In the past five years, school districts throughout Butler County have slashed, or eliminated, the number of school resource officers in their buildings, largely because of budget cutbacks.

But the Dec. 14 mass shooting in Newtown, Conn. — where 20 Sandy Hook Elementary School students and six staffers were killed — now has many area district and law enforcement officials considering the cost of not having armed police personnel in their schools.

Butler County Sheriff Richard K. Jones said this week that not only should more police be in schools, but that teachers should be trained to carry guns, too. Ohio Attorney General Michael Dewine vowed to offer weapons training of school officials to assure someone with a gun meets any heavily armed shooter in schools.

“It needs to be done,” said Jones. “I believe having armed personnel readily available to immediately respond would be a deterrent in and of itself.

“If a potential shooter knows someone might react within seconds rather than having a 15- to 30-minute or more window of opportunity to wreak havoc on as many victims as possible, they might rethink their plan,” he said.

Armed officers flooded schools across the country, including Butler County, in 1999 after 12 students and a teacher were gunned down at Columbine High School in Colorado, and school districts and police and sheriff’s departments were more than willing to foot the bill.

“Columbine forever changed the way law enforcement responds to situations in schools,” said Middletown police Maj. Rodney Muterspaw, who is a former SRO and Special Response Team member.

The Butler County Sheriff’s Office had six deputies assigned as school resource officers in various schools across the county in 1999. Funding constraints in the school districts and staff cuts with the sheriff’s office have whittled that number down to one full-time officer in Lakota schools and a part time officer in Edgewood schools.

“We had DARE officers in schools. They are gone too,” Jones said. “Schools, like everyone have made difficult budget decision.”

In August, there were three school resource officers assigned to the high school, junior high and sixth-grade building in the Middletown City School District. Up until recently, the district had five officers, according to Muterspaw.

Hamilton City Schools hires off-duty officers to have a presence in its freshman and high school buildings. There are also unarmed para-professionals in the schools, according to Joni Copus, district spokeswoman.

In Lakota, there are three school resource officers based at the two high schools, Lakota East and Lakota West. The cost of the officers is shared among the district, Liberty Twp. and West Chester Twp.

For the second straight year, because of budget cuts, there are no school resource officers in the Madison Local Schools. In the wake of the Newtown shootings, the district has started conversations about bringing an SRO back to the district, said Superintendent Curtis Philpot.

“The primary reason (SROs were eliminated) was because of budget constraints between the school district and the sheriff’s department, and just figuring out who was going to pay for it,” Philpot said. “At one point, we tried sharing an SRO with the township, but that didn’t work out because the officer was always on the road somewhere and he wasn’t readily available for our needs. That just didn’t work out.”

Philpot said the school board’s next organizational meeting is in January and that he’s “pretty sure that topic will be mentioned then.”

Within 24 hours of the Connecticut massacre, two school districts contacted the sheriff’s office asking for more security, Jones said. Jones, who admitted even he was apprehensive about letting his grandchildren go back to school last week, paid a visit to Madison schools Wednesday to reassure students and faculty about their safety.

“People are scared,” Jones said, adding he is paying overtime to have his deputies do extra patrols at schools.

Muterspaw said prior to the Columbine shootings in 1999, protocol for emergencies in schools was to call out a SRT or SWAT team, develop a plan of action, surround the school then go in to eradicate the situation. It took valuable time in which bad guys were shooting victims.

Today, officers in the schools are armed and calls for help are met with a mass of officers, guns in hand, not waiting for a tactical plan or until the school is surrounded.

“How schools react in the first minute makes a big difference,” Muterspaw said, noting he expects more changes coming in light of the recent tragedy. “We will do whatever it takes.”

Muterspaw said there is no doubt having armed persons in schools is a deterrent for bad guys, but he is not sold on arming teachers or staff.

“Shooting at targets is different than shooting a person. Officers will tell you that,” Muterspaw said.

Staff Writer John Bombatch contributed to this report