ST. PAUL – The Minnesota House on Monday approved a bill which Rep. Dean Urdahl, R-Acton Township, said provides clarity after a change in law last year caused school resource officers to be removed from schools throughout the state.
“The change in law enacted last year lacked clarity, leaving inconsistent interpretations around the state and some districts are still without SROs today,” Urdahl said. “This needed to be fixed so SROs could return to all the schools they previously had staffed. House Republicans sounded the alarm on this issue last summer and it is concerning the majority took so long to get serious about passing a bill to fix this problem. When they finally got on board, we were able to approve a bipartisan solution with broad support.”
The issue traces back to an omnibus education bill (HF 2497) Democrats enacted into law in 2023, imposing new prohibitions on the use of force in schools, banning certain physical holds by “an employee or agent of a district, including a school resource officer, security personnel, or police officer contracted with a district."
Language in the new measure provides updates which exclude SROs as employees or agents of a school district, exclude SROs from the prohibitions on prone restraints and physical holds; revise the “reasonable force standard” and mandate school districts and charter schools use only trained SROs and establishes new training and model policy requirements for law enforcement.
The House approved the bill (H.F. 3489) 124-8 and it now awaits action in the Senate.
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