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 "Editorial: The absurdity of teachers carrying guns ?"

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 "Editorial: The absurdity of teachers carrying guns ?"

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How long after teachers start coming to school armed for battle until a principal somewhere in America makes this embarrassing announcement over the PA system? Attention, a Glock 9 mm pistol with a 22-round magazine was left in the teacher's lounge - again. Will the owner please come to the office to retrieve it?

We jest, because the idea of allowing teachers and administrators to carry firearms in school is so absurd and irresponsible, it needs to be laughed off - quickly. Then the country can get back to reality-based discussions about how to better protect kids, and everyone else, by deterring mass shooters.

As we've written, there are steps to make it harder for a villain to obtain weapons, including background checks on every gun purchase. Schools can do more to protect themselves, too, by tightening security and holding more active shooter drills. But no, let's not get distracted by the fantasy that teachers should pack heat. President Donald Trump was in full fever on Friday suggesting that having a certain number of armed teachers on staff would have stopped the Feb. 14 massacre at a Florida high school. "A teacher would have shot the hell out of him before he even knew what happened," Trump imagined.

That's unlikely. There are tens of thousands of schools across the country. What are the chances of an armed, trained, literally-cool-under-fire social studies teacher taking down a gunman? The odds are much higher of an accidental discharge during study period, or a disturbed student disarming the teacher. Worse, we picture an angry teacher on a bad day pulling a gun on a student with an attitude. And if there were a shooter in the hallways? Given the chaos, terror and suddenness of an attack, chances are an armed teacher strikes a bystander, or gets shot mistakenly by law enforcement rather than disarming or disabling the bad guy.

Even contemplating this scenario presupposes that faculty members would enlist. We expect many would reject the idea of being armed. They wouldn't want the responsibility and see the folly. These are teachers, after all, who recognize the dystopian lesson: Kids, you live in a dangerous world you can never hope to improve through peaceful means. So let's lock and load.

Teachers and administrators do important work, as do police and other first responders. Let teachers educate children, and leave the protection of civilians to other professionals.
Join the discussion on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook.

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How long after teachers start coming to school armed for battle until a principal somewhere in America makes this embarrassing announcement over the PA system? Attention, a Glock 9 mm pistol with a 22-round magazine was left in the teacher's lounge - again. Will the owner please come to the office to retrieve it?

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"These schools say arming teachers 'can be done right'"

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"These schools say arming teachers 'can be done right'"

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"Should Teachers Carry Guns? Are Metal Detectors Helpful? What Experts Say"

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"Should Teachers Carry Guns? Are Metal Detectors Helpful? What Experts Say"

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Even after mass shootings in schools like Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., in recent years, security experts are divided over the question of how to keep students safe. Credit... Michael Appleton for The New York Times

Paul Hankins keeps a box of smooth, colorful river stones - he calls them "fidgets" - in his classroom for students to hold when they need to soothe their nerves.

The stones also have a different purpose, as do the billiard balls and the plank from the old gym floor. They can all be used as weapons in an emergency.

"Before we go to the corner where everybody gets invisible, grab one of those," he tells his students at Silver Creek High School in Sellersburg, Ind. "We could cause one hell of a ruckus if we need to."

Mr. Hankins does not begrudge teachers who argue that they should be allowed to carry guns to class, especially in the wake of attacks like last week's shooting that killed 17 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

For him, stones are better.

They put the fight in "Run, hide, fight," the mantra that he and countless other teachers are learning as lockdown drills become routine.

Yet experts are as divided as Mr. Hankins and his colleagues on how to protect students from violence or whether, for that matter, there is anything that can be done to prevent a determined attacker.

The latest shooting has intensified the debate over what tactics to use to protect against imminent danger: whether teachers should carry guns, or hide with their students; whether schools should invest in fancy security devices like door jammers or put more resources into crisis teams that could identify and intervene with troubled students. What follows is some of the discussion.

Most law enforcement experts argue that teachers should not carry guns. Civilians may be able to hit a bull's-eye at the shooting range, but they lack the tactical knowledge of handling weapons that trained law enforcement personnel get.

