Republican mayoral nominee Nicole Malliotakis said on Wednesday that she’d seek to place armed, retired officers at the city’s public schools on a rotating basis to prevent tragedies such as the 2012 shooting massacre at Sandy Hook.
Pressed on details, Malliotakis at one point said the patrols would be outside rather than inside — but later backtracked — and noted they’d also respond to bomb threats and other dangerous conditions at schools.
“It’s to ease the parents, it’s to make the children know that they’re protected during the day, and it’s to deter incidents that have occurred over the last few years in which there have been threats to schools,” Malliotakis told The Post after a press conference outside Tweed Courthouse, which houses the Department of Education.
She declined to provide a specific number of patrolmen for the proposal, saying it would be up to the police commissioner.
“It’s a random rotation, it’s not stationing somebody in the school,” she added.
At Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, an unstable gunman shot and killed 20 kids and six teachers — the deadliest mass shooting at a school in the country’s history.
On other educational issues, the Assemblywoman said she differed with Mayor de Blasio because she supports raising a state cap on the number of charter schools.
Unlike the mayor, she said she’s open to closing more failing schools and replacing them with smaller schools — as was done under Mayor Bloomberg — and to return to a letter grade system for schools that de Blasio abolished.