Pennsylvania bill would allow teachers, school staff to bring guns to work September 16, 2014 11:10 PM By Karen Langley / Post-Gazette Harrisburg Bureau HARRISBURG — As he returned home from Franklin Regional High School the day of the mass stabbing in April, state Sen. Don White thought of rural schools and how much longer it could take state police to respond to a similar incident at one of them, he told a legislative committee.

Such districts “would be a minimum of 25 to 40 minutes away from getting state police help, minimum, unless they just happened to be luckily on patrol in that area,” said Mr. White, R-Indiana. “Everything that happened at Franklin Regional happened in less than five minutes, and police were there.”

Mr. White now wants Pennsylvania school districts to be able to permit their staff — upon obtaining licensing and certification — to carry firearms in school buildings and on the grounds.

His proposal received a hearing Tuesday before the Senate Education Committee. Members heard from an Indiana Area High School math teacher who supported the proposal and a Schuylkill County superintendent who was satisfied with his district’s decision to arm two staff members.

The chief counsel for the Pennsylvania School Boards Association said the group’s members like to have local options, though he stopped short of endorsing the proposal. And the police chief of Susquehanna Township, which borders Harrisburg, did not oppose the measure but warned of the seriousness of equipping school workers to kill.

“I can tell you that having been involved in uses of deadly force, the mental component is a very critical factor,” Chief Robert A. Martin said.

“We take a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of hours, and it’s ongoing, in the training of our law enforcement officers to meet those legal, physical and mental thresholds to use deadly force. And you would want to be sure that the staff members or teachers that are armed, per se, are up to that commitment.”

He noted the possibility that police officers arriving at the school could have difficulty distinguishing between an armed aggressor and a teacher defending students with a firearm.

Recent state-level examinations of school safety have sided against arming teachers. In a report issued in November, the House Select Committee for School Safety said that testimony from state agencies, law enforcement, education groups and district attorneys led it to recommend that only school police officers or security officers be armed on school property.

In December, an Advisory Committee on Violence Prevention, formed at the direction of the Senate, reported that it supported schools hiring police or resource officers but “strongly opposes arming school administrators, teachers or other non-law enforcement personnel.”

“Police officers undergo extensive training in the use of their weapons and teachers do not,” the report states. “Therefore, it is unreasonable to expect a teacher to have the same firearms competency as a law enforcement officer, and not sound policy to assign such responsibility to a teacher.”

Mr. White’s bill is not on the legislative fast track.

After the hearing Tuesday, committee Chairman Mike Folmer, R-Lebanon, said he will review the bill again but does not believe enough time remains this fall for the committee to hold a vote.

Democrats at the hearing sounded skeptical. Sen. Daylin Leach, D-Montgomery, said of his mother, a teacher: “The idea of my mother having a shoot-out with some psychotic person with an assault weapon is just preposterous.”

Several members of the group Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America sat through the hearing.

“There’s so many things teachers are there to do, and what their job is, and being a security guard or a police officer is not part of our job,” Kristen Bruck, a former middle school teacher who now teaches at a community college, said afterward.

Karen Langley: [email protected] or 717-787-2141.

First Published September 16, 2014 11:04 AM http://www.post-gazette.com/news/state/2014/09/16/Pennsylvania-bill-would-allow-teachers-school- staff-to-bring-guns-to-work/stories/201409160159.print

Two Midstate superintendents hesitant about allowing school staff to carry guns

SEPTEMBER 16, 2014 11:15 AM • BY DANIEL WALMER AND JOSHUA VAUGHN, THE SENTINEL

A bill that would permit school districts to allow teachers and other employees to carry guns in schools took center stage at a Senate Education Committee hearing Tuesday in Harrisburg, drawing a mixed reaction from lawmakers.

Two Cumberland County superintendents, meanwhile, suggested the practice could do more harm than good.

Republican Sen. Donald White, R-Indiana, the prime sponsor, said at the hearing that the bill would give school boards more options for protecting students, especially those in rural areas who rely on often- distant state troopers for police protection. Mark Zilinskas, an Indiana Area High School math teacher who was the lead-off witness for the bill, said the legislation would enable school employees who are licensed and trained to use guns to prevent a mass shooting, rather than react to it.

