No guns for teachers

TAVARES — Lake County Schools superintendent and School Board members don't expect to take advantage of a new law that allows public schools to arm teachers.

School Board members polled as the approved bill made its way to Gov. Ron DeSantis' desk this week said they don’t think it’s a good idea, generally, while one said he liked the idea, even if it isn't for Lake. Most referred to a debate on the issue last year, when the School Board agreed by consensus to use school resource officers and trained "guardians" to handle campus security while leaving teachers out of it.

“We discussed this issue last year, and I believe we have landed in a good place in Lake County Schools,” Superintendent Diane Kornegay said. “We now have armed law enforcement officers and hired guardians in our schools, plus we have several administrators who have gone through the training and met the qualifications to serve as volunteer guardians. This gives the added protection we want for our schools while allowing teachers to focus on teaching, as so many of them told us they wanted to do.”

In the wake of the massacre last year at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in South Florida, the Legislature debated allowing teachers to carry weapons before settling on a compromise that instead permitted schools to train and arm just a select group of staffers, but not teachers. Those people had to be military veterans, ROTC staffers or former police officers.

The bill passed this week by the Legislature allows — but doesn't compel — districts to arm teachers, provided those teachers undergo training, psychiatric evaluations and drug screenings.

School Board Chairman Sandy Gamble said he’d be willing to bring it up again sometime in the future, but only after extensive study on just how many people on a campus should be armed and whether anyone is made safer as that number goes up.

Vice Chairwoman Kristi Burns believes firearms on campus should be limited, echoing arguments she made following the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting on Feb. 14, 2018. Teachers shouldn’t need to worry about acting as added security she said, as teachers have enough to focus on with their regular job.

Board member Bill Mathias supports arming teachers in other places but not Lake, he said, and he has no reason to bring it up again.

Current security measures are comprehensive enough, he added, and with the additional millage approved by voters in August for school safety, he thinks currently planned safety additions, including a major investment in mental health specialists, should be plenty.

He said he’s currently putting his focus into mental health in the hopes that, in the long run, those measures can pre-empt any future shootings.

“Maybe one day we won’t have to talk about guns,” he said. In the meantime, he’s happy the Legislature approved local control for other districts.

Board member Stephanie Luke, who started her teaching career in Lake County and now teaches at University of Central Florida, said she sees the issue through a teacher's eyes.

"I would not want a gun in my classroom, I would not be comfortable," she said, adding that she couldn’t ask others to do the same unless every teacher was comfortable with it. At any rate, the matter is settled, she said.

"I think we're in a sweet spot in Lake County," she said.

Given the divisive response in a survey sent to teachers last year, she said she doesn’t see it coming up again soon.