ARMING TEACHERS: House won’t take up bill this session
Published 6:30 am Saturday, March 24, 2018
The Alabama House of Representatives decided Tuesday not to debate a bill that would allow Alabama’s teachers and school administration to carry firearms before adjourning.
Proposed by Rep. Will Ainsworth, R-Guntersville, the bill narrowly made it through the Senate last week but was doomed by time constraints and an expected filibuster.
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House Bill 435 would have allowed teachers and administrators to carry a concealed weapon or have access to a weapon in emergency situations. The bill would have required teachers wishing to arm themselves to undergo mental health background checks and 40 hours of training through Alabama Peace Officers’ Standards and Training. A yearly recertification requirement was also included in the bill.
After the House failed to debate the bill, Ainsworth called on Gov. Kay Ivey to call a special session this summer on school safety.
Currently, only authorized law enforcement personnel are allowed to carry firearms onto school campuses.
According to a Feb. 16 statement released by Interim State Superintendent Ed Richardson, Alabama Code 16-1-24.1 requires the Alabama State Board of Education and local boards of education to uniformly enforce policies to protect students and employees and ensure a safe school environment free of weapons.
He added Alabama school systems should continue to enforce existing policies to ban firearms and other weapons from school grounds. Richardson said students and school employees who violate these policies may be subject to disciplinary actions.
Additionally, other individuals that bring firearms onto school property should be notified that they are in violation of school policy and be asked to leave the premises. Schools, he advised, should post notices at all points of entry stating, “Firearms Prohibited.”
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Ainsworth proposed HB 435 just three weeks ago, after the shooting in Parkland, Florida, in which 17 people were killed by a former student.
He said his bill was intended to keep students safe because many of Alabama’s school systems cannot afford to keep an armed school resource officer on campus.
Superintendent of Limestone County Schools Dr. Tom Sisk said if the bill had passed, he would have followed the county school board’s recommendations regarding arming teachers.
However, he pointed out he didn’t think armed teachers would necessarily make Limestone County’s schools safer.
“Adding a firearm doesn’t necessarily change the situation,” he said. “You look at Parkland and you have an armed SRO who didn’t do anything and 17 were killed, and in Maryland, you have an active resource officer that responded and only one student was killed,” Sisk said. “It’s a complex issue.”
A second student from the Maryland school shooting has since died.
According to Sisk, the county school system’s security policies are pioneering.
“We started addressing safety five years ago, very aggressively, “Sisk said. “We now have a three-tier safety system that rivals any district in the state.”
The three-tier system consists of an armed SRO officer at every school in the county, approximately 900 strategically placed SafeDefend boxes and the RAVE Panic button, which allows employees to call 911 with the push of a button.
The Limestone County school district was the first school system in the state to incorporate the SafeDefend system into their security plan. The box, which only administrators and teachers can open, is filled with necessary tools such as mace and billy clubs that can be used in an emergency.
“I’m just speculating, but before we give guns to our teachers, we need to look at other options like these ones we’ve put in place,” Sisk said.