Florida school safety commission recommends arming teachers after Parkland shooting

Leading teacher organisations have rejected the idea of arming teachers, as has a leading school resource officer association

This photo shows the police response after the shooting in Parkland, Florida last year (AP)

The public safety commission investigating last year’s mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School has recommended in its preliminary report that teachers should be allowed to carry guns at school.

The 15-member commission made the recommendation as a part of a 446-page report that was written in the year since the shooting, and would see volunteer educators undergo training before they could bring firearms to class.

The report includes several other recommendations with most appearing aimed at “hardening” schools so that carrying out mass shootings at schools would be logistically much more difficult.

The recommendations will now be considered by Florida's state legislature, as well as outgoing Republican Governor Rick Scott — who leaves office on 8 January — and his replacement, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis.

Proposals to arm teachers have been highly contentious in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting, where 17 people, including 14 students, were killed. President Donald Trump suggested in the aftermath of that Valentine’s Day massacre that he would support efforts to arm teachers, as well as other security measures.

However, leading teachers organisations — including the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association — have rejected the proposals, which are often floated as potential fixes to school gun crimes when massacres occur.

Those teachers groups are not alone: The National Association of School Resource Officers, an organisation that represents school-based resource officers, has also said it is not a great idea.

The commission’s report recommends several measures to toughen security in schools, including the installation of bulletproof glass on all school windows by 2025, and making sure that classroom doors can be locked from the inside.

“As a student attending school in Florida, I am appalled that the commission that was established to make schools in our state safer is recommending teachers carry guns,” Juliana Simone Carrasco, a Florida high school student and gun violence activist, said in a statement.

“I don’t want my teachers to be armed, I want my elected leaders to pass policies to keep guns out of the hands of people with dangerous intentions to begin with,” she added.

The programme to arm teachers would be voluntary, and teachers would not be allowed to carry guns in school until they complete 132 hours of training.