ST. PAUL – The Minnesota House on Monday approved a bill which aims to improve school safety after a change in law caused school resource officers to be removed from schools throughout the state.
Rep. Walter Hudson, R-Albertville, indicated Wright County kept SROs staffed in schools, but Sheriff Sean Deringer has publicly stated he would not be able to sustain them without a fix.
“We could have fixed this in August, before school started, and it never should have been a problem in the first place,” Hudson said. “The governor and House Speaker Hortman needed us to get this done yet didn't include the minority in interim discussions with stakeholders because they didn't want the solution to be bipartisan. This outcome was not their first choice, not what they really wanted, as they delayed taking responsibly while instead playing politics.”
The issue traces back to an omnibus education bill (HF 2497) Democrats enacted into law in 2023, imposing new prohibitions on the use of force in schools, banning certain physical holds by “an employee or agent of a district, including a school resource officer, security personnel, or police officer contracted with a district."
Language in the new measure provides updates which exclude SROs as employees or agents of a school district, exclude SROs from the prohibitions on prone restraints and physical holds; revise the “reasonable force standard” and mandate school districts and charter schools use only trained SROs and establishes new training and model policy requirements for law enforcement.
The House approved the bill 124-8 and it now awaits action in the Senate.
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