Allow teachers to have guns, Stoneman Douglas commission chairman urges.

More Broward school staff members should be armed to protect against a possible active shooter, the head of the commission investigating the Parkland massacre told the School Board.

The school district currently has one “armed guardian” in each of the 43 schools that don’t have a fulltime police officer. But that’s not enough, said Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, who heads the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Commission.

He met with the School Board on Tuesday to review some of the commission’s recommendations to prevent a shooting like the one that killed 17 people at Stoneman Douglas.

The most controversial one was to expand armed guardian programs statewide to allow classroom teachers to carry guns. Right now, administrators, librarians and security officials can be armed, but most classroom teachers cannot. The Legislature may change that this year in its session that starts next week.

The School Board has been strongly opposed to arming teachers.

“I'm trying to balance the whole idea of more guns on campus and hearing students talk about how it makes them feel more unsafe. Especially minority kids,” said Board member Rosalind Osgood, who serves a largely black district in the Fort Lauderdale and Plantation areas.

Gualtieri said he was initially opposed to arming teachers, believing armed protection was the duty of law enforcement. But he said his mind changed after studying the massacre. He said the killer had a chance to reload his gun five times, which would have given an armed staff member a chance to confront him.

He didn’t say specifically how many armed staff members schools need.

“They don't need 50, they don’t need 100. Two is better than one, three is better than two and four is better than three,” he said.

Teachers should be part of the mix because they may have skills and interest, and it creates a wider pool, Gualtieri said.

He said he didn’t favor forcing teachers to be armed, which is so far not part of any proposed legislation.

He said there’s also a shortage of 1,500 police officers statewide, so districts can’t hire enough to police officers to adequately protect schools.

Regardless whether Broward decides to arm teachers, it should relax the requirements of its current guardian program to attract more candidates, he said.

The school district requires applicants to be at least 21 years old and have a minimum of two years of military or sworn law enforcement experience to hold the job, which pays $25,000 to $33,000 a year.

“The criteria is too narrow. Loosen it up,” he said.

The School Board plans to hold a workshop at 9 a.m. Monday to discuss a possible expansion of the guardian and school resource officer program. The district plans to use about $19 million from a referendum passed by voters last summer to add more security staff to schools next school year.

The discussion on guardians came after a presentation where the School Board heard graphic details of the Stoneman Douglas tragedy, including videos and 911 calls as well as both failures and heroic acts by Stoneman Douglas staff members.

Gualtieri