Most teachers do not want to be turned into armed school security guards
ATLANTA GA June 8 2022 — If you know a teacher, you know that they wear many hats. Teacher. Parent. Counselor. Therapist. Referee. Comedian. Detective. Interior decorator. Event Planner. Nurse. Cheerleader. Coach. The inherent unfairness of their profession is that, despite us all knowing this fact, they get paid in money for only one of those hats. They only get paid in compliments for the other ones. But that’s another point for another week. This week, it suffices to say that teachers wear more hats than MLB teams.
Last week, the Ohio General Assembly decided to add another one: security guard. On June 1, Ohio lawmakers voted to greatly reduce the amount of training teachers (and other staff) must go through before carrying a gun on school grounds. Under that bill, House Bill 99, a teacher would have to complete roughly 20 hours of firearms training.
As it stands now, a teacher who wants to carry a gun on school grounds must undergo peace officer training, which is the same training that police officers take. That is because Ohio law currently bars public or private schools from employing anyone in a position where they would be armed while on duty unless that person has either undergone peace officer training or been an active-duty peace officer for 20 years. In total hours, peace officer training is about 600 hours.
Though the bill was introduced last year, it gained momentum in the legislature as the Republican response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. A co-sponsor of the bill, Ohio Sen. Terry Johnson, said, “We heard people say do something. Well, this is something. It’s a significant something. It’s something that needs to be done.”
Gov. Mike DeWine has indicated that he will sign HB 99 into law saying, “My office worked with the General Assembly to remove hundreds of hours of curriculum irrelevant to school safety and to ensure training requirements were specific to a school environment and contained significant scenario-based training. HB 99 accomplishes these goals, and I thank the General Assembly for passing this bill to protect Ohio children and teachers.”
DeWine’s argument isn’t entirely unreasonable on its face. If all 600 peace-officer-training hours aren’t applicable to protecting others in an active-shooter situation, then I can see how requiring teachers who want to be armed to take those hours can be considered a bit excessive. Further, schools can set their own training requirements above the roughly 20 hours mandated in HB 99, which gives them room to tailor training to their needs. That’s a good thing. Lastly, the idea that is driving HB 99, the idea that a trained and armed teacher could stop an active shooter, is not entirely unreasonable. I can — and would — argue with DeWine about the likelihood of that happening, but I can’t categorically say that the idea could or would never happen. It is possible.
But I have a question for the supporters of HB 99. It centers around teachers, those esteemed public servants that we all know sacrifice much for the benefit of our children. Teachers, those people who are at the center of the idea upon which HB 99 rests. My question is about them.
My question is this: Do teachers really want to train and bring firearms into their schools to protect their students? Said another way, is “armed security guard” a hat that teachers really want to wear?
I’m not so sure that they do. When HB 99 was introduced last year, Melissa Cropper, the president of the Ohio Federation of Teachers (OFT) — a professional union representing 20,000 members across the state — testified that her organization opposed HB 99 because they do not support arming teachers or staff. Instead, the OFT supported fully and fairly funding schools so that school districts — particularly rural ones — could hire appropriately trained School Resource Officers. Just last month, Shari Obrenski, the president of the Cleveland Teachers Union and the First Vice President of the OFT, said that her organizations do not support arming teachers or staff. Just like Ms. Cropper, Ms. Obrenski also called for fully and fairly funding schools so that school districts — particularly rural ones — could hire appropriately trained School Resource Officers.
Yes, I know that Ms. Cropper and Ms. Obrenski don’t speak for every teacher in the state of Ohio. I am sure that there are some teachers in the state who would love to wear their firearm into the school building. But what cannot be denied is that Ms. Cropper and Ms. Obrenski, by virtue of the organizations that they represent, speak for a lot of teachers.
I went through the committee testimony on HB 99 so that you don’t have to. You’re welcome. Initially, you should know that the list of people who testified in opposition to the bill is long. Many, many more people testified in opposition to the bill than in support of it. I’m not sure that I expected that.
But for our purposes, what is most important is what I didn’t see. I didn’t see testimony from one single Ohio teacher who said that he or she supported HB 99. There were several school superintendents who supported the bill. There was a director of safety & transportation for a school district. But there was no proponent testimony from a teacher. That means that, since March 4, 2021, when HB 99 was introduced, not one single Ohio teacher went before the General Assembly and said, “My name is ____. I teach at _____ school. I want to bring my gun to work to protect my students. I support this bill.”
Shouldn’t that mean something? Shouldn’t the lack of teachers coming forward in support of a bill which seeks to arm teachers matter? I think it should.
Regardless of whether you believe that arming teachers would make schools safer, it should matter whether teachers themselves actually want to be armed. What would be the point of HB 99 if, after Gov. DeWine signs it into law, few to no teachers actually take advantage of the law? If only just a few teachers get trained and armed, then that would mean HB 99 would have little to no impact on school safety, right? And legislators should not want to pass laws that have little to no impact, right? Right.
There is some evidence that a law like HB 99 would have little to no real impact. Texas has allowed teachers to sign up as campus “marshals” since 2013 through a program created after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Since its creation, the program has seen less than 300 educators sign up. And that’s even after some program restrictions were loosened after a 2018 mass shooting at a Houston-area high school. If you’re wondering how many teachers are in Texas, I looked it up so that you don’t have to. You’re welcome. According to the Texas Education Agency, Texas public schools employ more than 320,000 teachers.
Look, I’m not here to argue about whether arming teachers would make schools safer. That’s an opinion debate that leads nowhere. What I am here to do is remind you of the fundamental fact that the argument only matters if teachers actually want to be armed. If they do, laws like HB 99 arguably makes sense. If they don’t, HB 99 makes no sense.
From what I could glean from the testimony on HB 99, there is no real demand from Ohio teachers for the ability to bring firearms into their schools so that they can protect their students. From what I could glean from the testimony, the only actual teachers who testified said that they didn’t want to do that. So in my mind, the answer to the question of whether HB 99 makes sense is pretty clear:
No, it does not.
