WASHINGTON, D.C. – The National Rifle Association is applauding the Obama administration for finally allocating money to put hundreds of police officers in public schools in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings and other school tragedies around the nation.

But one school safety expert is less than impressed.

Ken Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, has worked as a safety and security consultant with schools nationwide for 30 years. He provides security assessments and training in school safety and emergency preparedness, violence prevention training, and media training for PreK-12 schools.

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He says the $45 million the U.S. Department of Justice announced for creating 356 new school resource positions is “just a drop in the bucket” for what is needed for school security. He notes there are thousands of public schools throughout the country and the money is insufficient to help all of them.

Attorney General Eric Holder says $150,000 of that will be for police officers in Newtown, Conn. where the shootings last year killed 26 people. A police presence has been in those schools since then and Holder says an additional $2.5 million will go to help the city pay for police overtime, forensic work, and security costs incurred.

Trump says the Obama Administration is “playing catch-up on a term of neglect” on school security, policing, and emergency preparedness. And he says it’s not just the Obama administration. He says Congress also had a part in eliminating all school safety grants; school emergency planning grants; the Safe School-Healthy Students program, which provided mental health support; and security equipment grants.

All were eliminated before the Sandy Hook tragedy. At the same time, he reports that special-interest political groups have pressured the schools themselves to minimize or eliminate the roles of officers in schools.

“The good news is that the Obama administration has finally put some resources—although in the big picture it’s a relatively small amount—into school-based security and policing,” he says. “The bad news is that they eliminated all of the security emergency planning and prevention programs for school safety in the first place.”

Armed professionals are worth the money

Armed and trained school officers are a very good idea, Trump says, despite the opposition of some educators and teachers unions, who want to keep schools completely weapon-free.

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The steady stream of tragic news out of our nation’s schools support that claim.

Since Sandy Hook there have been a least 39 school shootings in middle schools, high schools, colleges, and universities in 23 different states, according to the Mayors Against Illegal Guns website. Eleven of those have been reported during the current academic year.

Even more striking is the fact that none of this is new. The rate of school shootings in the U.S. has remained statistically unchanged since the mid- to late-1990s. Ronald Stephens of the National School Safety Center reports there have been 500 school-associated violent deaths in the past 20 years.

A Pew survey released last January, not long after Sandy Hook, showed by about a 2-to-1 margin Americans support armed guards in schools.  Not surprisingly, 73 percent of Republicans were in favor. And somewhat surprisingly, 62 percent of Democrats also supported the idea. Independents were less enthusiastic with 59 percent in favor. Just 32 percent of everyone polled were opposed.

Trump says the presence of School Resource Officers (SROs) inside the hallways is not a “cuff-‘em-and-stuff-‘em” type program which many people think it is. He says it’s a proactive, preventative tactic. It not only deters crime, he says, but officers build relationships with kids. They also help schools prepare for a crisis and most of all help prevent crisis situations.

Trump says the alternative, budget-conscious proposal – training and arming school administrators and teachers – is a bad idea.

“It’s very narrow thinking if you think of [arming school personnel] as taking a day or two of classes to learn how to shoot a gun,” he said.

Trump emphatically states the only armed presence inside a school should be professionally trained school resource officers or police officers.

“… they have extensive training far beyond the training they get on shooting and holstering a gun that makes a public safety officer more skilled to perform a public safety role in a school with children,”  Trump said.

“A police officer has hundreds of hours of training in the law that involves psychology, use of force, engaging individuals, and de-escalating situations.”

School security may have to become a local funding priority

While the rate of school shootings has changed little since Sandy Hook, the presence of SROs can mitigate such tragedies. Executive Director Mo Canady of the National Association of School Resource Officers says one such officer helped avert further bloodshed at Arapahoe High School in the Denver suburb of Centennial on December 13.

That was the day Karl Pierson shot and mortally wounded 17-year-old Claire Davis before taking his own life. Canady says the actions of security resource officer Cameron Rust kept Pierson from moving on to hurt others.

If the desire or need to have an armed presence in the school is strong enough, then that has to be included in the yearly budget, even if that means subjugating or eliminating other needs and desires.

Schools that wait around for financial assistance from the federal government may be wasting their time and tempting fate. Trump says the latest funding offered by the Obama administration is nothing but a marginal effort.

The recently passed congressional budget, which funds the government through September 2014, provides $140 million dollars to support safe school environments, a $29 million increase. But, again, Trump is unimpressed.

He says, “Congress is touting an increase in school safety funding that will barely be felt on the frontlines of school safety … to imply that the $29 million increase in funding will do something is grossly misleading.”

Initial reports say a good portion of the money is going for researching new technology, according to Trump. He believes Beltway firms that are politically connected will be the main beneficiaries. He says school administrators and principals will see very little in new funding.

In the meantime, America’s students remain at risk.