Each new
school shooting
reignites a national conversation about how the country should respond to
gun violence
.
And while
school districts
are divided on what safety measures are the best solution, there is a raucous debate about the best way to address the problem.
BIDEN THANKS ‘TENNESSEE THREE’ FOR ‘STANDING UP FOR OUR KIDS’ IN WHITE HOUSE MEETING
Some are equipping
teachers
with
firearms
to serve as a primary line of defense for students, and others are seeking to increase security with alternative measures.
In the first four months of 2023, there have been more school shootings involving more victims than there were this time last year, according to statistics from the
K-12 School Shooting Database
.
“I think in this conversation, it’s important to kind of take a step back and recognize that schools don’t exist in vacuums and we’ve got a larger problem in our nation,” Scott DiMauro, the president of the
Ohio
Education Association, told the Washington Examiner.
As tensions grow and
gun violence
persists, Democratic and
Republican
lawmakers propose varying resolutions on how to protect their school districts.
Here is a rundown of past and present school security approaches.
The first state to place firearms in the hands of staff
The mass shooting at
Sandy Hook Elementary School
that left 20 students and six educators dead permanently changed the landscape of school safety. Three months after the 2012 Newtown,
Connecticut,
shooting,
South Dakota
became the first state in the country to pass a law authorizing school employees to carry firearms on the clock,
according to
the New York Times.
The “school sentinels” law signed by Gov. Dennis Daugaard (R-SD) in March 2013 gave power to
Connecticut
‘s 152 school districts to opt in or out of arming teachers, school personnel, or hire security guards or volunteers.
Recent advances to arm teachers and school personnel
More than 30 states allow teachers or staff to carry firearms on school grounds, according to data collected by the
Giffords Law Center
. Sixteen states, as well as the District of Columbia, have provisions barring the use of firearms by teachers: Alabama, California, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
Ohio
On May 24, 2022, 19 children and two teachers were killed in the deadliest mass shooting in a decade at
Robb Elementary School
in Uvalde, Texas. Weeks later, Gov.
Mike DeWine
(R-OH) signed House Bill 99 on July 11, 2022.
“In the aftermath of House Bill 99, this is a local decision, and so each local community, in each local union, has their own context and has to do what they believe is best,” DiMauro said. “And as on all issues affecting our members and our students, we try to give tools to our local affiliates to advocate for what’s in the best interest of their members and their students.”
House Bill 99 didn’t legalize arming school staff because that had already been passed. Instead, the bill established that 24 hours of training was enough for teachers to carry firearms on school grounds, overturning the previous 700-hour requirement set by the Ohio Supreme Court in 2021. The previous Supreme Court decision, now overturned by House Bill 99, affirmed a
ruling
from the Ohio 12th District Court of Appeals that required school staff to take a
peace officer
training course used by police departments.
“We just thought that the 24-hour training standard was woefully inadequate,” DiMauro said, citing that Florida has a standard of 132 hours under
Senate Bill 7030
passed in 2019.
Tennessee
The
mass shooting
at a
Nashville
,
Tennessee
, Christian elementary school on March 27, 2023, left six dead, three children and three adults. Since then, a surge of school districts moved toward arming teachers.
Republican lawmakers in Tennessee responded by advancing a
bill
allowing teachers to carry firearms in their classrooms through the House committee on April 5, which was initially introduced earlier this year by state Sen. Paul Bailey and state Rep. Ryan Williams.
Prior to this introduction, Tennessee permitted teachers at private schools to carry if that school gave them permission but did not allow teachers to be armed in public schools.
The legislation came amid mass protests. Hundreds of people rallied at the state capitol to advocate stronger gun laws. Democratic state Reps. Justin Jones, Justin Pearson, and Gloria Johnson, nationally known as the ”
Tennessee Three
,” led the protest into the House chamber. Pearson and Johnson faced expulsion, which drew a national outcry, and they were later reinstated. The bill was moved off the calendar as of
April 17
, with no clear indication of when it will be back on the agenda.
“These are very parent-driven policy decisions,” Laura Carno, executive director of Faculty/Administrator Safety Training and Emergency Response, or FASTER, Colorado, an organization providing gun training, told the Washington Examiner. “And the reason that I’ve been probably three times busier than normal, after Nashville, is because parents are going to their school board meetings, they’re going to their principals and superintendents and saying, ‘What are you going to do to protect my children?’”
Wisconsin
On April 10,
Wisconsin
Republican state Rep. Scott Allen and state Sen. Cory Tomczyk unveiled
LRB-0471
, a bill that would give power to school boards to create their own concealed carry policy.
Republican lawmakers are pushing to take the decision out of the state’s hands and let local elected school board members vote on whether they want to implement arming teachers in their districts.
“The reality is that schools are often soft targets for those looking to do harm,” the
memorandum
states. “The knowledge that no one on the premise has the firepower to stop them emboldens bad actors. Parents are rightly asking for action to ensure the safety of their students.”