Accidents happen. Guns can fall out of holsters, be taken from the classroom or accidentally discharge.

"You don't want to have a gun that's available to a student or another worker who may have mental health issues," said Maureen S. Rush, vice president for public safety and superintendent of the Police Department at the University of Pennsylvania.

But some disagree.

Dave Workman, the senior editor of The Gun Mag and communications director of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, said arming guards or teachers could act as a deterrent so that no one had to draw a weapon in the first place.

"I understand the debate out there: 'Should this be the job of a teacher?'" he said.

"Why not? The teacher is going to be there," Mr. Workman said. "They become the first responder sometimes. It does take a while for police to respond to an incident."

The Parkland school had an armed sheriff's deputy who never encountered the gunman.

Metal detectors are unlikely to stop a gunman, experts say. But they can be useful in certain contexts, if, for instance, the school is in a neighborhood with high crime or gang activity, where students may try to bring guns or knives into school to defend themselves.

In a lockdown drill, everyone in the school practices responding seamlessly to the presence of an intruder. Teachers and students go to a secure location, like a classroom, closet or storage area that can be locked, and move out of sight, away from windows or doors.

Speed is important. The typical gunman is like water, the experts said, following the path of least resistance. Typically, a gunman will not try to kick in a closed door, but will look for one with a crack of light showing.

"Within 20 or 30 seconds, I, as a bad guy, should have very little easy access to anybody," said David R. Connors, head of Connors Security Consulting Services in Spencerport, N.Y., and a former police officer. The locks or barricades on the doors do not need to be very strong, just enough to last until help can arrive.

The point of a lockdown drill is to know what to do automatically, without having to think.

"When something's going down, you will not respond from your head, you will respond from your stomach," Ms. Rush said. "You need to get that in your stomach. You need to know what instinctively you will do. That's got to be part of your psyche. So it requires constant training."

Different schools or districts may have different protocols. The important thing is that everyone, from teachers to students to parents, know what they are. "It has to be something that goes like clockwork," said Dr. Irwin Redlener, a professor of pediatrics and public health and the director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University.

It may be heart-wrenching, but don't open the door, experts say. A teacher has to think of the lives of the many who have moved to a safe place over the one person outside in the hallway who may bring danger in.

"You don't open that door until you know the police are on the other side," Ms. Rush said, adding, "You're doing it for the masses of kids."

It depends on their age. "We don't have to scare the heck out of these kids," Mr. Connors said. "In a kindergarten through third-grade building, you might tell the kids, come over here and sit down next to the wall. Be nice and quiet. I'm going to read you a book. That's all the kids have to know."

Mr. Connors does not believe in making drills too realistic. "You don't have to have someone come over and try to kick in the door. I don't think that's constructive. With staff, yes. But not with kids."

Phones should be put on silent, not even vibrating. "Texting is fine," Ms. Rush said. "You want to be invisible, and you want silence."

Ms. Rush said she was alarmed by the students who took videos while hiding from the gunman in Parkland, not because she disapproved of the video, but because it changed their mentality. "That could be taking them out of their survivor mode," she said.

The experts vary on whether this is possible. Some say that students who become violent are often not the ones who seem most troubled or who make the most noise. "The perpetrators are very often not the bullies or the guys roughing people up," Mr. Connors said. "Quite often, it's the guy who is quiet. In hindsight, they'll go back and find that there's some family or mental health issue."

Others say that schools can do more to enlist students to help identify troubled classmates. Social media can be an early warning system, the experts say. Students may express their violent thoughts there, as did Nikolas Cruz, who has been charged in the Florida shooting, according to law enforcement officials.

"These kids are begging us to stop them," said Amy Klinger, a co-founder of the Educator's School Safety Network, who consults on school safety from the perspective of the former teacher and principal that she is. "We just have to be better at picking up the warning signs."

The schools alone cannot do it. Arguably, Dr. Klinger said, the failure to identify Mr. Cruz as troubled was a failure of the entire community, along with law enforcement agencies that had been warned about him.

"A school can identify the individual of concern, but they didn't create that individual," Dr. Klinger said. "So yeah, there is a role that the community and parents and our society has to play in identifying and dealing with those individuals as well."

