As an educator, I want to thank all of you who are expressing thoughts on arming teachers that mirror mine.
First, if we want to protect children, we need to pay the money to protect children. An armed police officer is trained to assess the area. Teachers in their classrooms are not able to scan or take note of anything but the behavior that exists in the classroom. An officer moving around a campus or watching video come from video cameras can. They can be the best first defense.
Second, federal and state government buildings have some sort of police protecting the building, many have metal detectors, and outdoor and indoor video surveillance. While extremely costly, doing this for schools would lower the rate of attacks as it has on state and government buildings. (From the Government Services Administration following their increased security measures after OKC bombing--Measuring Success---Before describing the progress we have made delivering the specifics of our security program, I would like to talk about measuring results. As you know, I have been trying to manage PBS by the numbers by establishing outcome-oriented performance measures. Security is no exception. We are struggling to develop meaningful performance measures. Other security organizations, both public and private, are trying to do the same thing. Until we settle on those measures over the next few months, we can report the following results.
Criminal activity reported in our buildings has declined steadily since 1995. During 1997, the number of crimes against persons decreased by 6 percent and the number of crimes against property decreased by 3 percent.
There have had a 31 percent increase in the number of weapons violations that we have caught. During 1997, we recorded 612 offenses.
Also know that our security measures have made our tenants feel more safe. Results of recent customer surveys conducted by the International Facility Management Association (IFMA) indicate high levels of satisfaction with our security measures. @
https://www.gsa.gov/node/77310)
Third, it is astonishing to me that we have an administration that is spending more money on Secret Service, with other elected officials traveling far and wide (where many companies have their execs on conference calls to save money), tax cuts that will spiral the deficit but we want to do the "give them a stipend" or "train them all and see who would be good for the quota" which are things that most of us would bristle at it if it was us or pets, let alone our children. The madness here, IMHO, is that rather than saying we can control guns and look for ways to secure buildings the president says that we should go with a "low cost" solution and pay teachers a stipend. ("The White House was later challenged that 40% of America’s teachers being given a bonus of, for example, $1,000, would mean $1bn being distributed to a million of them." --https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/feb/22/trump-proposal-teachers-guns-schools) How can we talk about going the cheap route here? If you had to choose a medical professional to do your heart surgery, would you choose a person who trained for 40 hours and reads more on the weekend or the professional who has been professionally trained, got their license, has a track record and trains continually? All of us want the highly trained because it is safer and has a greater chance of curing the issue. If there are only excellent doctors in a town thirty miles away or those who trained on a cadaver nearby, who do you want?
It is so specious to me that we would take the less optimal road for cost savings.
On another note, I don't want to gut the 2nd amendment but I can't see how a weapon with rapid fire capability in order to shoot through a metal helmet (linked in an earlier post) is needed by anyone in this country. Are there handgun issues? YEs, I am all for tightening the laws there for those who use them in crimes or don't secure their fire arms.