“They refer to the police as the first responders and we are the first responders. I am the first responder,” he said, “and I believe that I can make a difference and other people like me can make a difference if we have the proper tools and training.”

The measure would authorize school boards to permit teachers, administrators and other staff members to arm themselves to protect students. They would have to be licensed to carry a concealed weapon and trained in the use of firearms. Proponents of the bill cited the 2012 massacre of 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut and an April knife attack at Franklin Regional High School near Pittsburgh that injured 21 people as examples of incidents that armed school employees might have stopped.

“Any measure we can take to make schools safer, the better,” said state Rep. Stephen Bloom, R-North Middleton Township, whose district includes western Cumberland County.

Bloom said he supported most bills that aim to create a safer educational environment, whether that was by increasing the physical security through use of cameras and making entry into schools more difficult, or by adding armed individuals who can respond to a potential threat. Bloom said that he feels shooters target schools and other “soft targets” because they know they are not going to be met with armed resistance.

Sen. Anthony Williams, D-Philadelphia, however, said it is a bad idea to place such a grave responsibility on people whose principal interest is educating children.

Schools

Cumberland Valley School District Superintendent Fred Withum agreed that teachers have enough on their plates without the additional responsibility of carrying a weapon.

“If there were to be armed people in public schools, in my mind, it would have to be certified, properly vetted and trained police officers,” Withum said. “I don’t see how a teacher, particularly in a crisis situation, is going to easily change from one hat to another and make good, fast decisions consistently without that training and experience.” South Middleton School District Superintendent Alan Moyer expressed similar concerns. As someone who grew up hunting, he understands the potential for gun accidents, he said.

“I just believe that human beings make mistakes,” Moyer said. “The vast majority of serious accidents that come from guns in the home are just because of negligence or they are left loaded.”

Still, he said, the concept of armed staff might be worth considering in rural school districts where police cannot respond quickly.

“I do believe every district has some unique situations, and I do think keeping every option open for districts is good to talk about, but just in general ... I am not comfortable for firearms on school property,” he said.

South Middleton School District prepares staff in other ways for the possibility of an armed intruder through training drills and activities that teach situational awareness, he said.

The Pennsylvania School Boards Association said it preferred not to take a position on the bill, at least in part because of the public debate over the role of guns.

“PSBA acknowledges that there are great differences of opinion about whether increasing the presence of firearms in schools is a wise or effective approach for enhancing school security,” its general counsel, Stuart Knade, wrote in his printed testimony. “That is not a debate in which it is necessary or productive for PSBA to take a position, and it would be difficult for PSBA to take a position on (the bill) without being perceived as jumping into that other debate.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

HARRISBURG - A bill that would allow Pennsylvania teachers and other school employees to carry guns at work drew a mixed reaction Tuesday from lawmakers.

Republican Sen. Donald White, R-Indiana, the prime sponsor, said at a Senate Education Committee hearing that the bill would give school boards more options for protecting students, especially those in rural areas that rely on often-distant state troopers for police protection.

Mark Zilinskas, an Indiana Area High School math teacher who was the leadoff witness for the bill, said the legislation would enable school employees who are licensed and trained to use guns to prevent a mass shooting, rather than react to it.

"They refer to the police as the first responders and we are the first responders. I am the first responder," he said, "and I believe that I can make a difference and other people like me can make a difference if we have the proper tools and training."

Proponents of the bill cited the 2012 massacre of 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut and an April knife attack at Franklin Regional High School near Pittsburgh that injured 21 people as examples of incidents that armed school employees might have stopped.

But Sen. Anthony Williams, D-Philadelphia, said it is a bad idea to place such a grave responsibility on people whose principal interest is educating children. The measure would authorize school boards to permit teachers, administrators and other staff members to arm themselves to protect students. They would have to be licensed to carry a concealed weapon and trained in the use of firearms.

The Pennsylvania School Boards Association said it preferred not to take a position on the bill, at least in part because of the public debate over the role of guns.

"PSBA acknowledges that there are great differences of opinion about whether increasing the presence of firearms in schools is a wise or effective approach for enhancing school security," its general counsel, Stuart Knade, wrote in his printed testimony. "That is not a debate in which it is necessary or productive for PSBAS to take a position, and it would be difficult for PSBA to take a position on (the bill) without being perceived as jumping into that other debate."

