Dakotafire Get your spark here.
Joel Price recently gave his monthly Superintendent’s report to the Faulkton School Board.
He reported on a measure currently being considered in the legislature that would allow teachers and staff to be armed. The bill hasn’t been to any committee yet and is still being drafted, but it is the result of the recent school shootings.
Dr. Price told the board and wanted to go on record that he did not, as an education professional, feel that it was a good idea to arm teachers or staff members with firearms. Though violence is a part of our society, he feels that school staff members are by in large trained to soothe and diffuse a confrontational situation by nonviolent means and are not trained to use deadly force to resolve a situation. Therefore, it would be counterproductive to arm them. Training them in such a way or hiring guards whose job it would be to confront that kind of threat would be, he said, money better spent elsewhere.
Price said that daily traffic on U.S. Highway 212 carrying either fuel or potentially dangerous chemicals if an accident should occur gives him more potential anxiety than the possibility of an armed intruder.
Even so, Price said that the school will connect with the Faulk County Sheriff and create an emergency plan for an armed intruder situation. Dr. Price said that the students have drills for fires and tornadoes, and they’ll simply make taking cover from an armed assailant part of another drill.
