Starting this week, Florida teachers may carry in the classroom under an expanded version of a state program designed to stop active assailants on school premises.
Established in 2018, the Guardian Program (GP) allows school staffers, coaches, and other personnel to bear arms on campus provided they undergo extensive training (144 hrs), pass a psychiatric evaluation and clear a drug screening.
Initially, the GP only applied to staffers whose primary job didn’t involve teaching. However, the Legislature passed a bill earlier this year, which was signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis signed in May, to specifically include teachers.
The GP is completely voluntary. It’s up to each district to decide whether it wants to opt into the program. Since its inception, 39 of the state’s 67 counties have chosen to participate. It’s not clear at present how many are going to move forward with arming educators.
But one school administrator indicated to CBS News that they’re “all in” on this new opportunity.
“Everybody wants to know ‘How do we prevent it?’ How can we stop it? We don’t look at it as we want more guns, we look at it as we want more protection,” said Bay County Schools Superintendent Bill Husfelt.
Husfelt knows firsthand what it’s like to be unarmed in the presence of a deranged gunman. Back in 2010, Husfelt and his peers were at a school-board meeting when a crazed man armed with a handgun entered the room. The man fired several shots at Husfelt and the others before he was wounded by a security guard, at which point the assailant took his own life. Thankfully, no one else was killed or wounded in the attack.
“You know experiencing that myself put a different spin on it and a different understanding about what goes on in those situations,” Husfelt said. “You know, until you’re standing in front of someone with a gun pointed at you you don’t realize how helpless you really are.”
SEE ALSO: Florida Gov. DeSantis Signs Bill to Arm Teachers
Data collected from the Crime Prevention Research Center suggests that schools that allow teachers to be armed are actually statistically safer than those that do not. Since 2000, there hasn’t been a single mass shooting in any school that arms teachers.
Still, some critics believe that teachers should just teach. That the safety of their students should rest in the hands of police officers, student resource officers (SROs) or dedicated security guards.
“Teachers should not be burdened whether they think they want to or not with the responsibility of worrying about carrying a firearm,” argued Debbi Hixon, whose husband Chris was slain during the 2018 Parkland massacre. Chris was the school’s athletic director.
That sentiment was echoed by Tony Montalto, whose daughter Gina was also killed in the attack.
“We do believe in the Guardian Program, we do believe in school resource officers, and we do believe in having trained police officers on the campus,” Montalto said. “We need an armed person on campus able and willing to react properly.”
The state’s biggest school districts in Orlando and Miami have not enrolled in the GP. Instead, they’ve stated they’re going to continue to rely on police officers and SROs.
Sadly, though, not all of Florida’s counties have the financial backing to pay for full-time security. In these instances, it seems only logical for these smaller districts to take complete advantage of the GP.
Armed teachers, not only are students safe from preditors, class rooms won’t have disciplinary problems either.