House defeats resource officer rural schools

 The North Dakota house defeated a bill to place school resource officers in rural schools. The measure, sought over a million dollars for a pilot program to place armed school resource officers in 15 rural school districts.

Representative Randy Boehning of Fargo, a member of the appropriations committee that studied the bill and gave it a “do not” pass recommendation. He said it was too expensive and there are less costly alternatives:

The bill’s sponsor, representative Dwight Kiefert of Valley City said the bill was aimed at rural schools where response time from law enforcement officers could be 30 minutes or more.