As students are going back to school, administrators are faced with the difficult choice: how to make sure the classrooms are safe.
Which approach is the best way to handle school safety: creating additional security measures or addressing safety issues through the mental health system? According to a new poll from Virginia Commonwealth University, opinions are divided along regional lines and partisan lines. Respondents in Tidewater and Southwest are more likely to favor more security while people in Northern Virginia and south-central are more likely to favor increased mental-health intervention.
Grant Rissler is at the Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs.
“In the western region with a lot greater distances and often an undersupply of medical professionals in rural areas, that may not seem as feasible to people."
Republicans are more likely to favor increased security while Democrats are more likely to favor the mental health approach, although Rissler says the differences here are not as great as some of the other polling the Wilder School has done.
“When we asked whether people agreed with school resource officers, whether they should carry a visible firearm, the partisan gap there was much broader than it is here.”
Overall, he says, the latest poll has seen a significant shift. The number of people who want to see additional security has dropped 15 points in the last two years. And the number of people who say the issue should be addressed through the mental health system — or a combination of the two — has increased nine points.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
