How Secure School Design Could be a Better Option Than Arming Teachers.

While the latest school shooting is reigniting the debate over arming teachers, the interim superintendent of the Boulder Valley School District doesn’t see more guns in schools as a solution.

Trump said during a listening session Wednesday with parents and survivors of school shootings that a teacher adept at firearms “could very well end the attack very quickly.” He followed that up with a tweet Thursday that “highly trained teachers would act as a deterrent to the cowards that do this” and later suggested they receive bonuses for the added responsibility.

Boulder Valley School District interim Superintendent Cindy Stevenson said she looked extensively at the issue of arming teachers in her 12 years as superintendent in the Jefferson County School District, which includes Columbine High School where students shot and killed 12 kids and a teacher in 1999.

Police departments recommended against allowing teachers to carry guns because research shows that even highly trained police officers miss 70 percent of their shots — and it drops to 18 percent when a suspect returns fire, she said.

“There’s this mythology that bad guys will get shot, but that’s not always true,” she said. “Sometimes, the good guys get shot. Our teachers should be worried about effective teaching, not managing firearms in classrooms.”

Instead, Stevenson said, Boulder Valley wants to create “hard targets” by making it difficult for someone intent on doing harm to get access to students or faculty.

The district in the last few years has added locked doors and vestibules at school entrances to slow down a shooter and give police more time to respond. The district also added alarms to outside doors in case they’re left propped open, while schools regularly practice safety drills.

“You want to make it hard to reach the target,” she said. “That’s going to be safer in the long run than giving teachers guns.”

 

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