I see the advantages, on paper, of a school district police force. Unlike relying on city/County/state police, those officers would work every day in the schools and know all the ins and outs, layouts, etc. Whereas an officer who is not in there on a daily basis, or just respond to the occasional call, they may only know where the front offices.
The problem lies in the command structure, and what happens as we saw in you all day as the chief reports to the superintendent and potential conflict of interest in certain situations
It seems to me that school district police, aside from the chain-of-command problem, also simply don’t have the experience of dealing with dangerous situations on an almost daily basis like regular police do.
You can see in the video that the officers who responded to the Nashville school were not only well-trained, they were experienced and used to working as a team in a high-threat situation. School district officers simply can’t have that kind of experience and teamwork. It’s like the difference between green soldiers and hardened battle-tested troops in war. Which do you want when there are bullets flying?
The school was also prepared: the woman standing outside to hand keys to the cops, for example. That looked planned in advance, and perhaps even practiced in advance. Sure beats the Uvalde cops dithering over keys while children were murdered.
Nashville seems to have a sort of hybrid plan:
They have unarmed school “safety ambassadors” employed by the school district, plus police resource officers who are employed by the police department and answer to the police chief inside some schools, and also regular police patrolling around school areas to respond quickly in case of an active shooter or similar threat to kids’ safety.
The hybrid model Nashville uses might be the best way, at least it looks that way to me. Of course the small private Christian school did not have a “safety ambassador” or school resource officer, but as best I understand, had worked with police to form their active shooter plan.