Law enforcement experts suggest hardening the perimeter, that is, putting up security cameras, door buzzers, gates, and other barricades or high-tech devices.

But they say that buzzers are not enough, especially at arrival and dismissal times when hundreds of students may be milling around.

"After Sandy Hook, a lot of schools got very panicky and bought $5,000 buzzer systems," Dr. Klinger said. "They bought the system that was breached by the intruder in the first 30 seconds of Sandy Hook. He shot out the door and walked into the school. So your buzzer system did absolutely no good."

Ms. Rush said that everyone at the front office should be informed when a student has been suspended or expelled. A photo should be posted, and they should call 911 if the person appears.

"This happens in corporate America all the time," she said. "Workplace violence, where the person comes back and wants to kill the boss."

Dr. Klinger said that schools should invest in teachers who mingle with students in the lobby or in hallways as a way to learn about troubling behavior that may be brewing.

Even in a large school, the experts said, doors need to be manned by someone who knows the students and will recognize anyone who looks out of place. Dr. Klinger said that this should be a teacher, who relates to the students, not a security guard.

"If you want to take this to the extreme, you can ensure the safety of kids by locking them in a cell, but that's a prison," Dr. Klinger said. "This is not a prison. It's not a shopping mall."

Cultivate the survivor mentality, experts said. Fight. "If he's coming no matter what, if you got that one guy who starts breaking the door out, you take every object in the room and you beat the hell out of him to disarm him, because you're going to die if you don't," Ms. Rush said. "So you might as well take your chances of trying to fight."

Ms. Rush gave the example of a professor who, as a gunman approached, took his phone out to look at pictures of his children one last time before he died. "But a female student jumped and ran and locked the door. She had survivor instinct."

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Should Teachers Carry Guns? Are Metal Detectors Helpful? What Experts Say

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Paul Hankins keeps a box of smooth, colorful river stones - he calls them "fidgets" - in his classroom for students to hold when they need to soothe their nerves. The stones also have a different purpose, as do the billiard balls and the plank from the old gym floor.

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Should Alabama teachers be armed to increase school security?

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"Forget giving guns to teachers, Alabama superintendents ask for more police in the halls"

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"Forget giving guns to teachers, Alabama superintendents ask for more police in the halls"

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Not one school superintendent who talked with AL.com this week thinks that teachers with firearms is a good idea.

"I want a trained professional, which is the school resource officer, that's who I want there," said Madison City Schools Superintendent Robby Parker. School resource officers (SROs) are police officers or deputies who have been trained to work in schools.

"Do we really want a first-year teacher in a gun battle with a terrorist? Do we think that's going to make us safe? My answer is no."

Superintendents said they want a firm distinction between teachers and law enforcement.

"Educators are educators, and first responders are first responders," said Dr. Gale Satchel, superintendent of Colbert County Schools. "We don't expect first responders to educate our kids in the classrooms, and I don't expect our teachers to carry weapons and take the focus off educating. I would leave that up to the trained professionals to do their jobs and leave our educators to do their jobs. It's a partnership."

"I don't think arming teachers is the answer," said Escambia County Schools Superintendent John Knott. "There's quite a bit of legislative action that would be required before you could do it, a huge amount of liability that goes into play, and a lot of concern about who's going to (be armed) and how you're going to regulate it. And then there are expenses involved.

"I know almost every superintendent in this state and I don't know anybody who says they have all the money they need."
Ask us
Alabama politicians have offered their ideas this week for how to best protect students from mass shooters.

For State Rep. Will Ainsworth, it's teachers armed with guns.

For Gov. Kay Ivey and Sen. Doug Jones, it's metal detectors.

But is anybody asking educators? AL.com did. When superintendents from around the state were asked what they'd want to help make schools safer, their answers were similar: upgrading aging facilities and stationing more police officers in schools.

"In order to make things effective, there's not just going to be one panacea," said Dr. Alan Cosby, Etowah County Schools superintendent. "It's got to be multiple layers."