Posted earlier on Cumberlink:

HARRISBURG - Teachers and other school employees in Pennsylvania could carry guns at work under a bill that's before a state legislative committee.

Sen. Donald White, a Republican, is presenting his proposal to the Senate Education Committee on Tuesday.

The Indiana County lawmaker says the proposal is an option worth considering in the aftermath of school shootings in other states.

The measure would authorize school boards to permit teachers, administrators and other staff members to arm themselves to protect students. They would have to be licensed to carry a concealed weapon and trained in the use of firearms.

http://cumberlink.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/two-midstate-superintendents-hesitant-about-allowing- school-staff-to-carry/article_a583ee5e-3da7-11e4-a814-07bc2bf41048.html

States Renew Push for Guns in Schools

Lawmakers in Colorado, North Dakota and Wyoming are seeking to expand the ability to carry concealed weapons on school grounds.

Some state lawmakers argue that relaxing weapons bans will make schools safer.

By Tierney Sneed Feb. 4, 2015 | 5:58 p.m. EST + More

State lawmakers across the country are considering bills that would increase the presence of guns in schools, with a number of states debating proposals that would expand the right of gun owners to carry firearms on college campuses. In Colorado, North Dakota and Wyoming, lawmakers are pushing legislation that would peel back limits on bringing firearms to K-12 schools as well.

“We would like schools to have more options for protection,” says North Dakota Rep. Dwight Kiefert, a Republican sponsor of legislation that would allow holders of concealed weapons licenses to bring firearms to school campuses if they receive the school’s permission.

“The reason it’s necessary is we have rural schools that are 30 miles away from law enforcement, so we are trying to address the response time [to a potential shooting]. Because by the time law enforcement gets there, it won’t be a rescue anymore,” he says.

While the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting reinvigorated the push to put more guns in schools, the debate over whether arming teachers would make schools safer has raged since the 1999 Columbine High School shooting. The sponsor of a new Colorado bill that would allow concealed carry permit holders to bring weapons to public schools is a former Columbine student who was present at the high school the day of the shooting.

“As was the case in 1999, criminals aren’t deterred by a flashy sign on the door,” Rep. Patrick Neville, a Republican, said in a statement announcing the bill’s introduction Monday. “The only thing that is going to stop murderers intent on doing harm is to give good people the legal authority to carry a gun to protect themselves and our children.”

According to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 39 states prohibit concealed carry permit holders from bringing firearms to K-12 schools. (Three other states allow schools themselves to ban such permit holders from bringing guns.) However, most states allow teachers with concealed carry permits to bring firearms, if they are granted permission from their school board or another authority.

“Campuses and schools are on the long list where gun lobbyists are trying to push guns in public places,” says Laura Cutilletta, a senior staff attorney at the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. But she adds that there has been an increase in such efforts since Sandy Hook.

"To have the NRA go on TV and say the only way to stop is to have people armed in schools definitely had an effect on some legislators," she says.

The NRA was not able to confirm whether it supported the latest state bills, but spokesman Andrew Arulanandam says the organization favors a "holistic" approach to security at schools of all education levels.

While North Dakota’s bill requires school approval, as well as special training by law enforcement, Wyoming’s and Colorado’s respective legislation would extend the right to carry guns to schools to anyone with a concealed carry permit. The Wyoming proposal repeals “gun-free zones” not just in public schools, but in government meetings and at athletic events, and it passed the state's House of Representatives this week. Supporters compare it to laws in Utah, where gun restrictions are among the most lax in the country.

“We don’t see the mass shootings in Utah,” says Anthony Bouchard, executive director of the gun rights group Wyoming Gun Owners. “[Potential shooters] don’t know who’s inside, who’s armed, who’s going to fight back, and that's why we need to follow Utah’s model.” Opponents, however, point to a Utah teacher who made headlines in September when she accidentally shot herself in the leg while at her elementary school.

