

This fronm C-J.

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