Sponsors (2)
The bill increases and professionalizes school-based policing by prioritizing veterans for grant-funded SRO roles and requiring training, screenings, and student engagement—improving staffing and officer readiness but shifting resources toward policing with costs, privacy concerns, and risks of student criminalization and reduced support for non‑policing interventions.
Students and schools gain more funded school resource officers (SROs) because federal COPS grants and VA coordination prioritize hiring veterans and retired officers, increasing on-campus security staffing.
SROs receive regular professional supports (annual mental-health screenings, tactics-and-response training, and DOJ technical assistance), which can improve officer well-being, preparedness, and reduce use-of-force mistakes in schools.
Veterans and retired law-enforcement officers get expanded, grant-supported employment pathways into school safety roles through prioritized hiring and VA referral coordination, easing transitions to civilian work.
Students—especially marginalized youth—may face increased policing in schools that raises risks of criminalization, harsher disciplinary escalation, and disproportionate impacts on racial and ethnic minorities.
Shifting grant priority toward hiring and supporting SROs can divert funds away from community policing priorities and non‑policing violence‑prevention approaches (counselors, restorative justice), reducing support for alternatives that address root causes.
Expanding SRO hiring, salaries, annual training, screenings, and VA coordination raises ongoing program and administrative costs that may fall on taxpayers, local governments, school districts, and the VA.
Based on analysis of 6 sections of legislative text.
Expands COPS hiring grant allowable uses and gives preference to applications hiring/training veterans and retired officers as school resource officers, adds SRO duties, and directs VA referral coordination.
Official title: To prioritize the hiring and training of veterans and retired law enforcement officers as school resource officers, and for other purposes.
Introduced April 8, 2025 by Jefferson Van Drew · Last progress April 8, 2025
Authorizes and prioritizes use of DOJ COPS hiring grants to recruit, hire, and train veterans and retired law enforcement officers to serve as school resource officers (SROs). It directs the Attorney General to give preferential consideration to grant applications proposing such hires, allows grant-funded technical assistance for annual mental health screenings and annual tactics/response training for SROs, and adds an annual student‑meet requirement to the federal definition of a school resource officer. Also directs the VA to coordinate with grant recipients to connect veteran job-seekers with local law enforcement agencies participating in school-based partnerships, creating an interagency referral duty to place veterans into SRO roles funded under the relevant grant program.