Colorado’s law rolls back gun restrictions specifically geared toward schools, so that anyone with a concealed weapons permit can bring firearms to public school campuses. It already faces stiff opposition in the state, where gun politics attracted even more post-Columbine attention after a mass shooting at an Aurora movie theater in 2012

“As moms, we want our kids' schools to be safe havens. More guns in schools is going to cause more danger,” says Jennifer Hope, Colorado chapter leader for the gun control group Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. “We are dropping our kids off at school to learn about math, science, and reading, not to learn how to duck and cover.”

Even though the North Dakota bill requires training and for concealed carry permit holders to inform law enforcement they have received permission to bring a gun to school, school groups there have come out against it as well. The legislation also has passed in the state's House of Representatives.

“[The training] is not nearly comprehensive enough and it's not ongoing,” says Jon Martinson, executive director of the North Dakota School Boards Association, who doubts that armed teachers would act as a deterrent to school shooters, who are often suicidal.

“My biggest fear is that there would be someone hurt, injured or – heaven forbid – killed who is an innocent person,” Martinson says, “And heaven forbid the person who is shot is shot by a school district employee, and then what?”

Proposed legislation will make getting concealed carry permits easier

Proposed bills that will go in front of lawmakers Monday will make it easier for Oklahomans to get concealed carry permits and would allow guns to be carried on college campuses.

Tierney Sneed is a culture and social issues reporter for U.S. News & World Report. You can follow her http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/02/04/states-renew-push-for-guns-in-k-12-schools

Published Online: February 15, 2013

Published in Print: February 20, 2013, as Teachers Already Armed in Some Districts Armed Educators a Reality in Some Schools, Debated in Others As a once-unthinkable idea gains currency, educators ask: what happens if I miss?

By Nirvi Shah

Valley Mills, Texas

Shooting instructor Johnny Price looked at the teachers lined up in front of him, a selection of handguns resting on the table before them. He slid his fingertips over the clean, round bullet holes beyond the outlines of a human torso on paper targets a few yards away.

“That,” Mr. Price said, pointing to a hole that missed the target completely, “is a child.”

Mr. Price, the owner of Big Iron Concealed Handgun Training in Waco, Texas, spent two days this month training teachers and staff members from the Clifton school district in all they need to know to earn licenses to carry weapons out of sight. There is no indication that the 1,000-student district is leaning toward allowing employees to bring guns to school.

But curiosity about carrying concealed weapons has been running high here and all over the country ever since the school shootings in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14. The massacre has given rise to the perhaps once- unthinkable idea of arming teachers as a possible policy fix for improving school safety.

While many national organizations have rejected the idea, it is now being seriously weighed by some school boards and state lawmakers across the nation. The action wouldn’t be without precedent: In Utah, school employees have been able to carry concealed weapons onto campus for about a decade—without telling a soul—and at least four Texas school districts are known to have granted select employees permission to take concealed weapons to school.

For many educators here and elsewhere, it is no longer a question of whether to take guns to school. Instead, the questions are: How do I carry this thing without anyone noticing? Can I kill someone if the time comes?

And, maybe most frightening of all, what happens if I miss?

Educators Learn the Right Way to Bear Arms

Long before the Clifton school employees talked about carrying concealed weapons to class or the 26 students and staff members of Sandy Hook Elementary School were killed, the Southland district in Texas adopted a policy allowing a handpicked group of employees to carry firearms. The 163-student district in the Texas panhandle added the measure about a year and a half ago, seizing on a state law that allows employees to carry concealed weapons on campus if boards adopt policies allowing it—a relatively unencumbered process, especially when compared with other states'.

In recent weeks, the Texas Association of School Boards has fielded hundreds of phone calls from districts inquiring about such a shift, said Joy Baskin, the director of legal services for the Austin-based organization.

The group recently prepared a guidance document for school districts that helps walk administrators through the process of adding such a provision, including related safety steps that should be taken, liability concerns to consider, and how to involve local law enforcement in the decision.

Hiding the Holster

Southland Superintendent Toby Miller said his district considered all of that. School officials kept coming to the same conclusion: “We are the first responders.”

Adopting that attitude has dramatically changed the morning routine for one of Southland’s employees who brings a weapon to school—at least on the days her clothing will hide it.