Some want improved surveillance systems. Others want more crisis training for teachers and staff. The idea of metal detectors was met with hesitancy or outright skepticism.

"Most often we're reactive rather than proactive when it comes to funding and providing resources," said Dr. Gale Satchel, superintendent of Colbert County Schools. "I think our government should be more proactive in providing those funds."
Police in schools
Nearly every superintendent that talked with AL.com mentioned wanting one thing: more school resource officers (SROs). These are local uniformed police officers and deputies who patrol the schools.

"I would love to have a resource officer at every school, so they're present not only to the enemy, but so that our faculty, staff, students and community know we're providing a safe environment," said Satchel.

School resource officers typically have been trained to work in schools and are part of an agreement between a school system and a law enforcement agency.

"Police presence in a school is not the same thing as a certified, trained school resource officer working under a memorandum of agreement (between the school system and the law enforcement agency providing the officer)," said Dwight Satterfield, supervisor of school operations and safety at Decatur City Schools.

Parker said he'd like to have an SRO stationed at each school in his district.

"We have school resource officers at both high schools and both middle schools (in the Madison City district)," said Parker. "We have SROs in (some of) the elementary schools, but we don't have complete coverage and that's a goal of mine."

Funding for SROs varies. In districts like Madison, the school system pays the salaries. In other districts, the school system receives partial funding from city or county government to help pay for SROs.

In the Etowah County school district, there are about 12 SROs that cover about 20 schools. Some of the officers come from the Etowah County Sheriff's Department while others come from smaller municipalities in the county.

"Certainly having an SRO in every school, if we had the funding to do that, would provide another level of safety and comfort for the community," said Cosby.
Haven't been asked
There's already a School Safety Task Force with the State Department of Education that's been studying school safety in Alabama for several years. Its members have been contacted by few, if any, legislators in recent weeks.

"What I suggest is the legislators learn more about our safety task force and learn about the level of diversity in terms of city, rural, large districts," said Satterfield, who is on the task force. "I suggest they spend time sitting down and talking with us about what's in place, and listening to our needs.

"(Politicians) are all over the place with suggestions," he said. "We need a sit-down and an understanding of what's out there."
Different needs
Safety needs vary widely from district to district.

In mostly-rural Escambia County, Superintendent John Knott wants funding to improve and upgrade school facilities.

"We have school buildings and campuses that were designed with a different concept in mind," Knott said. "We have schools right now operating that are right at 100 years old, with different annexed buildings attached by awnings, and different entrances."

He'd like to be able to enclose walkways between school buildings to make them safer. Improved surveillance equipment, with trained personnel to operate it, is also at the top of his wish list, along with more SROs.

Satterfield wants to see funding for licensed professional counselors in schools to address mental health concerns with students.

Metal detectors are an option, but likely wouldn't stop a determined shooter and could be expensive to operate and maintain.

"You could go to the point where we have TSA-type security in schools (but) I'm not sure that's the answer," said Cosby. "We've still got to keep doing the basics, staying vigilant, having eyes and ears in the schools from parents, teachers and students (watching for potential threats)."

While all superintendents interviewed by AL.com said they had excellent relationships with local law enforcement, crisis response times can vary depending on a school's location. In an urban setting, first responders may be able to reach a school within 2-3 minutes. In rural areas, that time could stretch to 20 minutes.

Satterfield said his phone hasn't stopped ringing with calls from school administrators asking about safety training for their teachers and staff.

"It's not about turning off the lights and hiding in a corner," he said. "You have options in a crisis situation and schools need to know that, and know how to adequately prepare staff and students."

"Every school is different," said Knott, "and you need to assess what the needs are and develop a plan from there."
Want access to the best analysis and in-depth reporting about Alabama each week? Sign up for the weekly Reckon Report newsletter and follow Reckon on Facebook and Twitter.

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Forget giving guns to teachers, Alabama superintendents ask for more police in the halls

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Not one school superintendent who talked with AL.com this week thinks that teachers with firearms is a good idea. "I want a trained professional, which is the school resource officer, that's who I want there," said Madison City Schools Superintendent Robby Parker.

