Private schools, like in Wisconsin shooting, are responsible for their security. Here’s how they try to protect students

When a student carried out a shooting at Abundant Life Christian School this week, there was no school resource officer on site. And when six people were killed last year at another private Christian school in Nashville, there wasn’t one either.

When a student carried out a shooting at Abundant Life Christian School this week, there was no school resource officer on site. And when six people were killed last year at another private Christian school in Nashville, there wasn’t one either. While school resource officers are not the only way to secure a school, and best practices to keep students safe on campus are similar among all schools in the United States, experts told CNN it can be challenging for some private schools to cover their security costs. “Rarely do we see a circumstance where a private school is able to house a school resource officer and that’s for a variety of reasons. It’s something the private school would have to self-fund,” said Mo Canady, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers, a nonprofit group of school-based security professionals. Nearly 5 million students attended more than 29,000 private schools in the 2021-2022 school year, according to data compiled by the National Center for Education Statistics. Private schools function outside the local jurisdiction and for the most part, they don’t receive public funds outside the taxpayer dollars that some states have made available to help some students attend private schools – a trend that has grown in recent years. Abundant Life Christian School – the small, private school in Madison, Wisconsin, where two people were killed Monday and six others were injured – has several security measures in place, and has received training and a grant from the Wisconsin Department of Justice’s Office of School Safety, said Barbara Wiers, the school’s director of elementary & school relations.