“It’s actually a lot of looking in the mirror in the morning, asking your other half ‘Can you see this?’ That’s kind of how my morning goes,” said the staff member, who spoke with Education Week on the condition of anonymity—a necessity for the policy to work, the district says. “You can hide a lot with a long skirt that’s kind of flowy.”

She has been wearing her weapon in a boot holster—slender legs allow the gun to fit inside easily. But a recent episode of “NCIS: Los Angeles” gave her an inspiration. One of the show’s female investigators, dressed in a fitted shirt and tight skirt, was asked by her partner where she was storing her weapon. “She had it inside her shirt,” said the Southland employee, who has since ordered her own bra holster.

For another Southland arms bearer, most skirts are off limits now, as are elastic waistbands. Just as for other gun-bearing staff members, her weapon cannot be carried in her purse or locked in her desk but must stay on her person all day. Over time, its presence has become less awkward, but it’s not forgotten.

“Whether physically or mentally, you know it’s there. You have to be conscious of it all the time,” she said. The district’s training has drilled into her that it is rare or unlikely that she will ever use it. No situation thus far has caused her to contemplate drawing the gun.

“You can resolve most things ... just by talking with the person,” she said. Southland sits about 15 miles from the nearest law-enforcement agencies, and the response time for any emergency can be 25 minutes, Superintendent Miller said. Tranquilizer guns and Mace, other options the district considered, wouldn’t be as disabling or precise as handguns and would require being very close to an attacker, he added. Money for a school resource officer isn’t in the budget. And the guns are part of a larger school safety strategy for the district that includes a collection of security cameras.

The armed employees, a small subset of the district’s 32-member staff, went through mental-health screenings and trained for their concealed-weapons licenses together. The training will be ongoing, he said, as long as

Southland employees carry weapons. And the guns fire so-called frangible ammunition, which breaks into small pieces on contact, preventing ricochet.

“We’re not trying to pretend we’ve got a SWAT team here,” said Mr. Miller. “We’ve done a lot of things that put us in a better position to be able to react directly.”

Attitude Shift

Plenty of teachers and national education groups have rejected the idea of arming school employees, although at least some school safety experts say it shouldn’t be off the table completely, particularly when limited to a very small number of staff members in highly remote schools without ready access to law enforcement.

But what does worry Michael S. Dorn, who runs the Atlanta-based Safe Havens International, a nonprofit school safety organization, is the new sacrificial and cavalier attitude he has found many school employees adopting since the Newtown shootings, which is, “Now, I’m supposed to die” to defend students, he said.

The disposition is one that may be driving their desire to carry weapons, he said. And it is behind the mishandling of school safety procedures he is seeing when assessing security procedures at schools around the country, said Mr. Dorn, a former school police chief. Too many teachers and administrators have switched to attack mode, in his view.

“We’re seeing so many [school employees] saying they would attack” someone, he said, “whether it’s two parents coming into the office arguing over a custody issue or people pulling a handgun but not actually shooting anybody.”

In drills and hypothetical scenarios, school staff members are “forgetting to protect children while they’re doing this. They are failing to clear the room in the process of going after intruders,” he said. “The most important thing is [for school employees] to protect themselves so they can protect people in their immediate area and protect the whole school. If they get killed, they can’t protect the school.” School safety consultant Ken Trump, the president of the Cleveland-based National School Safety and Security

Services, disagrees with arming teachers and staff. He said if anyone is carrying weapons on campus, it should be trained police officers. But he, too, is alarmed by some of his recent consulting experiences. Basic steps to ensure safety from intruders or natural disasters seem to have been forgotten.

“Everything is ‘active shooter, active shooter, active shooter, active shooter,’ ” Mr. Trump said. “I’m still able to walk into school through unlocked doors at schools that are not practicing lockdown drills during normal hours.”

Dose of Reality

At the shooting range here, just south of the school district, Mr. Johnny Price couldn’t emphasize enough the consequences of carrying a weapon.

“We’re responsible for everything that comes out of our firearm,” he repeated to groups of Clifton district employees who took turns firing.

As acrid gunsmoke drifted over teachers’ heads, he stood firm on that point.

“That’s why most of y’all aren’t ready to carry in the classroom yet, without some additional training, a lot more trigger time, getting familiar with your firearm, ... without crisis assessment and crisis training, so you don’t take it to the next level when you don’t have to.”

