Virginia county looking to arm teachers in classroom

RICHMOND, Va. — Nationally, teachers are overwhelmingly against the idea of carrying weapons into classrooms. Not so in the westernmost county of Virginia, where declining revenues from growing tobacco and mining coal have left the local government unable to afford more than four resource officers to protect 11 schools.

Despite strong criticism from the state capitol, a six-hour drive to the east, the Lee County School Board has voted to become Virginia’s first county to arm its teachers and staff. The board’s next step is to ask a judge to exempt it from state law.

Board member Rob Hines says the panel was talking informally about possibly arming teachers for more than a year before the Parkland, Fla., shooting killed 17 people.

“You can sit around and you can plan and you can think about things, but at some point, you’ve got to do something,” Hines said. “We have a sworn duty to protect our children and our staff, and that’s what we’re trying to do.”

Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring is considering his next move.

“Virginia law clearly prohibits guns in schools with only a few narrow exceptions, and there are good reasons for that,” said Herring’s spokesman, Michael Kelly.

“It’s troubling to learn that people are putting so much time and effort into getting around the law and getting more guns into schools when the focus should clearly be on creating a safe, welcoming learning environment,”

Kelly said.

The Virginia Department of Education appeared to be caught off guard by the plan, which was approved unanimously last week by a 5-0 vote of the school board.

“Typically, if a school division is contemplating doing something that is new and there are policy questions, the school division will contact the department and we’ll work with them to provide guidance on the question and whatever support we can. In this case, we didn’t have that conversation with the school division in advance of the vote,” said spokesman Charles Pyle.

Hines said the board consulted extensively with attorneys. It plans to ask a circuit court judge to designate school employees who carry concealed guns or keep them in school safes to be “conservators of the peace,” a designation the board believes would exempt them from the law that bars guns on school property.