Committee proposes arming Fla. teachers
Bill allows employees to volunteer to act as campus guardians
Florida’s public school teachers, once trained, could be armed and then serve as school “guardians” under a bill proposed this week by the Florida Senate’s education committee.
The bill would alter the current program and allow classroom teachers who want to undergo training to serve as guardians under in Coach Aaron Feis Guardian Program.
The program was created last year in the wake of the fatal shootings of 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. Named for one of those killed in the massacre, it allows some school employees, but not classroom teachers, to carry weapons on campus.
Some lawmakers proposed allowing armed teachers last year, but many educators objected and that provision was deleted from the bill passed by the Florida Legislature.
But now some Senators have proposed it again, and Gov. Ron DeSantis has expressed support and proposed $50 million more be put into the guardian program. The state commission that investigated the Parkland shooting also recommended allowing trained teachers to carry guns, among other measures.
The Senate education committee is to discuss the new bill on Feb. 12.
Even with the teacher provision deleted last year, many Central Florida school districts were uninterested in the guardian program, saying they wanted armed police officers, not school employees, on school grounds. Most local sheriffs felt the same way, declining to participate in the program that needs their approval to get underway. Locally, only Lake and Volusia counties take part.
Statewide, only 24 of 67 school districts, in partnership with their local sheriff’s offices, requested money to take part in the guardian program at the start of the 2018-19 school year, according to the Florida Department of Education.
The new bill would allow school districts to take part in the
guardian program, even if the sheriff in their county did not want to participate.
Barbara Jenkins, superintendent of the Orange County school district, said school leaders in her county remain opposed to arming teachers, just as they were a year ago. “We believe those weapons belong in the hands of professionals,” she said.
Though the Orange County School Board has new members, none have said they want to rethink that position, she noted.
The district’s position won the support of its teachers, Jenkins added, and prompted no complaints from parents.
Orange leaders, like others in Central Florida, said they prefer to station police officers at their schools, though hiring and training enough officers has proved difficult. The Orange County Sheriff ’s Office, for example, was still short 21 needed deputies last month.
DeSantis spoke in favor of arming interested and trained teachers last week.
“In terms of the arming of personnel, what I’ve said is, if you’re somebody who is working at a school and you are somebody who is trained and has the ability to do it, then you shouldn’t be precluded, if you carrying a concealed firearm could potentially deter people from viewing that as a thing,” the governor said, according to News Service of Florida. “But what I would not do is say, Oh, Miss Jones, you want to teach English? Well, do you have a Glock? No. I mean, we should not force anybody to do that.”
The guardian program was part of a sweeping school safety bill the Legislature passed, and then-Gov. Rick Scott signed, after the Parkland massacre.