Correction: The superintendent of the Little Rock School District is Morris Holmes. His first name was incorrect in this article.
LITTLE ROCK — If the Little Rock School Board votes to place armed guards in the district’s schools, those guards would receive training and evaluation that exceeds all state standards, district Security Director Bobby Jones told board members Thursday.
Jones and Superintendent Marshall Holmes have proposed security measures that include placing an armed guard in any school that isn’t currently staffed by one of the district’s 18 Little Rock police officers.
The board will vote Thursday on the plan, which would also add 10 additional unarmed guards around the district and authorize Holmes to contact the Little Rock Police Department about hiring more officers, known as school resource officers, for the district.
The administrators drafted the recommendations following a district-wide security audit in the spring and meetings with principals after a December school shooting in Newtown, Conn.
“People who want to do harm look for the least resistance,” Mabelvale Elementary School Principal Darian Smith told board members in a workshop Thursday. “If they know there’s potential for resistance, that could curtail what they might do at our school.”
Smith was one of seven principals who addressed board members about desires for increased security measures such as exterior lighting, fencing, automatic locking exterior doors and new security cameras. He was one of two elementary school principals who told board members he would support hiring an armed guard in his school.
Board member Gregg Adams expressed some concern about the plan to arm guards, particularly in elementary schools.
“It concerns me that if we focus on something that is so unusual and so rare that we may take our eyes off of other areas,” he said, adding that students are more likely to die from suicide or drowning than from a school shooting.
Adams asked for research on the use of guards in elementary school settings.
The district’s discussions come at a time when schools around the country are reevaluating their security, their actions sparked by the Connecticut school shooting that left 26 people dead, 20 of them children.
Among 23 executive orders President Barack Obama signed Thursday in response to the shooting were plans to train law enforcement for active shooter situations in schools - a plan already in progress in Arkansas - and to provide federal incentives to hire additional in-school police officers.
Districts around the country have already explored ways to increase security by hiring military veterans to police school hallways or by allowing teachers to carry guns. An Ohio school district last week approved plans to arm four of its janitors.
Jones said Little Rock would be careful in how it selected and trained its armed personnel, calling the plan a “valuable tool” in potentially dangerous situations.
“You can place all the paper you want around a school saying it’s a gun-free zone and criminals do not care,” he said.
All of Little Rock’s 119 current school security guards said they would be interested in being trained and armed, and 46 of them already have some level of firearms training, Jones said.
The annual cost to employ a guard, including starting salary benefits, is about $23,000, administrators said.
It would cost about $1,550 to train, evaluate and arm a guard, Jones said.
He proposed a psychological evaluation similar to those used by police departments and a committee of district personnel who would interview guards before they would be armed. Guards would also be required to demonstrate that they could shoot with 80 percent accuracy, exceeding a common standard of 75 percent, Jones said.
If the board approves the plan next week, it would take a minimum of three months before the first armed guards would be in place in the district’s schools, he said.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 01/18/2013