On March 30, the Legislative Council voted to reject an earlier recommendation by its Municipal Operations Subcommittee to reduce a budget allocation for salaries and benefits for two school security officers (SSOs), cutting back the Sandy Hook Elementary School and Newtown High School security to just one armed SSO at each school.

Parents and educators spoke up at the March 23 Legislative Council meeting, resisting this security cutback and asking the council not to reduce SSO presence at the two schools, at least through the next school year. As a security measure, every Newtown public school for the past three years has had an armed SSO in place, with the high school and Sandy Hook Elementary School having two SSOs assigned to those facilities.

According to Every Town For Gun Safety, there have been 173 school shootings in the United States since 2013, an average of one school shooting a week. It is a sobering number, and does not include the number of guns brought into schools but never fired there. A 2015 study by Louis-Philippe Beland of Louisiana State University and Dongwoo Kim of the University of Missouri, "The Effect Of High School Shootings On Schools And Student Performance," finds that homicidal shootings in high schools have a detrimental effect on student performance and test scores, in the aftermath. It is not much of a jump to assume that if high school students' studies are disrupted by violence, that more impressionable younger students suffer the same or worse impediments. So, there are two key security objectives for our school district: physical security and psychological security.

The Newtown School System was awarded grants from the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Homeland Security and Public Protection to enhance security at the schools, which have ended or will end this year. According to Newtown Schools Superintendent Joseph V. Erardi, Jr, in February, a DOJ Consequence Grant used for school security has been wisely spent to "put ourselves in a position that offers optimal safety for students, staff, and the community."

Huge sums of money are spent each year by the town on seeing that our town is physically safer. Subtracting from the mental well-being of a large segment of its population would have been a step backward in the healing process for those greatly impacted by the tragedy of 12/14. While some might question how much protection a minimum number of armed and trained officers on the school grounds offers, or even the wisdom of armed guards in schools, those placements have given many parents, staff, and students a sense of security that itself has value.

Whether a psychological support or a statistically proven defense against a repeat tragedy in Newtown, council members' decision to support the school system's commitment to an environment of "optimal safety" deserves community support.