New School Safety Bill Prioritizes Veterans and Retired Cops for SRO Jobs, Mandates Annual Mental Health Checks

The Ensuring Safer Schools Act of 2025 is all about reshaping how schools hire security staff, specifically School Resource Officers (SROs). Essentially, this bill updates federal grant rules—primarily the COPS (Community Oriented Policing Services) grants—to aggressively push for the hiring of military veterans and retired law enforcement officers into these school safety roles. It doesn't just allow this; it prioritizes it, which is the key change here.

The New Hiring Preference: Who Gets the Federal Dollars?

This is where things get interesting for local school districts and police departments. Section 2 and Section 3 work together to change the federal funding landscape. Under the new rules, COPS grant money can now explicitly be used to hire and train veterans and retired officers as SROs. Even more importantly, when the government reviews applications for certain school safety grants, they must now give preferential consideration to those that propose using the money to hire these specific groups (Sec. 3). If you’re a local police chief or a school board member trying to secure federal funding for an SRO program, the fastest path to approval just became hiring a veteran or a retired officer. This move aims to provide employment pathways for veterans while staffing schools, but it could also mean that other qualified candidates—or even other school safety initiatives like hiring more counselors—might get sidelined because they don't fit the priority criteria.

Mandatory Check-Ups and Community Time

The bill also adds some significant new requirements for SROs, which is a big win for accountability. Section 4 gives the Attorney General the authority to provide technical assistance—using existing federal funds—to help local governments ensure that every SRO receives two things annually: a mental health screening and training on proper tactics and response methods. For parents and school staff, this means there’s now a federal push to make sure the officers in schools are both mentally fit for the job and up-to-date on modern, safe response techniques. The catch is that the bill is a little vague on what exactly constitutes "proper tactics" or a sufficient "mental health screening," leaving room for interpretation.

In addition to the screenings, Section 5 expands the definition of a “career law enforcement officer” to include veterans and retired officers and adds a new requirement: these officers must meet with students at least once a year for community engagement. This is a clear effort to move past the traditional image of SROs as just security guards and push them toward community building. For a high school student, this might mean a mandatory assembly or a classroom visit designed to foster better relationships and understanding between the student body and the SRO.

Connecting Veterans to the Classroom

Finally, the bill mandates coordination between the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the grant recipients (Sec. 6). The VA must now actively work to connect veterans who want to become SROs with local police departments that have these grant-funded positions open. This creates a direct pipeline from military service to school safety roles, streamlining the process for veterans seeking a second career. While this is great for veteran employment, it also means that school districts are going to be heavily encouraged to staff their schools with personnel whose primary background is in enforcement, which might not align with every district’s preferred approach to student discipline and support.