Allen cites that this proposal comes at the request of Germantown, a village in Washington County, Wisconsin, unanimously passing a resolution that would permit school staff to carry a firearm if they choose to do so last summer.
The school board issued a
resolution
, writing, “Whereas a sign stating ‘STAFF ARMED AND TRAINED TO USE DEADLY FORCE,’ sends a message that the school will not be an easy target.”
Gov.
Tony Evers
(D-WI) announced he would veto the bill if it made its way to his desk.
“Wisconsinites have been desperately demanding commonsense proposals that will reduce gun violence and keep our kids, our schools, and our communities safe,” Evers said on
Twitter
. “This bill isn’t among them.”
Other recent proposals include Mississippi
Senate Bill 2079
, which was passed in the legislature on Feb. 8, and awaits Gov. Tate Reeves’s (R-MI) signature.
Safety precautions
While the debate about allowing teachers and school personnel to carry guns to protect their students continues, some operations are choosing to provide measures to the districts greenlighting the initiative. FASTER issues gun training.
FASTER started in Ohio in December 2012, following the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Carno founded FASTER in
Colorado
in 2018 as a supported program of the Independence Institute, a libertarian think tank based in
Denver
, Colorado.
“Here in Colorado, and most states are very similar to this — at FASTER, we’re not arming anybody,” Carno said. “School districts make a decision to pass a policy that allows there to be somebody armed on campus. That isn’t law enforcement.”
As of April, FASTER is working with 41 of Colorado’s 178 school districts. Carno expects 400 people to enroll in this year’s training season. FASTER offers annual training, requiring 24 hours the first year and 16 hours in the subsequent years.
“So, we spend part of that half-day doing force-on-force scenarios with Airsoft guns and the other half of that day doing the police simulator, which is, we train at law enforcement training facilities so we get to use all the same equipment that they use for law enforcement,” Carno said.
FASTER training is on a voluntary basis, and Carno said that FASTER is not driving this publicly, but some oppose the notion that teachers or staff should be asked to choose a path in the first place.
“From our standpoint, it’s far better to have trained school resource officers,” DiMauro said. “Or that partnership between school districts and local law enforcement to provide school security as opposed to shortcutting the approach by asking teachers to take on another responsibility.”
FASTER has started to expand to Utah and Arizona as the demand for safety training is expected to increase with more districts permitting firearms on campus.
“I’ll clarify the word teacher,” Carno said. “That’s the very common language that’s used, ‘arming teachers,’ but really only 40% of the people who we see go through these programs are actually teachers in a classroom. And so we like to say school employees, school staff, something like that, because it’s just more clear.”
Ramping up school security and exploring the alternatives
As the market for security equipment grows, and school shootings continue to plague classrooms, those who oppose allowing school staff to have firearms search for alternative options.
The market for school security was estimated to be $3.1 billion in 2021, increasing from $2.7 billion reported in 2020, and is expected to raise 8% annually on average, according to
Omdia
, a market research firm.
“When you have a school shooter with a high-powered weapon, like an AR-15, somebody, especially a poorly trained school employee with a handgun, is not going to be well matched to be able to stop them,” DiMauro said.
Iowa
Des Moines Public Schools in
Iowa
voted to increase its school security budget on April 4, despite a $12 million cut overall. The budget will include $13 million more for safety equipment, security cameras, weapon detection systems, and patrol vehicles. About $300,000 will go to training and crisis prevention,
according to
KCCI.
Pennsylvania
Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) announced more than $8 million in competitive Safe Schools Targeted grants on Feb. 10. More than 166
Pennsylvania
schools can use the funds to purchase safety equipment, expand or implement new programs, and hire security and school resource officers, according to a
press release
.
“Every student in Pennsylvania deserves a safe learning environment, and these Safe Schools Targeted Grants will help schools all across the Commonwealth invest in the resources and staff they need to keep students, teachers, and staff safe,” Shapiro said. “Students should be able to focus on learning and growing in the classroom, and my Administration will continue to work with our schools and local communities to ensure they have the support they deserve.”
Maryland
Maryland is taking an alternative route, exploring how artificial intelligence can be used as a safety measure. Charles County Public Schools
announced
in March it is partnering with Omnilert, which says it is the first company to establish active shooter and emergency notification solutions and uses advanced AI software to detect guns.
The school district has already started installing outside building cameras for the system and plans to have it fully installed by the end of the school year, expanding to 22 elementary schools, nine middle schools, seven high schools, and five education centers.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
A CBS News and YouGov
poll
showed 77% of parents worry their children’s schools will experience gun violence. The poll was conducted from April 12 to 14 with 2,000 adults across the U.S. and increased 5% from 2022. Sixty-one percent of parents reported their children express worry over gun violence a lot or sometimes.
“There’s a lot of tension, as there should be, any time there’s a mass shooting in schools,” DiMauro said. “Everybody is very concerned, and educators, parents, and communities all want kids to be safe.”
