Giving Compass' Take:

• Colleen Wright reports that the Broward County School Board voted to hire armed guards in order to comply with a new state law, but they added caveats to regulate the practice.

• Should states force districts to hire armed guards? Is this the most effective way to protect students? 

• Learn what RAND discovered through research on improving schools safety. 

Reluctantly going back on its decision to arm only sworn law enforcement officers with weapons, the Broward County School Board unanimously approved hiring armed, non-sworn guards to protect schools and to comply with a new state law.

Board members' votes came with two caveats: That the role of the "armed safe school officer," now officially created, perform no other duties except fend off active threats, and to prefer that candidates have four years of law enforcement or military experience in the past 10 years.

Board member Robin Bartleman, who suggested the former revision and backed the latter on preferring law enforcement experience, blamed the Legislature for putting boards in a predicament that doesn't allow enough time and funding to hire sworn school resource officers to staff schools.

The board's blessing gives the district the green light to start advertising to hire about 80 armed guards to be placed mostly in elementary schools. The district is also working on renewing its agreements with the Broward County Sheriff's Office and 16 municipal police departments, which footed much of the bill for staffing 166 school resource officers in mostly middle and high schools last school year, and expects to hire more school resource officers by the start of school Aug. 15. There are 234 traditional public schools in the district.

Read the full article about armed guards for schools by Colleen Wright at Governing Magazine.