SCHOOL BOARD FINDS SAFETY TOUCHY
With the Feb. 14 Florida school shooting still on the minds of many people, a conversation around school safety can be a touchy issue.
The proliferation of misleading, partisan and just plain incorrect information about the incident and the issues surrounding it has made the situation even worse.
So when Hamilton County Board of Education member Rhonda Thurman began to speak on “Safety in the Schools,” an item on the agenda at the school board’s work session Thursday, a palpable tension filled the room.
The board’s longest-serving member dared to make the argument that few who deal with schools have made — that there is a place for student resource officers, teachers or staff members who volunteer and are properly trained to have guns.
As Thurman spoke, her fellow board members did not look at her, and most looked down at their desk. Most appeared clearly uncomfortable with the points she was making.
Schools, she said, “are the most dangerous place for you to be.” Children there are “sitting ducks” since there is “nobody there to defend them” if a troubled individual who didn’t like school, didn’t like his teachers and is “never scared” wants to “become a big man on campus.”
Thurman said it would take law enforcement a minimum of four to five minutes to respond to such a situation. In that time, multiple students could die.
She acknowledged that “some people are afraid of guns” but said “all the guns I’ve been around are good guns. They can be good things.”
Thurman also recounted an incident when she was in a North Hamilton County school when the principal received a call to lock down the school because a bank robbery had occurred nearby. She was comforted, she said, when she saw the principal draw a gun just in case.
“I don’t like that [a shooter] can just walk into the school because they’re the only one with a gun,” she said. “I don’t like to see” that students can “only cower under a desk.”
In time, board Chairman Dr. Steve Highlander tried to end the conversation, and she and Highlander wound up in a brief shouting match.
All she sought, she said at the outset, was “a serious discussion.” Others agreed, board member Joe Wingate saying “we need to have a conversation,” board member Tiffanie Robinson saying we “should be talking about other layers — all problems” surrounding school safety, and board member Karitsa Jones saying the board needs to “make sure everybody’s voices are heard.”
Although Superintendent Dr. Bryan Johnson said he was voicing his opinion when he said, “I don’t think guns are the appropriate approach in an academic environment,” we hope a larger conversation — even a community conversation — is held on the matter.
Appropriately, the school district is already taking steps it believes will help in the short run, but students, parents, teachers, school board members and law enforcement officials all should be able to weigh in on what measures should occur over the long term to keep our schools safe.