LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- School districts across the commonwealth are now required to have a school resource officer (SRO) on every campus.

It comes from an update this legislative session under House Bill 63, which clarified language in a previously passed 2019 law, Senate Bill 1, also known as the School Safety and Resiliency Act.

In 2019, the bill was intended to put SROs at each school, but according to Rep. Kevin Bratcher, R-Louisville, many districts weren't in compliance. So he said HB 63 only strengthened the original law and gave guidance as to what to do if a district wasn't in compliance.

That's where the State School Security Marshal Office comes in. It was also created under the Safety and Resiliency Act and was created to oversee SROs, among other things.

Former SRO Ben Wilcox was appointed to the new role of state school security marshal and has a team of compliance officers who travel the commonwealth checking in on districts.

"As an SRO, my goal was to make sure every kid went home safe to their parents at the end of school," Wilcox said. "And I feel like that's the same way here in the marshal's office."

He said his professional experience is half the equation, but his wife is a school counselor, and he is a dad of two students.

"I'm neck deep into school safety because I send my whole family to school every day," he said. "So I want schools to be safe. Everybody does."

Part of the role as marshal also entails helping districts if they can't get an SRO on every campus. Each district was required to submit a waiver by Aug. 1 to the marshal's office explaining why they couldn't meet the requirement.

As for how many districts need help with hiring SROs, Wilcox said it's going to take a few months to go through it all. But there's no question that staffing is an issue.

"We're getting all that information in and and collecting that data, and, hopefully, we'll know in the next couple of months exactly where we stand," Wilcox said. "And I think that was kind of the purpose of HB 63 to see where we needed to be to get officers on the campuses."

It could also be a money issue. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle debated if HB 63 should also get some direct funding to help pay for the cost of SROs. Instead of direct allocations, lawmakers passed a historic amount of education funding overall.

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