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"Alabama not the only state considering guns for teachers"

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"Alabama not the only state considering guns for teachers"

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In the aftermath of yet another mass school shooting, President Donald Trump says that if one of the victims, a football coach, had been armed "he would have shot and that would have been the end of it."

Revisiting an idea he raised in his campaign, Trump's comments in favor of allowing teachers to be armed come as lawmakers in several states are wrestling with the idea, including in Florida, where the 17 most recent school shooting victims are being mourned.

Assistant football coach Aaron Feis, hailed for shielding students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, "was very brave," Trump said Wednesday during a listening session with parents and survivors of school shootings. "If he had a firearm, he wouldn't have had to run."

Florida Republican Sen. Greg Steube said gun-free zones like schools are easy targets and has proposed allowing specially trained educators with military or law enforcement backgrounds to be armed.

"Our most valuable, most precious resources are our children. Why in the world are we going to put them in a circumstance where there is nobody that is armed and trained at any of our schools to be able to respond quickly to an active shooter situation?" Steube told The Associated Press, even as students, including survivors of the Parkland shooting, rallied at the state's capitol in support of changes in gun laws.

Similar discussions have taken place in Kentucky, Colorado, North Carolina and Alabama in recent days and Wisconsin's attorney general said he's open to the idea.

"Our students do not need to be sitting ducks. Our teachers do not need to be defending themselves with a No. 2 pencil," Rep. Will Ainsworth said in proposing a bill days after the Valentine's Day shooting in Florida.

The debate breaches statehouse walls, and teachers -- and the public -- are divided on the issue. A poll released this week by ABC News/Washington post says 42 percent of Americans believe teachers with guns could have prevented the Florida shooting.

Salt Lake City, Utah, teacher Kasey Hansen said the idea to arm herself in school began with the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 children and six adults died.

"It just really hit home that these teachers, all they could do was pile those kids in a corner and stand in front of them and hope for the best," said Hansen, who carries a concealed handgun as she teaches special education students.

"I'm not here to tell all teachers that they have to carry a gun," she said. "For me personally, I felt that it was more of a solution than just hiding in a corner and waiting."

Utah is among at least eight states that allow, or don't specifically prohibit, concealed weapons in K-12 schools, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

In Austin, Texas, teacher Tara Bordeaux can't easily see herself taking on that role, preferring to leave it to trained law enforcement officers.

"Would I get the same training and would I have the same type of instinct of when and how to use it?" asked Bordeaux, her state's 2018 teacher of the year. "I don't have any instincts in me to be an officer of the law. My instincts are to be a teacher."

Claude, Texas, Superintendent Brock Cartwright won't reveal how many or who among his teachers is armed, but the district's message to potential intruders blares in capital letters in three signs: "Please be aware that the staff at Claude ISD is armed and may use whatever force necessary to protect our students."

Like other administrators, Cartwright said armed teachers are just one part of safety plans that include drilling for emergencies and shoring up buildings. The small town east of Amarillo doesn't have a police department, raising concerns about the potential response time for law enforcement.

"Hopefully, we never have to use it," Cartwright said, "but if we do, our thought is we're going to hold off until help arrives."

The president of the 1.7 million-member American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, called arming teachers "one of the worst ideas I have heard in a series of really, really, really bad ideas." Nevertheless, a tweeted offer by Butler County, Ohio, Sheriff Richard Jones to train local teachers to carry a concealed handgun garnered so much interest that he quickly capped the number at 300.

When asked by radio host Hugh Hewitt about arming teachers, his education secretary, Betsy DeVos, said states "clearly have the opportunity and the option to do that."

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich called for small groups of armed teachers in every school, and was quickly countered by Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who labeled it the new "gun industry business model - using the gun violence epidemic to sell more guns, make more profit."

I never said "give teachers guns" like was stated on Fake News @CNN & @NBC. What I said was to look at the possibility of giving "concealed guns to gun adept teachers with military or special training experience - only the best. 20% of teachers, a lot, would now be able to
-- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 22, 2018

Magnolia, Texas, parent Robert Morphew would want strict guidelines, including for teachers to be trained and licensed, to support guns in his son's high school.

