Arkansas Times I Leslie Newell Peacock
Community activists with Grassroots Arkansas announced their opposition today to arming security guards in the Little Rock School District and made suggestions for alternative means of quelling violence.
In a note to the LRSD Community Advisory Board, which last month asked Superintendent Mike Poore to develop ways to enhance school security, including providing arms to guards, Grassroots said such a move would exacerbate “the root causes of school violence rather than fixing them. … It should be the goal of the LRSD to cultivate brains, not bullets.”
Instead, the note, also signed by Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, decARcerate, Arkansas Poor People’s Campaign, Our Communities Our Schools and #OurLRSD, asked the board to work to implement restorative justice; increase the number of counselors, mental health professionals and social workers to work with students; rewarding students for appropriate behavior; and take other measures.