At one time or another, most boys have had a fight with another student in school, the back of the gym, or school yard.

That is something that happened to me more than once. I received a phone call from my son’s school when it happened to him…unfortunately, more than once. If my son were caught fighting in school today, it would not be the school office that would be calling but the police to tell me an arrest had been made.

According to a study by the University of Florida, there was a 40%-82% increase in arrests at schools since the implementation of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act in 2018 which mandates law enforcement to be assigned to all schools. That is an alarming increase in the state.

It is resulting in our children having criminal records instead of a school infraction.  Before this 2018 change, school authorities would handle tobacco use, behavioral problems, and other school misbehavior. Now, the first call is to the school resource officer who is a law enforcement employee.

How are our children safer in this environment? It is a well-known fact that kids do stupid things. They are impulsive, sometimes irrational, and often unthinking. School should be the place where they learn control, rational behavior, and to think before acting. Misbehavior that once would result in detention after school can now find the offender spending the night in juvenile hall.

Why have we decided our kids are criminals and they need to be arrested as young as kindergarten and often placed in restraints? The entire purpose of mandating armed law enforcement in schools was to prevent another Parkland. But are we instead instilling a mistrust of the police in students? According to the study mentioned above, one of their conclusions is that law enforcement’s presence did not make schools safer.

What we have done in schools are make them gated, impenetrable buildings and campuses. They more resemble minimum security prisons than places of learning. The only thing that has changed in Florida are the schools rather than the issues that gave us Parkland. Guns of all sort are still readily available. Mental Health programs are still woefully inadequate.

Schools should be places of intellectual and emotional growth within supportive environments where kids can learn behaviors that will make them better adults. They should not be places where armed guards patrol the halls.

Law enforcement should be kept at entrances to make sure that intruders do not enter the building. School staff should handle behavioral problems as they did before rather than having law enforcement fill the role of school disciplinarians. No child in elementary school should be handcuffed…this is child abuse. A fight between kids should result in punishment by the school district not the courts.

The criminalization of childhood is wrong. We are not keeping our children safe by locking them in as if they were inmates. Police should not be roaming the halls but guarding the perimeter.

If we are going to continue with this inane policy, then school resource officers need to be hired and supervised by the school districts rather than the sheriff’s departments. They should wear jackets and ties instead of uniforms with assault rifles. They need to be conflict resolution specialists and trained in mental health. They can be armed without being militarized.

Our children deserve to be kids. They should not be made to feel anxious that Big Brother is always looking. Schools are places of learning and nourishment not containment facilities.