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The Daily Signal
How This Ohio Program
Trains Teachers in 12 States to Carry Guns
“In short, we decided we were tired of watching our kids die in
schools.”
Fred Lucas
March 06, 2018
When a school shooting occurred barely an hour away, administrators
with the Mad River school district in Riverside, Ohio, looked for ways
to keep it from happening at their schools.
“The safety of our students is paramount,” Mad River Superintendent
Chad Wyen told The Daily Signal. “After several shootings in schools
across the U.S. and some locally, I found myself not asking why but
what is the most logical thing I can do as a superintendent to keep
students and staff safe in my district.”
A 14-year-old boy shot at two other students in the cafeteria of
Madison Junior/Senior High School in western Ohio in a nonfatal
encounter in February 2016.
By that July, the Mad River district’s Board of Education had voted to
arm certain trained teachers and staff.
“After much research, discussion, and thought, it became clear that
creating an armed response team was the best way to ensure children in
Mad River would have the best chance to survive if confronted with an
armed intruder,” Wyen said in an email to The Daily Signal.
“My hope is we will never have to deal with a situation like what
happened recently in Florida. But if we do, I at least know that we had
the tools and resources to save lives,” the superintendent said.
Mad River is among school districts in Ohio that have put teachers
through a 26-hour, three-day course that exceeds the requirements of
the Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy.
The school district worked with the Riverside Police Department and the
Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office in implementing the program.
Trained Mad River faculty and staff have access to handguns that are
locked in biometric safes during the school day in strategic locations;
the safes open with the thumbprints of those authorized to use them.
The idea didn’t provoke opposition in the community, Mad River district
spokeswoman Jennifer Alexander said.
“Teachers and staff apply. There is an interview process,” Alexander
told The Daily Signal. “The training they receive is in line with
police officer training.”
Teachers and staff from 76 of Ohio’s 88 counties have received training
from a program called FASTER Saves Lives, which also has trained school
personnel in 11 other states. FASTER stands for Faculty/Administrator
Safety Training and Emergency Response.
Among the earliest school districts to enroll five years ago was Ohio’s
Newcomerstown Exempted Village Schools, where designated school staff
were authorized to carry concealed weapons.
Parents in Newcomerstown, near Columbus, asked for school personnel to
be armed, Superintendent Jeff Staggs said.
“Training for the FASTER program is top of the line,” Staggs told The
Daily Signal in a phone interview. “Some people try to say teachers are
not qualified to handle guns. That’s insulting. I was obviously a
teacher before I was a superintendent, and I wasn’t qualified to teach
before I was trained.”
Staggs said some have tried to make the matter political, but locally
it is viewed as keeping kids safe. He noted the rapid pace at which the
gunman killed 17 in Parkland.
“When you have a stopwatch of death, time is not a luxury,” Staggs
said, adding:
Who is calling 911 when you’re running away from a shooter? It takes a
minute to get a call through to 911. It would take 50 seconds for 911
to connect to dispatch and another minute for police to arrive. That’s
why 17 people can be shot in three or four minutes.
In the past five years, the FASTER Saves Lives program has trained
about 1,300 school personnel at public and private schools from 225
districts across 12 states. Sponsored by the Buckeye Firearms
Foundation, the program will train more than 200 this year, Director
Joe Eaton told The Daily Signal.
The organization has two training facilities in Ohio, one in the town
of West Union near Cincinnati and the other in the town of Rittman near
Akron. It operates a third training center in Denver.
Eaton stressed armed response is just one facet of the program, which
also trains school personnel on crisis management and emergency medical
aid.
All training is at no cost to the schools. The program survives through
private, individual donations, he said.
Under the program, generally only the superintendent, principals, and a
few others are aware who is authorized to use the firearms.
Arming teachers has sparked a national debate since President Donald
Trump suggested it as a solution in the aftermath of the Parkland,
Florida, school shooting Feb. 14, in which a 19-year-old former student
carrying an AR-15-style rifle killed 17.
American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said the
union’s members are decidedly against the idea.
“I spoke to 60,000 educators last night in a telephone town hall,”
Weingarten said in a public statement, referring to a Feb. 21 event.
“The response was universal, even from educators who are gun owners:
Teachers don’t want to be armed, we want to teach. We don’t want to be,
and would never have the expertise needed to be, sharp shooters; no
amount of training can prepare an armed teacher to go up against an
AR-15.”
Eaton, director of the gun-training program, said he isn’t surprised
about opposition from some.
“It is human nature to think of the one person you wouldn’t want to be
part of this program,” Eaton said.
But, he added, once the public learns about the level of training that
school staffs go through, they generally support the idea.
Since the idea of arming teachers leaped back into the news, Eaton
said, the program has averaged 10 inquiries per day from teachers and
administrators.
The Trump administration hasn’t been in contact with the organization,
he said.
“We were a nonprofit educational charity who previously worked with
youth firearms safety [and] suicide prevention, and partnered with the
American Academy of Pediatrics here in Ohio to encourage safe storage
of firearms by parents of young children,” Eaton said.
The program began to do firearms training for teachers in 2013, in
response to the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown,
Connecticut, where a young man shot and killed 20 children and six
adults in December 2012.
“Five years ago, after Sandy Hook, we were contacted by schools wanting
help to put together a safe and effective security plan,” Eaton said.
“In short, we decided we were tired of watching our kids die in
schools.”
Read this (plus see the video) and other articles at The Daily Signal
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