That message hit home for Dianne Bernhardt, who supervises the district’s custodial staff. Other than the occasional armadillo she has deflected from her own property with a shotgun, Ms. Bernhardt said she has little experience with guns.

“It’s a wake-up call when you’re outside the perimeters of where you’re supposed to be shooting. Thinking that could be an innocent bystander or a child,” she said, her voice breaking, “you know, that you might hurt them in the process ... Practice is just very important with this type of thing.”

The afternoon at the shooting range—a makeshift outdoor setup where the bullets that penetrated the paper targets lodged in a bluff—was both a thrill and a trial for participants. Guns jammed, magazines were loaded backwards, and hands shook. But, eventually, brass casings flew as the mostly novice group of shooters ripped through the required 50 rounds of live ammunition from three-, seven-, and 15-yard distances from the paper targets. “It was exhilarating,” said Stacey Cockrell, a 9th grade special education teacher at Clifton High, at the end of her session. She said she has plans to buy a gun and favors arming teachers.

“I think you need to take each and every measure that you can to make sure you’re prepared as you can be and keep those kids as safe as you can possibly keep them safe,” said Ms. Cockrell, adding that she’d need a lot more training before taking a weapon to school.

Holding up one of the handguns teachers used to practice their aim, Luke Price, the instructor’s son and a trainer himself, summed it up this way: “This is just a rock, unless you know how to use it.”

Policies Elsewhere

Some of the staff members believe it’s only a matter of time before Clifton joins the other Texas districts that allow employees to carry on campus. They include two that adopted their policies since the Newtown killings,

Union Grove and Van.

In the 2,200-student Van school district in East Texas, Superintendent Don Dunn said that although each of the four campuses in his domain are within about a mile of the local police station, the swiftness with which 26 people were killed at the Connecticut school drove his district’s decision.

“From the moment we have an armed intruder to the time the police are notified and can actually arrive is a 3 - to 5-minute window. During that time period, our kids and our teachers and our staff are completely defenseless,” Mr. Dunn said.

Each employee he enlisted will get a one-time stipend to buy a weapon and a monthly check to buy ammunition for practice.

When he recruited staff members, none said no, but he was choosy: “Some teachers don’t have any business carrying a gun. I’d never feel good giving them the authority to do it,” he said. “It just may be that they don’t have the mental makeup to be able to put their life on the line to protect the kids.”

Utah school administrators have no say in the matter: “A school administrator cannot ask,” said Carol Lear, the director of school law and legislation at the state education department.

The state tweaked its concealed-carry law in 2003, allowing permit holders to bring weapons to schools. “A school administrator cannot get a list of employees in his building who have permits. Now that I am thinking about it, I guess an administrator could ask teachers to tell him who does not have a concealed permit,” she added.

Cori Sorenson, a 4th grade teacher at Highland Elementary in Highland, Utah, recently applied for her permit after years of self-defense and firearm-training courses. Reviewing media accounts of the Sandy Hook shooting, she said she can’t help but wonder “if that principal had been carrying, if that teacher had been carrying, what would have been different?”

Mr. Dorn, the Georgia school safety consultant, said basing security decisions on media accounts, however, is a mistake. Until Connecticut State Police release a detailed report of what happened at Sandy Hook, it’s impossible to tell what could have been done differently. And schools can’t prepare for future incidents based solely on the events of Dec. 14, as they could not previously base all training on what happened at Columbine

High School in Jefferson County, Colo., in 1999.

“Sandy Hook didn’t look anything like Columbine. Columbine didn’t look like Pearl, Miss.,” Mr. Dorn said, referring to a 1997 shooting spree in which a student killed two classmates and wounded seven.

But Ms. Sorenson, a 13-year teaching veteran, is among those bolstered by the fact that there haven’t been school shootings in Utah since the law changed. Should her license materialize, Ms. Sorenson would not disclose whether she would take a gun to school.

“One person’s choice is not the same choice for somebody else,” she said. “Along with that choice, comes responsibility.”

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/02/15/21guns_ep.h32.html?tkn=LWZFixL7TFb%2BlXqQHF34LnGv5q

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