Arkansas School to arm teachers

Steinhauer

Steinhauer

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Arkansas school to arm teachers with concealed weapons - NY Daily News
CLARKSVILLE, Ark. -- As Cheyne Dougan rounded the corner at Clarksville High School, he saw three students on the floor moaning and crying. In a split-second, two more ran out of a nearby classroom.

"He's got a gun," one of them shouted as Dougan approached with his pistol drawn. Inside, he found one student holding another at gunpoint. Dougan aimed and fired three rounds at the gunman.

Preparing for such scenarios has become common for police after a school shooting in Connecticut last December left 20 children and six teachers dead. But Dougan is no policeman. He's the assistant principal of this school in Arkansas, and when classes resume in August, he will walk the halls with a 9 mm handgun.

Dougan is among more than 20 teachers, administrators and other school employees in this town who will carry concealed weapons throughout the school day, making use of a little-known Arkansas law that allows licensed, armed security guards on campus. After undergoing 53 hours of training, Dougan and other teachers at the school will be considered guards.

"The plan we've been given in the past is `Well, lock your doors, turn off your lights and hope for the best,'" Superintendent David Hopkins said. But as deadly incidents continued to happen in schools, he explained, the district decided, "That's not a plan."

After the Connecticut attack, the idea of arming schoolhouses against gunmen was hotly debated across the country. The National Rifle Association declared it the best response to serious threats. But even in the most conservative states, most proposals faltered in the face of resistance from educators or warnings from insurance companies that schools would face higher premiums.

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In strongly conservative Arkansas, where gun ownership is common and gun laws are permissive, no school district had ever used the law to arm teachers on the job, according to the state Department of Education. The closest was the Lake Hamilton School District in Garland County, which for years has kept several guns locked up in case of emergency. Only a handful of trained administrators - not teachers - have access to the weapons.

Clarksville, a community of 9,200 people about 100 miles northwest of Little Rock, is going further.

Home to an annual peach festival, the town isn't known for having dangerous schools. But Hopkins said he faced a flood of calls from parents worried about safety after the attack last year at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn.

Hopkins said he and other school leaders didn't see why the district couldn't rely on its own staff and teachers to protect students rather than hire someone.

"We're not tying our money up in a guard 24/7 that we won't have to have unless something happens. We've got these people who are already hired and using them in other areas," Hopkins said. "Hopefully we'll never have to use them as a security guard."

State officials are not blocking Clarksville's plan, but Arkansas Education Commissioner Tom Kimbrell is opposed to the idea of arming teachers and staff. He prefers to hire law enforcement officers as school resource officers.

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There are other dissenters, too. Donna Morey, former president of the Arkansas Education Association, called the idea of arming teachers "awful." The risk of a student accidentally getting shot or obtaining a gun outweighs any benefits, she said.

"We just think educators should be in the business of educating students, not carrying a weapon," Morey said.

Participants in the program are given a one-time $1,100 stipend to purchase a handgun and holster. Hopkins said the district is paying about $50,000 for ammunition and for training by Nighthawk Custom Training Academy, a private training facility in northwest Arkansas.

The Nighthawk training includes drills like the one Dougan participated in, with various role-playing scenarios involving shooters on campus. Dougan and other teachers in the program practiced using "airsoft" pellet guns, with students wearing protective facemasks and jackets.

"There's pressure on you, because you're shooting real bullets if this actually happened," said Dougan, who has three children attending Clarksville schools. "I was nervous to start, but once it started and I was going through what they had taught us, it just took over."

The training is narrowly tailored for teachers to respond to shooters on campus.

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"That teacher is going to respond to one thing and one thing alone, and that's someone is in the building either actively or attempting to kill people," Jon Hodoway, director of training for Nighthawk. "That's it. They're not going to enforce the law. They're not going to make traffic stops. If somebody is outside acting the fool, they're going to call the police."

Using students as actors helps trainers re-create the environment that teachers and staff would face in a typical school shooting, Hodoway explained. The students who participated in the exercise were children of the teachers and staff who were being trained.

Sydney Whitkanack, who will enter seventh grade this fall, said she's grown up around firearms and doesn't mind if teachers or staff are armed at school.

"If they're concealed, then it's no big deal," said Whitkanack, who was an actor in the training scenario. "It's not like someone's going to know `Oh, they have a firearm.'"

The district will post signs at each school about the armed guards, but the identities of faculty and staff carrying weapons will be kept secret, Hopkins said.

Those who participate in the program will continue to receive regular training, he said.

Sherry Wommack said the program is one reason she's taking her son, an incoming eighth-grader, out of Clarksville's schools before the school year begins. Wommack said she doesn't believe teachers should make life-or-death choices involving students.

"I think police officers are trained to make those decisions, not teachers," Wommack said.
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Read more: Arkansas school to arm teachers with concealed weapons - NY Daily News
 
Teachers? Bad idea.

I prefer armed police officers to patrol the school and I do not want children to get killed by spray bullet.

Good luck to this school district and if any children get killed by accident or spray bullet so parents will sue the school and taxpayers will lose the money that where goes to fund the school.

The lability is serious issue.
 
The teachers received SWAT training. They got more firearms training than new police officers get.
 
Only in Arkansas... HAHAHA! :laugh2:

In all seriousness though... Teachers? Really? This is a lawsuit waiting to happen... I'll keep my eyes peeled in August for some sort of happening with this... Stay tuned ladies and gentz! :roll:
 
Here in Georgia they are passing the same thing. In South Dakota too.
 
Steinhauer said:
The teachers received SWAT training. They got more firearms training than new police officers get.
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SWAT training? The article doesn't mention about they received SWAT training.

That's not true, the police officers required to receive daily routine training since teachers and school staffs are not required.

