Centennial State News

Colorado Republican gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl recently stressed the importance of keeping students safe and her disapproval of eliminating police officers from school grounds.

“There are so many good-intentioned people working on this issue, and for that I am so grateful,” Ganahl wrote in a May 28 opinion piece for Campfire Colorado. “But before we can cure the illness, we must diagnose the disease. In the meantime, we should not allow the Democrat leadership to remove school resource officers from schools when they are needed more than ever. And we should not let them pass legislation that makes it hard for administrators and teachers to deal with discipline in schools as they have tried to do.”

Ganahl, who was appointed to serve on former Governor Hickenlooper's Committee on School Safety and Youth in Crisis in 2015, created a School Safety 360 Pilot Plan outlining how to assess and improve the level of safety in Colorado's schools. The plan's “School Safety Profile” involves a three-day process in which officials evaluate whether the school is aligned with certain safety recommendations put forward by law-enforcement bodies. The School Safety Profile produces an overall "safety score" for each school and identifies areas in which schools can make improvements.

Denver Public Schools (DPS) removed all safety resource officers (SROs) from its schools in 2020, citing the belief that "the close proximity of law enforcement to students on campuses directly contributes to the school-to-prison pipeline," according to its website. The website said that non-white students who are arrested for infractions in school are more likely to end up in the "criminal system" as adults.

Boulder Valley Public Schools removed its police officers as well, but officials from Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) said they were not considering following suit, Colorado Newsline reported. JCPS has approximately 40 SROs in its schools. “In JeffCo the conversation has been just great appreciation for what they offer and provide,” John McDonald, JCPS executive director of school safety, said. “Our principals and our school teams have very, very strong relationships with the SROs. The kids have incredibly strong, powerful relationships with the SROs.”

There have been 28 school shootings with 79 total victims in Colorado since 1970, according to KDVR, citing data from a Naval Postgraduate School study.

The most recent school shooting in Colorado took place in May 2019 at the STEM School Highlands Ranch, just south of Denver, NBC News reported. The attack was carried out by two students, ages 16 and 18, who allegedly planned the shooting for weeks. Their attack left 18-year-old Kendrick Castillo dead. Castillo was remembered a hero for trying to stop the shooting.

Ganahl defeated Greg Lopez in the Republican primary in June and will face off against incumbent Democratic Governor Jared Polis in the November general election, according to Ballotpedia.