Decisions about arming school district employees and other measures tied to student and staff security are best left to local districts, Richard Abernathy, chief of a state organization of superintendents and principals, said Tuesday.
But districts need financial help from the state to put their safety and security plans in place, Abernathy told the Arkansas School Safety Commission that was recently appointed by Gov. Asa Hutchinson to identify gaps in school safety plans and make recommendations for school safety improvements to the governor by July 1.
The governor appointed the commission of educators, mental-health providers and law enforcement personnel in the aftermath of the Feb. 14 shooting deaths of 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Fla.
Abernathy, executive director of the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators, was among the presenters Tuesday that included Clarksville Superintendent David Hopkins, who described how his five-campus district initiated and now operates with 20 armed school system employees, including classroom teachers. Hopkins is one of the 18 members on the commission.
Abernathy proposed that state money for school security come from as many as three sources: matching grants, categorical state funding that would be specifically earmarked for security related costs, and the state's facility Partnership Program that provides a share of funding to school districts for school building construction and renovation but does not specifically include a funding mechanism for school safety features.
"We hope that this committee understands that one size doesn't fit everyone," Abernathy said about security measures. "What Clarksville needs may be different than what Little Rock needs, and that may be different than what DeWitt needs. Just having a state-mandated policy that is going to keep everyone secure, there is no such thing."
Even if the committee and state decide to mandate that every school district employ school resource officers, who are law enforcement officers such as police and sheriff's deputies, "it's not going to happen," Abernathy said, because there aren't enough police officers out there.
"We want local communities to have the ability to come up with their own solutions," he said. "We think part of the state's responsibility is to help those communities with funding when they do come up with a plan because some communities won't be able to afford it otherwise."
The association conducted a survey of superintendents and principals in recent weeks about safety to which about 400 people responded in the first 72 hours. School district and school leaders said their top two needs were additional security staffing and making existing school buildings more secure. That was followed by the need for features such as cameras, radios, door locks, fencing and safer doors, and by additional mental health services.
Abernathy said educators aren't trained to be mental-health service providers and behavior analysts.
"We are seeing a deterioration of funding for those services," he said. "We need to be very careful with that because our kids need mental health. It seems to be more and more of an issue."
Hopkins said he and his community were motivated to arm some school system employees after the December 2012 shooting deaths of six faculty members and 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Those shootings occurred within the four minutes it took for the first police officer to arrive on the campus, Hopkins said. Three of the dead included the school principal and school psychologist who confronted the 20-year-old shooter, who broke a panel of glass at the front door to get past the locked school door.
"We want to give people tools to fight back," Hopkins said. "They are already fighting but not properly equipped or trained. I believe lives can be saved if that is done."
Hopkins told how staff members who were considered to be well-suited to the task were invited to consider participating on a volunteer basis. Participants undergo psychological exams, drug screens and background checks. They are provided specified, multiple hours of initial training and more hours in subsequent years by those who train police officers.
The employees, including licensed teachers and support staff members, are not paid more but are provided stipends to use to buy one of the two models of Walther guns in Fort Smith.
The employees are required to get quality range gear for their training and quality concealment gear. The school district provides 50 rounds of ammunition a month for use in training and practice. All the guns are subject to annual inspections by the superintendent to ensure cleaning and maintenance.
All of the weapons must be concealed on a person's body or be in a locked safe. They cannot be carried in a bag or purse, Hopkins said, nor can they be removed from their holsters in front of any students.
Gun safes are located throughout the district so there is a place to store a gun when an employee goes to the restroom or has other reasons to store a gun. Participating elementary school teachers start their workday in their empty locked classrooms where they put their guns in locked classroom safes before allowing children to enter the rooms.
The district's Emergency Response Team staff "will deploy their firearms only in situations of immediate or otherwise unavoidable danger of death or great bodily harm," Hopkins said. "We are not police."
Hopkins said there is no published list of the employees who carry the guns but it is not a secret either.
A Clarksville School District 11th-grader who was a participant in Hopkins' presentation said he knew of some of the carriers but not of others and that he doesn't give much thought to the armed staff members unless he notices one of the signs posted on the campus that states that the "facility is protected by armed security." He said he feels better knowing there are people in the school to protect him.
Lance Fetters, a Clarksville history teacher and coach, told the committee that he doesn't want to shoot anyone but if he had to choose between shooting a student or former student to protect 200 other students, he could do it. He also said there is no fracture between staff members who do and those who don't carry guns.
In response to questions from the School Safety Commission, Hopkins said the district and law enforcement agencies that would respond in an emergency have worked together to develop safeguards, including code words, to keep law enforcement officers from shooting the armed school employees.
The school employees routinely practice marksmanship and shooting scenarios with one another and with local law enforcement officers as another way of familiarizing themselves with one another.
Others presenting Tuesday included Greenbrier Superintendent Scott Spainhour on the Department of Education's Safe Schools Committee, the Texas School Safety Center and the Arkansas School Boards Association on how it develops model policies for school boards to consider adopting.
The School Safety Commission will next meet May 2 at Westside Consolidated School District near Jonesboro.
Metro on 04/18/2018