{"id":96373,"date":"2023-09-28T16:30:28","date_gmt":"2023-09-28T21:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=96373"},"modified":"2023-09-28T16:30:28","modified_gmt":"2023-09-28T21:30:28","slug":"96373","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=96373","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Teachers With Guns: District by District, a Push to Arm Educators Is Growing<\/a>
\nSeconds matter during a school shooting. A rural superintendent wondered, what if staff members could intervene before police arrived?<\/em><\/p>\n

An act of mass violence hasn\u2019t yet touched the Benjamin Logan Local School District.<\/p>\n

Superintendent John Scheu is thankful for that.<\/p>\n

But for years, every time news broke about yet another school shooting, Scheu faced a handful of \u201cwhat if?\u201d questions.<\/p>\n

What if a school in this small, rural district about an hour northwest of Columbus, Ohio\u2014where the closest police outpost is 10 miles away\u2014was the next target of a shooting? What if Benjamin Logan students were the next to have to huddle in closets sending \u201cI love you\u201d texts to friends and family? What if Scheu\u2019s community was the next to have to mourn the loss of beloved students and staff members?<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it can happen in all of these other places, it could happen here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

So, Scheu and his district invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in security. They hired school resource officers who are stationed at each of the district\u2019s three schools. Security cameras send live feeds to the local sheriff\u2019s office. Staff are reminded often that exterior doors are not to be propped open or left unlocked for any reason.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a new mental health clinic at one of the schools, staffed with counselors trained to help the district\u2019s roughly 1,600 students and 225 staff members.<\/p>\n

\n
District leaders felt confident they\u2019d done all they could to keep outside threats from entering their buildings.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

But what if the threat came from someone already inside?<\/p>\n

Students and teachers have lockdown drills, and, as has become commonplace in American schools, they know to pull down the shades and lock the classroom doors before hiding quietly from a threat. But, beyond that, there isn\u2019t much they would be able to do but \u201cwait and hope that help would come,\u201d Scheu said.<\/p>\n

Except, Scheu asked himself, what if there were staff members trained to intervene? What if a handful of teachers, aides, and others could quickly reach for a firearm if an active shooter were targeting students?<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re talking about putting out an active shooter threat, it\u2019s a matter of seconds, not a matter of minutes,\u201d said Scheu, who has served as superintendent in the district since July 2020. \u201cAnd it\u2019s a matter of life and death.\u201d<\/p>\n

After a year of planning, the district\u2019s first \u201cArmed Response Team\u201d was in place to start the 2023-24 school year, part of a growing trend in Ohio and elsewhere in which schools tap teachers and other employees to act as the first line of armed defense against an active shooter.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

An evolution of thinking on arming teachers<\/h2>\n

Scheu isn\u2019t the first to have the idea of allowing trained educators to be armed, but he brings unique experience to the process of standing up a team of teachers with access to firearms on campus.<\/p>\n

In fact, Benjamin Logan is the second district to develop a program under Scheu\u2019s oversight in which teachers and other school staff take firearms training and have weapons at the ready.<\/p>\n

He ushered in a related program at a nearby district nearly a decade ago, in Ohio\u2019s Sidney City Schools, when he served as superintendent there.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"Officer<\/picture>
\n
\n
Officer Logan Brown discusses de-escalation tactics with educators from the Benjamin Logan Local School District in Bellefontaine, Ohio, during a training session for the district’s armed response team by the Logan County Sheriff\u2019s Office on June 26, 2023. The 24-hour training curriculum is approved by the Ohio School Safety Center, part of the Ohio Department of Public Safety.<\/div>\n

Eli Hiller for Education Week<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

In 2013\u2014just a few months after 26 people were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut\u2014the district approved an armed response team, which remains in place today. Staff members in the program keep their firearms and bulletproof vests in specialized safes in the buildings that only open with the team members\u2019 fingerprints, Scheu said. Nobody, however, carries a concealed firearm with them on campus.<\/p>\n

Sidney City Schools\u2019 current superintendent did not respond to EdWeek interview requests over the summer.<\/p>\n

There are no national data on just how many schools have armed staff, but the controversial change has gained steam in the past decade, corresponding with a rise in American school shootings and widespread attention to the issue of gun violence on campuses.<\/p>\n

Thirty-three states now allow<\/a>\u00a0teachers to carry guns at school, if approved by their local district. Those state laws have all passed in the past decade, after\u00a0South Dakota became the first state to enact legislation<\/a>\u00a0allowing educators to be armed in March 2013.<\/p>\n

Is 24 hours enough training?<\/h2>\n

The 17 staff members who started the school year on Sept. 5 as part of Benjamin Logan\u2019s inaugural Armed Response Team spent the summer preparing. The group is a mix of 10 men and seven women, a combination of teachers and other school employees.<\/p>\n

After undergoing background checks and mental health screenings, they participated in a three-day, 24-hour training at the end of June, which included classroom-based lessons and practice handling and using firearms at a local shooting range.<\/p>\n

The lessons addressed when and when not to engage with a shooter, first aid, firearms handling, and self-defense, and included simulated drills of active shooter situations and target practice.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"An<\/picture>
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An educator with the Benjamin Logan Local School District takes notes during the district’s armed response team training in Bellefontaine, Ohio, on June 26, 2023.<\/div>\n

Eli Hiller for Education Week<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Under the Ohio state law allowing districts to have armed staff members, the participants required approval from the local sheriff\u2019s office, the firing range instructor, coursework instructors, and Scheu.<\/p>\n

Armed Response Team members will also have to complete eight hours of additional training each year, and the experts who conduct the training will have to reapprove the participants.<\/p>\n

\n
Some have raised concerns that armed educators in Ohio aren\u2019t receiving enough training, especially in the past year, after changes to state law<\/a>\u00a0in June 2022 dropped the minimum number of required hours of training to 24 from more than 700.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Ohio\u2019s main teachers\u2019 union and its primary police union both opposed the change. In a year of debate, legislators heard testimony from those opposed to the change more than 360 times, compared with 20 times from those in support,\u00a0according to NPR<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Jim Irvine, president of pro-gun Ohio\u2019s Buckeye Firearms Foundation recently told a local news outlet that he doesn\u2019t think the teachers across the state who have been certified to carry guns on campus in the past year, since the reduction in required training hours took effect, have been adequately trained.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are some things that are a mess with trainers that have been approved by the state that really don\u2019t have the experience and the knowledge, we don\u2019t think, to be doing this,\u201d\u00a0Irvine told TV station WSYX<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Scott DiMauro, the president of the Ohio Education Association\u2014the state teachers\u2019 union that represents educators across the state\u2014agreed that the teachers involved are not receiving sufficient training. Twenty-four hours is not enough, he said, pointing out that other states, like Florida, require\u00a0more than 100 hours<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we\u2019re going to go this route, they should at least set a higher standard,\u201d DiMauro said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Teachers With Guns: District by District, a Push to Arm Educators Is Growing Seconds matter during a school shooting. A rural superintendent wondered, what if staff members could intervene before police arrived? An act of mass violence hasn\u2019t yet touched the Benjamin Logan Local School District. Superintendent John Scheu is thankful for that. But for … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,8,29,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-schools","category-rkba","category-safety","category-self-defense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=96373"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96374,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96373\/revisions\/96374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=96373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=96373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=96373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}