Not everyone agrees whether arming teachers is the solution to school shootings.
The debate has come up in the past, but after 17 students and teachers were killed in February at a Parkland, Fla., high school, the topic blew up. The question of arming teachers entered conversations across the country, and Beaver County residents, too, joined the discussion.
Many local educators have offered varying opinions on the topic.
Eric Rosendale, executive director of the Beaver Valley Intermediate Unit, said the national intermediate unit and several other national education organizations have agreed that it is “not a good idea” to arm teachers.
“I would echo that,” he said.
Rosendale said he supports school resource officers, uniformed police officers who work in schools. In most cases, resource officers carry firearms. Other schools hire private security officers who in many cases also carry guns.
However, arming individual teachers could lead to “other misfortunate events,” Rosendale said.
'Very hot topic'
Several local firearms clubs joined together to offer free instructional training for teachers interested in learning more about carrying guns while on the job.
“It’s a very hot topic, and a lot of people are on the fence about it,” said Sam Piccinini of the Beaver Valley Pistol Club.
The training is strictly informational and not much different from other programs offered by area clubs, Piccinini said. The pistol club, for example, often offers training and recommends that any gun carrier participate. According to Piccinini, the program is more elaborate than what is offered on scene when a person buys a firearm.
He said it is “very necessary to know how to responsibly carry a firearm.”
Piccinini said the current model for school safety isn’t working. “If it was, the numbers wouldn’t be so high” when it comes to violence in school, he said.
“We truly need a last line of defense,” Piccinini said. “We need to give (teachers) the tools they need.”
He pointed to the Florida school shooting, where armed deputies were unable to stop the threat. Piccinini looked to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School football coach Aaron Feis, who is said to have used his body as a shield to protect students.
“What if that individual had a firearm?" Piccinini said. “Maybe he’d still be alive, maybe less students would be shot.”
He believes many people don’t understand what arming teachers would really look like. For example, Piccinini said he isn’t suggesting every teacher be armed, only the ones who what to take on that responsibility.
“Too many people think we want to throw guns in the hands of teachers,” he said.
Piccinini also disagrees with the opinion that arming teachers would turn them into police officers. He argued that teachers are expected to learn CPR but aren’t required to act as doctors or paramedics.
Piccinini has a background in law enforcement. He is a police officer in Rochester Township and formerly served in Rochester.
While he believes federal or state guidelines might someday address arming teachers, at least two area school superintendents aren’t ready to see teachers carry guns.
Rochester Area School District Superintendent Jane Bovalino said it’s a difficult question to address, and she often considers what is appropriate. Several members of her staff expressed an interest in the training opportunity offered by the gun clubs, just to get more information.
Having said that, educators are nowhere near saying teachers should start carrying guns right now, she said.
While Bovalino said the Rochester district has “some great security measures in place” and the entire staff is always working on preventative measures, there is the fear that someone could enter the school and injure students.
“This is a difficult world we live in,” she said.
Aliquippa School District Superintendent Peter Carbone said he is not in favor of arming teachers.
“Teachers are here to teach, not be police officers or security guards,” he said.
Carbone pointed to the armed security guard who works in the high school. “He is a professional,” Carbone said.
He said he isn’t against guns in schools and believes the armed guard serves an important role.
“In a nutshell, I don’t think teachers should have guns. If the proper person is registered, then I am OK with that,” he said.
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Starting the discussion
While there isn’t agreement across the board, several area organizations have sat down and started a discussion into the best ways to address school safety.
Rosendale said the intermediate unit and area organizations are working to address school safety. After the Florida shooting, he realized he needed to discuss the issue with a variety of people.
“It’s about trying to figure out a way to maximize what we already have,” Rosendale said.
It’s fair to say, Rosendale said, that the incident in Florida “spurred extra concerns” and led to the establishment of the group.
“It’s a major topic right now; it’s out there on the forefront,” he said.
From the Valentine’s Day shooting came protests, walk-outs, threats made at local schools, criticism of students and a lack of consensus across the country about what should be done about school violence.
He started the conversation with Beaver County District Attorney David Lozier. In the wake of the Florida school shooting, Lozier said he received several calls asking what schools in Beaver County were doing to prevent violence.
“There was a lot of pressure for school boards to do something,” Lozier said.
In the weeks after the shooting in Florida, local police investigated about a dozen threats made to local schools, Lozier said. In total, three students were connected to credible threats, he said.
After a “flurry of phone calls” among the intermediate unit, school resource officers and the district attorney’s office, it became clear that everyone needed to get together to discuss the topic. Lozier knew law enforcement had to be part of the conversation.
“The adults are talking,” Lozier said.
Rosendale also brought in Beaver County Behavioral Health, the Beaver County Emergency Services Center, school superintendents, juvenile services, Children and Youth Services, the Beaver County Prevention Network and representatives from the Student Assistance Program, a state-funded student-outreach service.
The local group is working to provide “a continued effort to improve the ways we’re able to support our schools and their needs. We offered to put everybody in the same room,” Rosendale said.
They are aiming to understand where each school stands in terms of safety, what the county offers to schools and what measures can be taken to get everyone on the same page when it comes to emergency response.
“It’s a time for us to come together and grow into understanding resource capabilities and a timeline for what is available throughout the county,” Rosendale said.
The group itself, which doesn’t yet have a formal name, is broken into several subcommittees, Rosendale said. The individual groups are looking into topics such as community events to spread awareness, information sharing and establishing emergency protocols.
Those protocols can then be distributed to the school districts across the county. Rosendale said the information will be presented in a way that “is not cluttered, but helps to get the job done.” Districts won’t be obliged to implement specific changes but instead will have information about resources and best practices.
“It’s kind of like a group effort to look at ways we can improve what we’re doing with school safety,” Rosendale said.
The school safety organization is in the early stages, but Rosendale said the bottom line is that a variety of professionals are coming together in an effort to “educate each other and our staffs on the topic and what to expect” if an act of violence should occur.
The fear and the stress of safety measures in schools, he said, come from the unknown. The goal the group has established is to minimize those fears by creating a check list, educating the community and providing open communication.
“As a group we are updating everybody’s protocols to make sure we’re all being smart and we all know what everybody else is doing,” Lozier said.