School panic system bill vetoed
Gov. Asa Hutchinson has vetoed legislation that would grant the state Department of Education $850,000 in spending authority to continue paying for a panic-button alert system in public schools in the fiscal year starting July 1.
The Rave Panic Button helps protect about 476,000 students and 39,000 faculty in the public schools in Arkansas, said Todd Miller, a vice president of public safety services for Framingham, Mass.-based Rave Mobile Safety, the company behind the Rave Panic Button app. Funding has come from various parts of state government.
Hutchinson said in a letter to the Senate dated Thursday and released Friday that he vetoed Senate Bill 446 by Sen. Larry Teague, D-Nashville, because "it is now up to the local school districts to choose whether to pay for the panic-button alert systems.
"When the panic button system was initially presented for funding in {fiscal 2016}, it was presented as a pilot project that the local school districts would eventually pay for," the Republican governor said in his veto letter.
Read more: http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2017/apr/08/school-panic-system-bill-vetoed-2017040/?f=news-politics