The school shooting massacre is rare.
 
Phoenix23 said:
Only in Arkansas... HAHAHA! :laugh2:

In all seriousness though... Teachers? Really? This is a lawsuit waiting to happen... I'll keep my eyes peeled in August for some sort of happening with this... Stay tuned ladies and gentz! :roll:
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I will not take my child to school that where teachers are armed and the security guard isn't part of teacher's role.

Let police deal with it and the school have to follow the safety guideline, such as keep door locked all time.
 
Arkansas... Georgia... Dakota... Tennessee... Texas... Missouri... Oklahoma... Need I go on? All those states are considered "southern states" and "southern" meaning the majority of how their state is run... It doesn't surprise me...

Don't get me wrong, I'm all with the "right to bear arms" thing. However, I'm simply pointing it out... there will be a lawsuit... it WILL happen... and it WILL be stupid...

Also guns all through a school... I wouldn't send my kid there... Hell no.

If a woman can sue McDonalds for spilling her coffee on her lap and scolding herself because it wasn't clearly marked "hot" anything is possible for a lawsuit... We've all seen it, and it won't be the last time... This thing, will be no different.
 
Phoenix23 said:
Arkansas... Georgia... Dakota... Tennessee... Texas... Missouri... Oklahoma... Need I go on? All those states are considered "southern states" and "southern" meaning the majority of how their state is run... It doesn't surprise me...

Don't get me wrong, I'm all with the "right to bear arms" thing. However, I'm simply pointing it out... there will be a lawsuit... it WILL happen... and it WILL be stupid...

If a woman can sue McDonalds for spilling her coffee on her lap and scolding herself because it wasn't clearly marked "hot" anything is possible for a lawsuit... We've all seen it, and it won't be the last time... This thing, will be no different.
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Yes, taxpayers will lose money.

I'm for gun rights but arm the teacher is one of thing that isn't my favor.
 
Foxrac said:
Yes, taxpayers will lose money.

I'm for gun rights but arm the teacher is one of thing that isn't my favor.
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I'm right there with ya... 110%

Bringing guns into a school where there are supposed to be NO guns... poor decision. Lock the doors to the school, and the classrooms and follow school procedure and there would be no need for this.

This is ridiculous... What the hell is happening to the USA... seriously... it's unsettling... :shock:
 
And yes, if my tax dollars can go towards some of the things it does... I fully believe if a school is THAT worried, they can hire a police officer "known in Florida as an SRO" to be in the school... I will support my tax money paying for that any day.
 
Steinhauer said:
The teachers received SWAT training. They got more firearms training than new police officers get.
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Now they need to start a new policy that vistors will have to be escorted on school grounds at all time and must state why they're there, who they came to see and for what reason. Treating everyone like they're in a federal building is yet another way to deter this. Anyone seen wandering on school grounds and can't be readily identifed as an active student of the school, the police should be called and the school should be placed on lock down as a prevention. I think it's a great idea. I've always felt that the best way to fight crime is to shoot back.....

Laura
 
The teaching field is becoming more and more complicated these days. Do these teachers get a pay raise for arming the school?
 
I'm for arming teachers if they get the proper training and can pass a psychological exam. I can only assume they have already passed background checks to become teachers. Cops are just people too, no different than teachers, you can train a teachers just as well as a cop. Now will they get the proper training? It's a lot of time and money so I wonder.
 
shel90 said:
The teaching field is becoming more and more complicated these days. Do these teachers get a pay raise for arming the school?
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Probably not but they should. They probably have to pay for their own training as well.
 
jonnyghost said:
Probably not but they should. They probably have to pay for their own training as well.
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There is just so much going on with the education field with the new Common Core Standards and S.T.E.M. education because it means all of us have to throw all the old traditional teaching approaches out of the window and take on a new approach. Also with STEM, we have to start teaching engineering practices and many of us have no experience with that plus with technology constantly changing and trying to keep up with it.

I just cannot imagine having to worry about being armed and being trained to shoot on top of it.

Guess these teachers don't mind but wow...just thinking about it makes me want to go camping in my RV and never return. LOL
 
Foxrac said:
Teachers? Bad idea.

I prefer armed police officers to patrol the school and I do not want children to get killed by spray bullet.

Good luck to this school district and if any children get killed by accident or spray bullet so parents will sue the school and taxpayers will lose the money that where goes to fund the school.

The lability is serious issue.
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I see where you are coming from and it would be a tragedy if a child got killed by a stray bullet. But I also wonder, if a legally armed person had been at Newtown and stopped the shooter before he killed anyone BUT one of the legally armed persons rounds killed someone would they be a hero or a child killer?

In reality we have no way of knowing how many lives if any they saved because we wouldn't know for sure if anyone would be killed by the shooter but in my scenario we know that the shooter is about to kill 20 people.
 
Foxrac said:
Teachers? Bad idea.

I prefer armed police officers to patrol the school and I do not want children to get killed by spray bullet.

Good luck to this school district and if any children get killed by accident or spray bullet so parents will sue the school and taxpayers will lose the money that where goes to fund the school.

The lability is serious issue.
Click to expand...

I would suggest the school become heavily insured.
 
shel90 said:
There is just so much going on with the education field with the new Common Core Standards and S.T.E.M. education because it means all of us have to throw all the old traditional teaching approaches out of the window and take on a new approach. Also with STEM, we have to start teaching engineering practices and many of us have no experience with that plus with technology constantly changing and trying to keep up with it.

I just cannot imagine having to worry about being armed and being trained to shoot on top of it.

Guess these teachers don't mind but wow...just thinking about it makes me want to go camping in my RV and never return. LOL
Click to expand...

I think that is a very valid point. Do teachers have the time to be properly trained?
 
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