Board to vote on arming schools’ security officers.

Little Rock district proposes training for 10 staff members

The question of whether to arm 10 members of the Little Rock School District’s security department, starting with the upcoming 2019-20 school year, is on the agenda for a meeting of the Community Advisory Board at 5:30 p.m. today.

Any decision made today by the seven-member advisory board on the matter will ultimately be forwarded to Arkansas Education Commissioner Johnny Key for final action. Key acts in place of a school board in the state-controlled district that has no locally elected board.

Existing Arkansas law allows public school district employees to be armed — conditioned on meeting training and other requirements — for the purpose of defending students and staff members from violent attackers. If the measure is approved, the Little Rock district would join others in the state — such as Clarksville — that have already established commissioned school security officers.

The Little Rock district proposal calls for arming 10 staff members — none of whom are campus security officers assigned to single campuses.

Four of the security officers to be armed would be roving school security patrol officers, according to the proposal. Also to be armed would be two investigators in the school district’s security department, along with three supervisors and department Director Ron Self.

The 10 armed employees would be in addition to the district’s long-standing practice of using school resource officers — who are armed Little Rock Police Department officers — at all of the district’s middle and high schools. The school district and the city of Little Rock split the cost of those law enforcement officers.

The cost of creating the proposed commissioned school security officer unit would be $55,000 the first year and $25,000 each year thereafter. The initial costs would cover training, psychological evaluations, guns and ammunition, other duty gear, body cameras and a $2,500 stipend per armed security officer.

The proposal to the advisory board states that the school district will follow all of the guidelines set forth by the Arkansas State Police and state law regulating commissioned school security officers. That will entail 60 additional hours of training, including 16 hours specifically devoted to training on firearms based on law enforcement standards.

In addition, the district will require psychological evaluation, random drug testing, officer-worn body cameras, and training on handcuffs, defensive tactics, verbal de-escalation and the use of pepper spray.

Little Rock School District leaders first raised the possibility of arming some of its security department in 2018 in the aftermath of the Feb. 14 shooting deaths of 17 people at a Parkland, Fla., high school.

The Community Advisory Board meets at the district headquarters at 810 W. Markham St. in Little Rock.