Some School Districts in This State Will Allow Teachers to Protect Their Students

Would you rather send your children to a “gun-free zone” school or one where teachers are fully prepared and trained to stop a shooter intent on murdering everybody in the building?

Parents in some Florida counties won’t have to worry about gun-free zones, where the murderer is the only person with a gun until the cops arrive. The state has begun arming teachers to protect children. Fox 32 Chicago reported that seven school districts will allow teachers to carry concealed on school grounds. An excerpt (emphasis added):

The law expands on a safety measure known as the “guardian” program. The program was created in response to the February 2018 Parkland massacre but did not allow teachers to carry guns, in part due to the recommendation of former Gov. Rick Scott. Under the original law, guardians were either non-instructional personnel who volunteered, or employees–such as school resource officers– hired specifically to protect students.

“That initial program [said] everybody except classroom teachers … could be armed. With the recent legislation, our board approved to train classroom teachers to be able to further protect our students,” said Dylan Tedders, the assistant superintendent of Okeechobee County.

A state lawmaker criticized the program, calling it “absolutely asinine,” “counterproductive,” “dumb,” and “backwards.”

But this is what a parent with children in government schools in Florida had to say:

“If all else fails and my child is sitting in a classroom with some psycho coming through that door, I want my child behind that teacher, and I want that teacher equipped to do something to help themselves, which is also going to help my child,” said Adam Cohen, whose two kids are enrolled in Okeechobee County schools. The family moved to Okeechobee from Parkland after the 2018 Parkland Massacre. Cohen’s daughter, now in the ninth grade, was enrolled in Parkland’s middle school at the time.

From Andrew Pollack, whose daughter was murdered in Parkland:

“You’ve seen multiple mass shootings stopped by people that saw something, said something and then they saw someone actually did something, not like in Parkland — where no one did anything and that it was these failures and these policies that are in the schools or across the nation,” Pollack said.

It’s not mandatory that teachers be armed. They may volunteer for the program.