Officer Edward Toves, a school resource officer in a school in Arizona, shown in a 2018 file photo. Maryland school board candidates largely support school resource officers, among other measures for dealing with school security. File photo by Faith Miller/Cronkite News
By Emily R. Condon and Colin McNamara
Local News Network
In Montgomery County, school board candidate Brenda M. Diaz worries that “knife-wielding vandals” have easy access to schools because the district removed the police officers that are on hand in the rest of Maryland’s public school districts to try to keep the peace.
Across the state on the Eastern Shore, school board candidate Karla Wieland-Cherry of Talbot County told the Local News Network in a candidate survey that teachers feel threatened by some of their students.
And in Howard County, school board candidate Andrea Chamblee – whose husband, John McNamara, was shot to death in the 2018 mass shooting at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis – said the threat of a school shooting is just one of the stressors looming over the county’s children.