The school shooting in Nashville Monday is reigniting a debate over school resource officers in schools.

For years, Portland Public Schools had them, but then the program was disbanded in 2020.

On a social media poll I took (that had more than 300 respondents) about 70% said they want the return of school resource officers, about 30% said they don’t want them.

“We shouldn’t have to have armed officers anywhere,” said state Sen. Lew Frederick, D-Portland.

Frederick thinks the school safety conversation should be about access to guns.

“If we want to be effective, we need to be thinking about how we deal with all of the guns, especially the semi-assault and assault rifles, and how we deal with them on a regular basis,” he said. “Not somehow hiring a security guard at every door. That makes no sense at all.”

State Rep. Jeff Helfrich, R-Hood River, spent 25 years as a Portland police sergeant and once led the school resource officer training program.

He thinks the best approach to school safety is hardening security.

“I respect Sen. Frederick’s opinion,” he said. “However, I have a different lens on this and my lens says if you have school resource officers in the school, they can help stop that threat.”

Helfrich says the 2014 shooting at Reynolds High School shows that school resource officers were able to protect students during an on-campus shooting.

But Frederick says the massacre at a school in Uvalde, Texas showed that a school resource officer didn’t make a difference.

The two also differ over the role a person’s mental health plays in their decision to instigate a shooting.

“I think there needs to be resources for mental health and have kids identified who are on the fringe of having an event like this happen,” said Helfrich.

“Don’t give me the mental health issue,” said Frederick. “All countries around the world have mental health issues. The common thing that we have as a struggle right now is we have so many guns, and we have people who believe that that is how they determine their identity.”

Earlier Tuesday, the House Republican Caucus proposed a “Safe Schools Package” that includes requiring the Department of Education to pay for school resource officers.

Last week, the Oregon House Democrats proposed a package of gun regulation measures that include raising the age of purchase to 21.