Anne Arundel County Executive John R. Leopold said Tuesday that he plans to fund school resource officers at two more county middle schools, in an attempt to curb student violence and bullying.
Leopold has pledged about $200,000 in funding from the forthcoming county budget to pay for school resource police officers at Corkran Middle School in Glen Burnie and Wiley H. Bates Middle School in Annapolis. Leopold said he got a request from the Parent Teacher Association at Bates to take action.
In October, a 14-year-old male student at Corkran was charged with first-degree assault for allegedly choking a 13-year-old male classmate inside of a bathroom at the school.
"No child should be sitting in a classroom being apprehensive about their safety," said Leopold, a Republican.
School resource officers are deployed in all of the county's public high schools and nine of the 19 middle schools.
"It's definitely good news for us," said Maneka Monk, a spokeswoman for the county schools. "The SRO program has been quite beneficial and a national model and we're happy to provide the resource for more of our students."