"I do think it would be a deterrent, there's no doubt," he said.

In Buffalo, New York, parent Wendy Diina disagreed.

"Why am I trying to prevent someone from having a gun by giving a gun to someone else?" the mother of two asked.

The National Association of School Resource Officers favors hiring more trained law enforcement officers, in part to ensure a teacher's gun won't mistakenly wind up in a student's hands.

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Alabama not the only state considering guns for teachers

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In the aftermath of yet another mass school shooting, President Donald Trump says that if one of the victims, a football coach, had been armed "he would have shot and that would have been the end of it."

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"Bill to let Alabama teachers carry guns wins committee approval"

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"Bill to let Alabama teachers carry guns wins committee approval"

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Teachers who train and qualify could have guns in school under a bill approved this morning by an Alabama House of Representatives committee.

The bill by Rep. Will Ainsworth, R-Guntersville, is one of the proposals sparked by the mass shooting that killed 17 people at a Florida high school on Feb. 14.

The House Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee approved it on a 5-4 vote. The bill is still a long way from becoming law. It would have to pass the House and Senate.

The committee heard pros and cons about arming teachers during a public hearing on Wednesday.

The committee adopted a new version of Ainsworth's bill this morning before approving it. Ainsworth said it combined his bill with parts of another by Rep. Allen Farley, R-McCalla. Farley's bill would have allowed school systems to set up volunteer emergency teams under the supervision of county sheriffs and police chiefs.

Farley asked the committee to set his bill aside this morning.

Voting for Ainsworth's bill in committee this morning were Ainsworth, Farley and Reps. Allen Treadaway, R-Morris, the committee chairman, Isaac Whorton, R-Valley and Tommy Hanes, R-Scottsboro.

Voting against it were Reps. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa; Thomas Jackson, D-Thomasville; Mary Moore, D-Birmingham; and Harry Shiver, R-Stockton.

Shiver, a retired physical education teacher and coach who taught for 32 years, said he opposed the bill because he was against teachers carrying guns, in part, because most teachers are women.

"I taught for 32 years and it's mostly ladies that's teaching and they've got more things to worry about than carrying a gun," Shiver said.

Shiver said teachers with guns would be at risk of being shot by law enforcement responding to a shooting inside a school.

Ainsworth said many women can capably handle firearms, including those who serve in the military and law enforcement.

Moore said instead of arming teachers, the Legislature should boost funding to provide more money for police officers based in schools, often called school resource officers.

Moore said the poorer school systems that can't afford school resource officers also would not be able to pay for the 40-hour training required for any armed teachers under Ainsworth's proposal.

"Even though you give them that option, they can't opt in because they don't have the funding," Moore said.

Ainsworth said the training to arm teachers. would be less expensive that school resource officers.

Under Ainsworth's bill, a teacher or school administrator designated to carry or store a gun on campus would have to complete, at a minimum, 40 hours of training that would include firearms safety, crisis management and active shooter training. They would also have to complete a firearms qualification annually.

Also, before final approval to carry or store a gun, a teacher or administrator would need a recommendation from the school principal, local superintendent and sheriff or chief of police and approval by the local school board.

"It's also going to allow the superintendent, working with the principal as well as the local law enforcement agent, chief of police or the sheriff in that community, to actually decide who would carry," Ainsworth said. "It's still voluntary, strictly permissive."

Ainsworth's bill goes to the House floor.

If it passes the House, Sen. Gerald Dial said he might carry it in the Senate, depending on some of the specifics. Dial said he generally supports the concept.

Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh, R-Anniston, said it was too soon to assess the chances without knowing specifics on a bill that might ultimately reach the Senate.

"It's my intent to assign it to a committee and just see where it goes from there," Marsh said.

Marsh has said he expects the session to wrap up by the end of the month.

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Bill to let Alabama teachers carry guns wins committee approval

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Teachers who train and qualify could have guns in school under a bill approved this morning by an Alabama House of Representatives committee. The bill by Rep. Will Ainsworth, R-Guntersville, is one of the proposals sparked by the mass shooting that killed 17 people at a Florida high school on Feb.