In a 5-4 vote, the city school board has opted to end the practice of allowing monitors to carry guns in the Saratoga Springs School District.
The monitors are former law enforcement officers that now work as security guards, which differs from school resource officers, who are active-duty police officers or sheriff's deputies that carry weapons inside the school buildings.
The issue of disarming the monitors came up last month when Superintendent Michael Patton discovered that the district was not in compliance with state law, because the school board had never, over a period of several decades; given specific approval for the monitors to be armed.
Patton insists safety remains a key priority for the school district.
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