(cross posted at Edudiva.com)
The Sandy Hook massacre inside an elementary school has shocked us all. While we want everyone to be safe, we expect our youngest to be so inside their own school.
My children attend Clayton School District, one of the wealthier districts in St. Louis County. Like many local districts, it already has police officers at the high school and middle school. (The middle school officer also works with the elementary schools.) On Monday when I went to pick up my youngest, I saw a different police officer at the elementary school. I was a bit taken aback but assumed he was there to help parents feel more secure in the first few days after the Connecticut shooting. I am hopeful that the district does not spend money to keep police officers or even armed security at each elementary school long-term as the expense would not be justified.
Other school districts such as Kirkwood and Florissant are considering police officers at elementary schools in their school safety reviews. I believe, however, that time and calm parents will help them spend limited resources wisely.
I do agree that schools should review safety procedures as they have after each school shooting and periodically otherwise. Safety experts learn from each experience. For example, whoever turned on the intercom at Sandy Hook, whether intentionally or not, alerted the teachers to the severity of the problem. These types of details are important to safety plans.
St. Louis County Police Chief Tim Fitch said that each officer costs a district about $50,000 for a nine month contract. (Really a 10-month contract) In order to afford that, districts would need to lay off a teachers at each elementary school. That is not a trade-off I am willing to make.
As an alternative to paying for police officers at the schools, some politicians such as Texas governor, Rick Perry, have advocated arming teachers as a way to make schools safer. On Sunday, Chief Fitch brought the gun control debate squarely to the St. Louis school districts via Twitter.
It's time to talk with our schools (that don't have armed officers) about allowing properly trained school personnel to have firearms. --Chief Tim Fitch
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch followed up with a front-page story discussing Fitch's suggestion and other security possibilities. The local districts did not react with enthusiasm.
Fred Crawford, chief of security for the Parkway School District, said he would favor more police in schools over gun training for school officers.
The districts are right to hesitate. Teachers with guns in the classroom, even in a locked drawer, would bring a whole new set of problems to schools: that gun is more likely to be found and used against the teacher or other students, the teacher is not going to be as experienced as an active police officer, that gun is unlikely to be useful against a prepared killer like Adam Lanza with a bulletproof vest on, the teacher would be spending time helping students to safety, police might mistake teacher for intruder etc.
I would not send my kids to school with a teacher carrying a gun or with a gun in a locked drawer in the classroom. If the gun is locked up in the office, I would still feel uncomfortable. Who would have access? Have the parents been notified who has access? Their training? The date and continuation of their training?
In addition, districts hire teachers to teach, not to act as security.
I'm a former teacher and my daughter teaches currently. I want our teachers to be trained so that we can address the problems of literacy, so that we can improve our education system. Let the public safety people handle these other issues." --Rep. John Larson (D) Conn. on NOW with Alex Dec. 17, 2012
Districts should re-evaluate their safety plans and assess whether to add more security, depending on the local needs, not as an emotional reaction to a horrific situation. They should not, however, ask teachers to become that security force.
Should the citizens, parents, and leadership of a school district (or private school) decide as a community to take action to allow for some form of CCW, then that is one thing. Parents understand the environment they send their children to, and can make decisions based on that information. What you are doing is wrong. Personally, I don't trust civilians to exhibit the judgment or have the ability to follow protocols that LEOs have. You taking this upon yourself demonstrates poor judgement, in my opinion.
We are at the intersection between your belief that you having a gun handy 24x7 "might" help you ward off *potential* *future* *hypothetical* attackers for one brief moment of need, and my belief that my child is in a gun-free zone when they are at school, where there is no risk of a gun accident, and that the teachers respect that belief when I choose to send my child into that school. I didn't ask you to protect my child, and the community has explicitly stated this same policy. It is arrogant of you to think you "know better" than I do about my child's safety and violate school policy and the law to do so. If I am concerned about this, then you and others who feel like you would be able to convince the school governance to allow and legalize what you are and have been doing, and I would have the choice to send my child to such a school with that knowledge. Taking away my choice as a parent because you don't feel like the law applies to you is not an expression of *my* freedoms, and demonstrates your complete lack of respect for the rights and freedoms that the rest of us are just as entitled to as you are. If you don't like the current laws, work to change them, not break them.
On average, 4 children died every day in non-homicide firearm incidents from 1999-2002. From 1997-2002, more than 1,324 children were killed in firearm accidents. Source: CDC and http://ow.ly/gjq15 That another reader proposes that such gun-totin' teachers be "encouraged" to take training is horrifying, and does not ease my concerns at all over such a policy change. MANDATORY should be more like it, if you were to even think about convincing others to agree with you. If you feel your workplace is so unsafe that you feel you need to carry, then you really need to find another line of work. Become a real police officer and ask to be assigned to school duty or your local church or mall security if you truly feel the need to carry a gun and "protect" people - legally and with their open agreement for you to do so.
But to claim that you know how to protect my child better than I do, I'll take a pass on your offer. I'm the parent, you're not.
Mike maybe you considered purchasing a weapon also. You never know when a bad guy may come into your life. When that happens it will be too late. Maybe this is why gun sales are up 100% over same period last year.
On average, 4 children died every day in non-homicide firearm incidents from 1999-2002. From 1997-2002, more than 1,324 children were killed in firearm accidents. Source: CDC and http://ow.ly/gjq15 I'll take my chances in a gun-free zone over your alleged self-professed skill and ability to disarm and protect my kid any day, every day. You expect me to trust your hypothetical, unproven ability as claim by someone that picks and chooses which laws he wants to abide by depending on whether you agree with them or not. What's next, you're only going to protect the straight white kids from affluent neighborhoods when you can't save them all and have to choose which children to save? IMHO it is you and your gun that are not helping the problem.