Congressman Bob Etheridge (D-NC2) was in Fayetteville to talk about the Schools Empowered to Respond Act, a bill he plans to introduce to direct funding from the Department of Homeland Security to help protect schools.
Etheridge said he has been concerned about school vulnerability to everything from natural disasters to armed attackers since he was North Carolina?s superintendent of public instruction. ?Schools are soft targets,? Etheridge said. ?When I was state superintendent, I always had that worry.?
Reasonable enough, though I’d say responding to natural disasters is not the same as preventing terrorism. This, though, is glaring:
Etheridge acknowledged that millions of dollars in homeland security funds have been squandered by public safety agencies since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But he predicted school districts will do better, with a little help from a mandate in his bill: educators must file a plan of action to get their money.
Maybe we should put DPI in charge of the magnetometers at RDU. I bet someone could write the grant to incorporate it into “Learn and Earn”.
