LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Five years after the Kentucky legislature passed a bill mandating student resource officers be assigned to each school in the state, progress continues to be made toward accomplishing that goal.

What You Need To Know

  • More than 67% of Kentucky schools have a student resource officer, according to a new report

  • Last year, only 57.12% had an SRO

  • A 2019 law mandated each school have an officer

  • The legislation was filed a year after a school shooting in Marshall County that killed two

Released in late August, the 2023-24 annual report by the Kentucky Office of the State School Security Marshal found that the number of schools with SROs increased by around 10% in the last year. 

Of the state's 1,325 schools, 67.75% now have an SRO, a mandated requirement in the 2019 School Safety and Resiliency Act. In 2023, 57.12% of schools had an SRO. 

The report also found nearly all schools have policies and procedures for active shooter situations, classroom doors are closed and locked during the day and classrooms can be locked from the outside but opened from the inside. It added 99.1% of schools were compliant with school safety and resiliency mandates.

This year, the legislature passed a bill allowing what it calls "guardians" to assist in protecting schools. The new law lets veterans and retired law enforcement officers carry firearms in schools but would not grant them the authority to arrest people. They would also be required to go through some SRO training. Districts are given the option to opt-in or out of this program.

The last school shooting to happen in Kentucky took place at Marshall County High School in Jan. 2018. Two students were killed and fourteen others were injured. The suspect in the case, a student at the school, was sentenced to life in prison.

That tragedy was cited as a reason state lawmakers pushed to mandate school resource officers in 2019. 

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