The High School Journal

School shootings are nothing new in the United States. So far in 2018 there have been two mass shootings on k-12 campuses in the United States resulting in multiple injuries and deaths. The most highly publicized incident occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida where 17 unsuspecting students and teachers were killed by a lone gunman. In the wake of such incidents, activists have organized marches like March For Our Lives (March 14, 2018), and the National School Walkout (April 20, 2018), and have engaged in other forms of protest against gun violence. One solution that has been proposed by participants in these protests to stem the tide of gun violence is the development of common sense gun laws. A divergent solution presented by The National Rifle Association (NRA), a powerful lobby group that supports the Second Amendment which the Supreme Court has ruled gives an individual the right to possess and use a firearm (District of Columbia v. Heller, 2008), suggests that schools should place highly trained resource officers on school campuses to thwart future attacks (Rostron, 2014; Weatherby, 2015). While some NRA supporters think armed resource officers are a good idea, others think teachers should be armed and trained to carry guns on school campuses in order to be the first line of defense for student safety. The proposal to arm teachers has gained traction since President Donald Trump tweeted his support in February 2018:

Armed educators (and trusted people who work within a school) love our students and will protect them. Very smart people. Must be firearms adept & have annual training. Should get yearly bonus. Shootings will not happen again–a big & very inexpensive deterrent. Up to States.

While the president's words fueled the national debate as to whether or not arming teachers is a good idea, the fact is that some states (South Dakota, Tennessee, Alabama, Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Colorado, Ohio, Utah, and Indiana) are already arming teachers. This editorial explores the complex terrain of what arming teachers looks like and raises questions about the impact arming teachers can have on school climate and its specific impact on students of color.

In 1990, the United States Congress passed the Gun-Free School Zones Act that authorizes that all k-12 public schools are gun free zones, however if you hold a state's valid conceal and carry license you can carry a concealed gun on school grounds. This is the only national law related to guns in schools, making the issue of arming teachers the domain of the states. In fact, many states already have laws in place that allow school personnel to carry concealed guns on school grounds. So there are currently teachers in some states lawfully entering their schools with concealed loaded weapons. Particularly alarming is that there is no official tally of exactly how many teachers are packing heat in the classroom (Hobbs & Brody, 2018). What parameters are currently in place with regards to training teachers to carry weapons in schools? Does this [End Page 129] approach make our schools safer and less vulnerable to mass shootings as President Donald Trump suggests?

The legislation that exists surrounding arming teachers is as unique as each state's geography. South Dakota passed legislation in 2013 that allows schools to create programs in which armed "sentinels" will protect school premises against violent attacks (Rostron, 2014). These "sentinels" are a select few individuals who are tasked with carrying a gun and protecting school grounds during an active shooter situation. The South Dakota legislation is written in such a way that local communities have complete control of whether or not they implement the "sentinels" program. The approval process is three tiered: 1) the school board has to opt-in to the program; 2) local citizens have to then approve; 3) local law enforcement then has the option to veto despite previous approval. If a local school district obtains approval, the state regulations require "sentinels" to hold a valid concealed weapon permit and complete a course of at least 80 hours of training, with additional eight hours of training each year to maintain their certification.

South Dakota's "sentinel" program can be contrasted with Kansas's law that allows teachers and other school personnel to carry concealed handguns in schools if they have a valid conceal and carry handgun license. Individuals in Kansas do not have to inform anyone that they are carrying the weapon on campus as long as they have the appropriate license. Frankly stated in Rostron (2014), "the Kansas law imposes no training or qualification requirements beyond what is needed to get a general license to carry concealed handguns in public" (p.451). Kansas's concealed gun license training only requires the completion of an eight-hour handgun safety and training course making it one of the least restrictive states in the nation with regards to arming teachers. Similar to Kansas, Utah teachers only need to obtain a concealed carry permit in order to bring a gun to school (Weatherby, 2015).

While some states have already addressed arming teachers, other states, like Florida, are wrestling with this question for the first time, in part as a result of the Parkland shooting. Florida is currently trying to write and pass legislation titled "The Guardian Program" which would arm teachers. The Guardian program is similar to South Dakota's "sentinels" program where a select few teachers would be trained and armed. Much of the debate surrounding the bill is that arming teachers jeopardizes the safety of the entire school community (Jones & Sung, 2018). Many whom have spoken out against Florida's Guardian program do so in concern specifically for black and brown students' safety. Extensive research has been conducted about teachers' use of implicit bias in the classroom wherein their unconscious attitudes negatively impact their interactions with students of color (Anyon et al., 2018; Gregory, 2016). These implicit biases manifest themselves in students of color being disproportionately identified as behavior problems in the classroom. Because of this, studies have found that students of color are suspended at an alarmingly higher rate than their white peers (Gregory, 2016). These facts are concerning on their own, but now we are adding a loaded gun into the equation. The issue becomes even trickier in states like Florida that have Stand Your Ground Laws, that permit an individual to use deadly force against another person if they feel their life is in danger. What is to keep a teacher from shooting a student of color whom that the teacher deems as a threat to them or other students, perhaps stemming from a teacher's own implicit bias rather than a viable threat? These scenarios already play out in real life in the shooting deaths of unarmed black men and women around the country by police. By introducing guns in schools, are we creating environments for more instances of racialized violence? [End Page 130]

