By Dave Workman | Senior Editor
A draft report from the Florida panel reviewing the Feb. 14 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland sent a shockwave when one of the recommendations to improve school security would be to allow armed teachers.
The recommendations come from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission.
The South Florida Sun Sentinel said a draft report from the panel identified several failures “by Broward County agencies” which the recommendations would help correct. Armed teachers, improved security and “better law enforcement” were high on the list, the newspaper said.
Still, there was one noticeable dissent, and it came from panel member Max Schachter, the father of a student who was killed at the high school along with 16 other students and adults. Schachter was quoted by the newspaper, saying he had heard from teachers who oppose the idea. He suggested putting “smoke cannons” in school hallways to confuse any school shooter.
Earlier last year, the Broward School Board opposed the idea of armed teachers, the Sun Sentinel reported at the time.
The proposal amounted to something of a slap for David Hogg, the student who became the face of last year’s teen gun control movement in the weeks after the shooting. He had opposed the idea of armed teachers during an appearance on ABC This Week following the massacre.
The notion of armed teachers also received some opposition from Congressman Ted Deutch, a Florida Democrat, who contended that “Teachers want to teach, not be armed for combat in their classrooms. Law enforcement cannot push their responsibilities to make our communities safer on to civilians that should be focused on educating their students.”
But Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, who sits on the panel, has a different view.
“In the ideal world, we shouldn’t need anyone on campus with a gun,” he reportedly stated, “but that’s not the world we live in today.”
He advocated having multiple people on campus “to protect the children.”
According to the newspaper, the draft report, which runs 407 pages, “does not recommend new gun control policies.” That amounts to a refute of the activities by the gun prohibition lobbying groups that many rights activists believe co-opted the student movement for their own purposes.
National teacher unions have been vocal in their opposition to arming trained teachers for school safety purposes. And Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has been criticized for suggesting that the federal government could allow some school districts to use federal funds to buy firearms for teachers to be armed. Meanwhile, some school districts in various states have moved toward armed licensed and specially trained teachers and administrators to be armed on a voluntary basis.
There was no indication when a final Florida report would be available.
