Does my kid’s teacher have a gun?

Go to the bottom of the story to see how your school district responded.

A sign greets visitors at the door. In block orange and black letters, the school colors, it gets right to the point: Staff members here are armed. And they’ll do what it takes to protect their classrooms.

This is Bright Local Schools, a rural district about an hour east of Cincinnati and among the first in Ohio to start arming its staff.

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In the wake of America’s latest mass shooting, where 17 students and staff members were killed at a Florida high school, there is a loud, ugly debate over whether we should arm our teachers. Opinions for and against are fierce, but here’s the thing: In Ohio, an unknown number of schools are already doing this. And they’ve been doing it for a while.

So, if you’re a parent, you might be wondering: Does my kid’s teacher have a gun?

The short answer: In some cases, there’s no way to know.

The Enquirer asked 48 school districts in Hamilton, Butler, Warren and Clermont counties if they are arming teachers or other staff members. About half responded, and all but one of those said no staff members are armed.

In Northern Kentucky, where the laws are similar to Ohio, six out of six districts said no staff members are armed and there are no plans to change that.

A few school officials said there have been discussions on the topic, but nothing formal. Many others said the idea is not even on the table. With armed security guards and school resource officers already walking the halls, they said, there’s just no need for teachers with guns.

One local unknown is Edgewood City Schools in Butler County. At first, in response to The Enquirer’s inquiry, a district spokeswoman sent a link to the district’s concealed carry policy, which allows those with concealed carry licenses to bring their weapons onto school property provided they leave them locked in a vehicle.

In 2013, however, the Dayton Daily News reported that Edgewood voted to allow administrators to carry firearms at school. When pressed about whether that is still the case – a separate issue from the district’s concealed carry policy – the spokeswoman would not answer.

How common is this?

Ohio law bans anyone from carrying a weapon into a school, but there are some exceptions. Police officers, for example, school security guards and – the catch that matters here – “any other person who has written authorization” from the school board.

Schools are required by law to submit safety plans to the state, but those plans are excluded from public record, according to Sara Clark, chief legal counsel for the Ohio School Boards Association. So if a school wants to arm certain teachers, it’s easy. The school board approves it, and they put in the safety plan.

They can do it all behind closed doors since the safety plan is not public record, Clark said. There’s no requirement to tell anyone it’s happening.

The Ohio Department of Education has no idea how many schools are arming teachers. It’s not under ODE’s jurisdiction, said spokeswoman Brittany Halpin, and districts are not required to report to ODE whether they allow staff members to carry guns.

Some superintendents have heard rumors of a count – perhaps as many as 200 districts in Ohio, roughly one in every three – but that’s just talk, not an official tally.

Perhaps the best estimate we can offer is this: The Buckeye Firearms Foundation does a training for educators called FASTER, for Faculty/Administrator Safety Training and Emergency Response.

The training goes over guns, crisis management, trauma and medical training – anything an educator might need to respond to a crisis before law enforcement or EMTs arrive, said Joe Eaton, FASTER program director.

In the past five years, 1,300 school employees have taken the FASTER training, Eaton said, though it’s important to note that just because an employee goes through the training does not automatically mean he or she is carrying a gun at school.

Those 1,300 trainees include staff members from 225 school districts in 12 states, but the vast majority were from Ohio, Eaton said.

Statewide, he said, the Firearms Foundation has trained school employees from 76 of Ohio’s 88 counties.

“We’ve been running at the limits of our foundation for five years,” Eaton said. “The demand was high before Florida and Kentucky. But now it’s extremely high.”

‘Don’t count on my coming home’

After every school shooting, Georgetown Exempted Village Schools Superintendent Christopher Burrows would have a similar conversation with his wife. If anything ever happens at my school, he’d tell her, I will take action. “Don’t count on my coming home.”

Burrows talked with his staff members and realized many of them were having similar conversations with their loved ones. Since Georgetown can’t afford school resource officers, he said, they started the conversation about arming staff members. In 2017, the school board approved the policy. 

It was a similar situation at Bright Schools, which first armed its staff in 2016. The high school sits in Mowrystown, where the police force is volunteer-only. The sheriff’s office is 20 miles away, said Downing, the superintendent.

“If something would happen, God forbid,” Downing said, “it’s going to be a long time before someone gets to us.”

But both superintendents say the debate should not really be about arming staff but about mental health and prevention. If Burrows had an extra $200,000, he said, he wouldn’t spend it on guns and bullets.

"I’d much rather spend $200,000 on social workers and case managers and psychologists,” he said, “people that are on the ground to really meet and nurture and wrap around our kids.”