Ohio ahead of the curve on plans to arm teachers

RIVERSIDE, Ohio — The safes were installed last summer. Thirty-two in all. Spread out among the four elementary schools, the two middle schools, the high school and the administration building of the Mad River Local Schools district on the outskirts of Dayton.

On Aug. 14, the first day of school for the district’s 3,900 students, each safe contained the centerpiece of the district’s new security plan: a semiautomatic pistol and a removable magazine loaded with bullets.

The guns are not there for law enforcement. There are no armed security guards at the schools. The weapons, paid for with money from the district’s operating budget, are for teachers and staff members who have volunteered and trained to be part of the school’s response team if a shooter enters a building. Each team member has access to a safe that can be reached quickly in case that happens.

Chad Wyen, the district’s superintendent, thinks about the unthinkable often. He has twin daughters in Mad River schools. To Wyen, arming staff and teachers will make all the students in the district safer.

“A bad guy is going to do whatever he wants in that building until someone either addresses him, or he runs out of ammunition, or he shoots and kills himself,” Wyen said in an interview in his office. “Otherwise, you are literally a sitting duck in a school if you are not able to respond. And I’m not willing to do that. I’m not willing to put our kids at risk.”

In 10 states, schools allow teachers and staff members to be armed, with administrators’ permission. After the shooting that took 17 lives at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida last month, pressure is increasing to expand that approach.

But even as elected leaders and national organizations weigh the political impact of arming teachers, some school districts are already embracing programs that put guns in the hands of educators and staff.

The debate over arming teachers is now percolating nationally, but it has been stirring in school districts across Ohio for the past five years. It began soon after the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut that left 26 students and educators dead. A number of Ohio districts, particularly those in more rural areas, worried that their schools were vulnerable and began arming staff members and training them to respond to a shooter.

Wyen did not sugarcoat the potential dangers for teachers and staff in his district who wanted to take part.

“We told them, you have to understand that if you choose to do this, you’re putting your life at risk, and you have to be comfortable with that,” he says. They do not get extra pay.

From his staff of 460 systemwide, 50 volunteered to take part. All had experience with guns and possessed concealed-weapons licenses. Each was interviewed several times. Why do you want to do this, they were asked. Can you move toward a threat? If a suspect is a student, can you shoot to stop him from hurting others?

Wyen selected 32 teachers and staff members for his team. Their identities are known only to Wyen and law enforcement officials. Their anonymity is part of the district’s security strategy. The only sign to outsiders of their existence is one that greets visitors at every entrance to Mad River schools: “WARNING: Inside this building our children are protected by an armed and trained response team.”

Jade Deis, a freshman at the district’s high school, says she feels safer knowing that teachers are armed. “What’s a stapler going to do against a gun?” she asks. For Deis and her friends, the new program hasn’t been the subject of much discussion.

“The teachers don’t talk about it, they don’t show the guns,” she says. “I kind of forget it’s there.”

But some parents, students and teachers have raised concerns that having guns in school makes it more likely that an accidental shooting — or worse — could occur.

“It’s good that they want to protect us, but what if a teacher just pops off? Anyone can go crazy, and then they have the gun right there,” says Jalen Yarbrough, a freshman. “Or let’s say a kid gets rowdy. The teacher could say, ‘I feared for my life and I shot him.’”

In Ohio, the decision on whether to arm teachers is made by school districts, and they are not required to make that information public, so there are no figures on how many of the state’s 610 districts have armed teachers.

Michael Hanlon, superintendent of the Chardon school district in northeast Ohio, says he is often asked if his district arms its teachers.

Six years ago, 17-year-old T.J. Lane entered Chardon High School with a .22-caliber semiautomatic handgun. He killed three students and injured three others. In a matter of minutes, the school joined “a club that no one wants to be part of,” Hanlon says.

And after every shooting, Hanlon hears renewed calls to arm teachers. His district has chosen not to.

“If we saw the same thing happen in a hospital, I don’t think we’d start saying we need to arm doctors and nurses,” Hanlon says.