Despite the surprising number of states that already have armed teachers in schools, we know little about how effective these initiatives are in saving lives. We do know about general gun violence and children in the United States and the statistics show that students are actually fairly safe at school (Flannery, Modzeleski, & Kretschmar, 2013) and that most gun violence occurs in other spaces, specifically the home (Robers, Zhang, Truman, & Snyder, 2012). Students are more likely to be a victim of gun violence in their own home, with a weapon obtained from a family member, than they are at school. Those that are opposed to arming teachers, even well-trained teachers, note that accidents happen and the more guns that are around the more gun related accidents will occur (Crews & Crews, 2013; Buck, Yurvati, & Drake, 2013; Weatherby, 2015). In fact just days after President Trump proposed arming teachers with guns as a solution for protecting classrooms, a California teacher, a reserve police officer, teaching a class about gun safety accidently fired a gun in the classroom, resulting in a student injury (Brueck, 2018). This incident illustrates the point that even highly trained individuals have accidents with guns thus putting students in more danger than before. But let's not focus on the potential accidents that can occur in schools just by having a gun present. What does merely having guns in classrooms do to the learning environment? What kind of message are we sending to students by placing guns in these spaces?

With increased drastic security measures, such as arming teachers, scholars suggest that students will get the impression that all students are potential sources or targets of violence fostering fear, resentment and other negative feelings (Marchbanks, Peguero, Varela, Blake, & Eason, 2018). There is also a phenomenon termed the weapons effect, which means that just being in the presence of a weapon can increase feelings of aggression (Buck et al., 2013). Feelings of aggression can emerge in both the teachers and students by the sheer knowledge that a gun is in the classroom. These negative feelings are not conducive to creating safe and secure learning environments intended to foster student social, emotional and educational growth. Ungrounded fear towards students and specifically students of color is a main concern of those who are against the proposed Guardian Program in Florida. As noted earlier implicit bias causes students of color to be identified as behavior problems at higher rates than their white peers; therefore schools with heightened negative climates will most certainly have damaging effects on students of color in particular. In a recent publication in The Washington Post, students of color are already disproportionately impacted by school shootings. The reporters found that African American students make up just 16.6% of the school population in the United States but experience school shootings at twice that rate (Cox, Rich, Chiu, Muyskens, & Ulmanu, 2018). Placing guns in classrooms could see that statistic increase.

An additional question we need to consider is whether or not teachers want to be armed. A recent survey of teachers found that over 60% of teachers did not want to be armed (Thomas, 2013). A second study found that 67% of surveyed teachers thought the hiring of a school counselor would be more effective at preventing school violence then other major security measures like arming teachers or increasing police presence in schools (McGreevy, 2013). There has also been a recent Internet movement on Twitter and Instagram titled #ARMMEWITH that provides teachers a platform to express their desire to not be armed with guns but with the necessary supplies to teach their students. For example one teacher wrote, "#ARMMEWITH: More time to build relationships with students. Smaller class sizes. Safety for kids to learn at school without fear" (Palmer, 2018). [End Page 131]

In addition to asking teachers about their reservations concerning guns in the classroom, we should also develop an understanding about various student perceptions about teachers being armed. No formal surveys have been conducted specifically about student opinions on allowing teachers to carry guns in schools. Nor is there any information that students are informed that in some states their teachers are already armed and ready to shoot. What we do have is evidence that students want to feel safe at school, an estimated one million students participated in the National Walkout Days on March 24, 2018 and April 20, 2018 in protest of gun violence. The impassioned speeches from survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school shooting have given life to the common sense gun law movement. These include the one from Emma Gonzalez, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, given in an address to Florida lawmakers and gun advocates on February 17, 2018:

Every single person here today, all these people should be home grieving. But instead we are up here standing together because if all our government can do is send thoughts and prayers, then it's time for victims to be the change that we need to see. . . . We are going to be the kids you read about in textbooks. Not because we're going to be another statistic about mass shooting in America, but because, . . . we are going to be the last mass shooting. . . . It's going to be due to the tireless effort of the school board, the faculty members, the family members and most of all the students.

This brief segment from Gonzalez's powerful speech, just days after her school experienced a mass shooting, illustrates the passion that many students feel about the current state of gun laws in the United States. Edna Chavez, a 17-year-old from Manual Arts High in Los Angeles who spoke at the March for Our Lives protest stated plainly:

Arming teachers will not work. More security in our schools does not work. Zero tolerance police do not work. They make us feel like criminals. We should feel supported and empowered in our schools.

These young women's words and the growing activism against gun violence in the United States demonstrates that something needs to be done to keep children safe from gun violence. The answer does not lie, as Trump suggests, in arming teachers.

To date there are zero empirical studies published on whether or not arming teachers is an effective approach to school safety. Good teachers know that students are individuals and require different instructional practices in order to achieve mastery of a concept. There is not a one-size fits all to teaching, so we need to assume that there is not a one-size fits all to school safety. The arming of teachers is an over-simplified, unsupported solution to a much larger problem that plagues the United States. What is the school climate like in schools where teachers are already carrying weapons? How have students in these schools been impacted by this so-called security measure? Specifically, how do students of color feel about these drastic security measures? These are some of the questions that need to be answered to identify if arming teachers is a solution to school safety and a way to end mass school shootings.