In tiny Texas town, teachers are  armed with concealed weapons, a ‘better’ solution than a security guard

In the days after the  Newtown, Conn. school massacre,  a growing number of states — including  Oklahoma, Missouri, Minnesota, South Dakota and Oregon — will consider laws  allowing teachers and school administrators to carry firearms on campus.

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Thursday, December 20, 2012, 10:41 AM

ASSOCIATED PRESS

A school in Harrold, Texas has a  policy allowing teachers and other employees to carry concealed weapons on  campus. Some lawmakers in at least five other states are looking into similar  legislation in the wake of last week’s deadly elementary school shooting in  Newton, Conn.

HARROLD, Texas  — In this tiny Texas town, children  and their parents don’t give much thought to safety at the community’s lone  school — mostly because some of the teachers are carrying concealed  weapons.
In remote Harrold, the nearest sheriff’s office is  30 minutes away, and people tend to know — and trust — one another. So the  school board voted to let teachers bring guns to school.
“We don’t have  money for a security guard, but this is a better solution,” Superintendent David  Thweatt said. “A shooter could take out a guard or officer with a visible,  holstered weapon, but our teachers have master’s degrees, are older and have had  extensive training. And their guns are hidden. We can protect our  children.”
In the awful aftermath of last week’s  Connecticut elementary school shooting, lawmakers in a growing number of states — including Oklahoma, Missouri, Minnesota, South Dakota and Oregon — have said  they will consider laws allowing teachers and school administrators to carry  firearms at school. Texas law bans guns in schools unless the school has  given written authorization. Arizona and six other states have similar laws with  exceptions for people who have licenses to carry concealed  weapons.
Harrold’s school board voted unanimously in 2007 to  allow employees to carry weapons. After obtaining a state concealed-weapons  permit, each employee who wants to carry a weapon must be approved by the board  based on his or her personality and reaction to a crisis, Thweatt  said.

Employees also must undergo training in crisis  intervention and hostage situations. And they must use bullets that minimize the  risk of ricochet, similar to those carried by air marshals on planes. CaRae  Reinisch, who lives in the nearby community of Elliott, said she took her  children out of a larger school and enrolled them in Harrold two  years ago, partly because she felt they would be safer in a building with armed  teachers.
“I think it’s a great idea for trained teachers to carry  weapons,” Reinish said. “But I hate that it has come to this.”
The  superintendent won’t disclose how many of the school’s 50 employees carry  weapons, saying that revealing that number might jeopardize school  security.
The school, about 150 miles northwest of Fort Worth near the  Oklahoma border, has 103 students from kindergarten through 12th grade. Most of  them rarely think about who is carrying a gun.
“This is the first time in  a long time that I’ve thought about it,” said Matt Templeton, the principal’s  17-year-old son. “And that’s because of what happened” in Connecticut.
Thweatt said other Texas schools allow teachers to carry weapons, but he would  not reveal their locations, saying they are afraid of negative  publicity.
The Texas Education Agency said it had not heard of any other  schools with such a policy. And the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence did not  know of any other districts nationwide that allow school employees to carry  concealed handguns.
But that may change soon.
Oklahoma state  Rep. Mark McCullough said he is working on a bill that would allow teachers and  administrators to receive firearms training through the Council on Law  Enforcement Education and Training, which would authorize them to carry weapons  at school and at school events. Other states are proposing or considering  similar measures.
However, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder this week vetoed  legislation that would have allowed concealed weapons in schools, churches and  day care centers, saying he seeks a more “thoughtful review” that includes  school emergency policies and mental health-related issues.
In Texas,  guns have an honored place in the state’s culture, and politicians often  describe owning a gun as essential to being Texan. At the state Capitol,  concealed handgun license holders are allowed to skip the metal detectors that  scan visitors.
Gov. Rick Perry has indicated he would prefer to give gun  owners the widest possible latitude. Just days after the Connecticut attack,  Perry said permit holders should be able to carry concealed weapons in any  public place.
Last year, many Texas lawmakers supported a plan to give  college students and professors with concealed handgun licenses the right to  carry guns on campus, but the measure failed.
Opponents insist that  having more people armed at a school, especially teachers or administrators who  aren’t trained to deal with crime on a daily basis, could lead to more injuries  and deaths. They point to an August shooting outside the Empire State Building,  where police killed a laid-off clothing designer after he fatally shot his  former colleague. Nine bystanders were wounded by police gunfire, ricochets and  fragments.
“You are going to put teachers, people teaching 6-year-olds in  a school, and expect them to respond to an active-shooter situation?” said Ladd  Everitt, a spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Coalition to Stop Gun  Violence, who called the idea of arming teachers “madness.”
Kristin  Rowe-Finkbeiner said she would not have felt better if teachers at her  children’s Seattle school had been armed during a May shooting at a nearby cafe.  A gunman killed four people at the cafe and another woman during a carjacking  before killing himself. The school went on lockdown as a precaution. “It  would be highly concerning to me to know that guns were around my kids each and  every day. … Increasing our arms is not the answer,” said Rowe-Finkbeiner,  co-founder and CEO of MomsRising.org. Dan Gross, president of the Brady  Campaign, said focusing on arming teachers distracts from the “real things” that  could help prevent a school shooting “and at worse it furthers a dangerous  conversation that only talks about guns as protection without a discussion about  the serious risks they present.”
As the debate continues, Harrold’s school plans to leave its policy  unchanged.
“Nothing is 100 percent at all. … But hope makes for a  terrible plan, hoping that (a tragedy) won’t happen,” Thweatt said. “My question  is: What have you done about it? How have you planned?”