Louisiana’s school guards, but not its teachers, can carry guns
17th September 2018 · 0 Comments
By Susan Buchanan
Contributing Writer
After a string of school shootings across the country, Louisiana is beefing up security. Bills to allow guns in schools failed in the state legislature this spring, however. Governor John Bel Edwards thinks schools should have trained officers, but not armed teachers. Nationally, many parents agree with that view.
In February, President Trump said he supports arming 20 percent of America’s teachers. In over a dozen states, including Texas, Arkansas and Alabama, teachers can bring guns to classrooms. Louisiana has resisted efforts by gun lobbyists and others to arm instructors.
When asked who can carry guns in schools, state Department of Education spokeswoman Sydni Dunn pointed to Louisiana Revised Statute 14:95.6. All of the state’s public and private schools and college campuses, out to perimeters of a 1,000 feet, are firearm-free zones, according to that legislation. These zones are marked by signs on streets and fences. Armed law-enforcement officers are allowed inside them, however. As for school buses, they are to be kept free of guns. Anyone violating these rules can be fined and/or imprisoned.
Local schools have stepped up safety efforts. At Warren Easton Senior High, an Orleans Parish public charter with nearly a 1,000 students in Mid-City, “we have a school crisis plan for emergencies,” principal Mervin Jackson said last week. “In August, we had active-shooter drill training for our staff and security officers. Our security officers are commissioned to carry weapons, and they renew their commissions annually.” Warren Easton’s officers have been armed for a few years, he said.
In late March, the Orleans Parish School Board inked an agreement with the City of New Orleans to enhance safety, by improving active-shooter training for public school leaders and the police. In a late-February school board meeting, OPSB Superintendent Henderson Lewis, Jr. discussed plans to increase training for school crises. OPSB works with school leaders and the New Orleans Police Department to develop crisis plans for each campus annually, he noted. A number of city schools conduct drills, including lock-downs and sheltering in place.
Before Henderson spoke to the board about coordinating with the police, a mid-February shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida had left seventeen people dead.
In mid-March, more than 200 New Orleans school and city personnel joined in an active-shooter training and simulation project organized by OPSB and NOPD at McDonogh 35 Senior High School on Cadillac Street. The NOPD’s SWAT Team and New Orleans Emergency Medical Services attended.
After the Florida shootings, Governor Edwards formed a 19-member Louisiana Blue Ribbon Commission on School Safety to make improvements. So far, the commission has done on-site assessments at public and some private and parochial institutions across the state.
“These on-site assessments are critical to maintaining situational awareness about the safety and security of students, faculty and staff,” Louisiana State Police spokesman Lieutenant J.B. Slaton said last week. “In Phase 1 of the commission’s initiative, school superintendents have conducted a survey, and the Louisiana State Police has partnered with local sheriffs, city police departments, the State Fire Marshal’s office and school officials to do multi-point examinations at Louisiana’s schools.”
These reviews, which began at high schools and have extended to middle and elementary schools, have evaluated floor plans, signs, parking, points of access, PA and other communication systems, security cameras and student reporting procedures, Slaton said.
State Police superintendent Colonel Kevin Reeves and Department of Education superintendent John White are co-chairs of the Louisiana Blue Ribbon Commission on School Safety.
The Louisiana State Police has applied for two U.S. Department of Justice grants to address school safety. One is a School Violence and Prevention grant, worth up to $500,000, to strengthen ties with law enforcement, conduct training, and add more metal detectors, locks, lighting and ways to notify the police to schools. The other application is a for a School Violence Threat Assessment and Technology Reporting Program grant that could be up to $500,000. Washington officials will let the State Police know about these grants by September 30.
Meanwhile, the state’s Department of Education, along with the National Center for Biomedical Research and Training/Academy of Counter-Terrorist Education at Louisiana State University, recently applied for a school safety grant with the U.S. Department of Education, Sydni Dunn said.
Nationally, parents aren’t keen on arming teachers. In a 50th annual PDK poll of attitudes toward public schools, conducted in May, 67 percent of parents preferred not to have a child in a classroom where the teacher is armed. However, 80 percent of parents polled favored armed police in schools, and 74 percent supported placing metal detectors at school entrances.
Phi Delta Kappa or PDK, based in Virginia, is a professional group of educators. It polled a random, national sample of 1,042 adults, including an “over-sample” of 515 parents of kindergarten to grade-12 students.
For arming teachers or other school staff, “Republicans are more amenable to the idea, particularly when training and screening are included, while most Democrats remain opposed — with half strongly so,” PDK said. Gun ownership was a dividing line, the poll found. Among those surveyed with an operable gun at home, 55 percent supported arming teachers and staff, while only 26 percent of those without a gun did.
The survey found that 44 percent of white parents supported arming teachers but only 27 percent of nonwhite parents did. School security was of less concern to wealthier, white and well-educated adults than to lower-income, less-educated, minority and urban parents—who were more fearful about child safety and less confident in a school’s ability to deter shooters.
In legislative matters, Governor Edwards this spring signed a proposal allowing students to wear bullet-proof backpacks to school. They’re more expensive than regular ones. For parents who can’t afford them, an option is to buy a bullet-resistant insert for a regular backpack. Heavy books, laptops and thick jackets are conventional, but less effective ways to fortify packs.
After February’s Florida shootings, eight students and two teachers were killed in Santa Fe, Texas on May 18. In a New Orleans tragedy that many remember, a teenage boy was shot to death and several girls were wounded in mid-April 2003 at what was then John McDonogh High on Esplanade Avenue.
This article originally published in the September 17, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
