LITTLE ROCK — The Little Rock School District surveyed parents and teachers this week to assess their support for placing armed guards in its elementary schools.
Under a plan proposed by Superintendent Morris Holmes, the district would place an armed civilian guard in every school not staffed by a Little Rock police officer.
The School Board is set to consider that plan, which also calls for 10 additional unarmed guards throughout the district, at tonight’s regular meeting.
“Please rest assured that the safety and security of you, your children and the staff is of utmost importance to the Little Rock School District,” parent surveys from several elementary schools said.
The surveys were distributed by e-mail or notes to parents Tuesday with responses due Wednesday. The district lists 32 elementary schools.
District spokesman Pamela Smith said each elementary school’s principal determined the method for surveying parents. The results were still being compiled Wednesday afternoon, and they will not be available before today’s board meeting, she said.
The surveys said security officers in elementary schools “would be armed and trained in use of handguns in the event of crisis, as they are in the secondary schools.” But none of the district’s secondary schools currently have nonpolice armed guards.
The district pays half the salary of 16 school resource officers it employs in cooperation with the Little Rock Police Department to monitor its high schools and all but three of its middle schools, district Security Director Bobby Jones said. With board approval, the district plans to work with the department to hire three additional officers within a year, he said.
There are no plans to put police in elementary schools. Rather, the district would train, certify and arm one of its 119 civilian guards for each school with no on-site police officer, Jones said.
A proposal distributed to School Board members said the plan, drafted as a response to a December school shooting in Connecticut that left 26 dead, would cost $64,000 in its first year. That cost for each armed guard includes $750 for a gun and equipment and $800 for training, psychological screening and certification, the proposal said.
Guards would be certified by the Arkansas State Police after 40 hours of training, which exceeds the eight-hour state requirement, Jones said. The guards also would be screened by a committee that would include Jones, two administrators and one human resources staff member, the proposal said.
The board also will consider a request to hire 10 additional unarmed guards to fill needs identified in a district wide security audit at an annual cost of $23,000 each, which includes salary and benefits, the proposal said.
Some School Board members, including Jody Carreiro and Greg Adams, have requested additional research on the effectiveness of armed guards in elementary schools.
School shootings are relatively rare, Adams said last week, and the district needs to be careful in how it spends its money.
Carreiro told Holmes at a recent meeting that he wanted to avoid approving a new policy as an emotional response to the December shootings in Newtown, Conn.
Some parents posting on the district’s Facebook page called for increased measures to lock doors and secure school entrances.
Since the Newtown shootings, schools around the country have evaluated and tightened security.
Elsewhere in Arkansas, the Cedar Ridge School Board plans to seek a 1-mill tax increase to pay for two additional school resources officers with salaries of $51,000 a year.
Among 23 executive actions that President Barack Obama took this month 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.
State lawmakers around the country are considering bills that would add security or allow teachers to carry guns in school. Some school boards have implemented emergency plans to hire military veterans to guard hallways or to arm janitors and support staff members.
The American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, the country’s two largest teacher’s unions, issued a joint statement Dec. 20 calling for an increased focus on mental-health services and “reasonable gun safety legislation” and rejecting calls to arm educators.
The Little Rock Education Association, the Little Rock district’s teacher’s union, has not approved a formal position on the district’s armed-guards proposal, President Cathy Koehler said.
“But not one person has told me they are comfortable with that as a solution at the elementary level,” she said.
Carrying guns may form an obstacle for guards attempting to form “a positive relationship between students and the people who are trying to keep them safe,” Koehler said.
But several district employees gathered after a meeting last week and told Jones, the district’s security director, that they supported the plan.
There are armed guards at courthouses, hospitals and amusement parks, Jones said, why shouldn’t they be at schools as well?
“We can all debate why it’s happening, but that’s not what we’re here for,” he said of school shootings. “We’re here to decide how we can stop it from happening in our schools.”
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 01/24/2013