Be grateful that our sheriff and School Board members possess the wisdom not to embrace the governor’s wrongheaded decision last week to sign into law a bill allowing Florida teachers to carry guns in an effort to prevent on-campus shootings.
Take pride in having elected local public servants who possess the principles and courage to put practicality above politics, and not irrationally grasp for a reckless remedy that almost certainly will bring unintended consequences and create the potential for more problems than it solves.
Rest assured that, when it comes to school safety and protecting students in this community, our local law enforcement, governmental and educational leaders are far smarter than the small thinkers in Tallahassee.
Yes, these are difficult times for America’s schools, where children continue to die as heroes because adults are too cowardly to act responsibly. But rather than work toward thoughtful, long-term solutions, our state lawmakers settle for the knee-jerk idiocy that puts more firearms in classrooms.
They give us teachers with guns, expecting already stressed and usually underpaid educators to suddenly transform themselves into Rambo at the first sign of an armed attack.
“No, thank you,” says Sheriff Deryl Loar – and the School Board, empowered to make such decisions, appears to agree.
We already have deputies and police officers assigned to every school here, the result of a law passed by the Florida Legislature in the wake of the 2018 Valentine’s Day massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.
We don’t need to introduce gun-toting teachers – even if they’ve passed extensive background checks and received the requisite firearms training – into the chaos of an active-shooter scenario in which there’s a real chance they’ll do more harm than good.
There are simply too many disasters waiting to happen, not the least of which is the possibility that armed teachers could fall victim to friendly fire.
Earlier this year, in fact, Loar rejected the armed-teacher proposal.
Sheriff’s Maj. Eric Flowers said Loar was concerned about the possibility that, during an active-shooter incident on campus, a law enforcement officer might mistakenly shoot an armed teacher.
“Our greatest concern is that you can’t identify the bad guy,” Flowers said at the time. “Deputies and police officers wear their uniforms on campus. They’re easy to identify. But what happens if a deputy of police officer confronts someone who is dressed in civilian clothes and who is armed?”
And nobody wants to see a teacher accidentally shoot an innocent student, or mistakenly shoot another armed teacher. Nobody is talking about what could happen if a troubled student takes a gun from a teacher.
Nobody knows how a teacher with a handgun will respond in a high-stress environment in which the gunman might be armed with an AR-15.
Proponents defend Florida’s new, ill-conceived law by pointing out that teachers who volunteer to serve as “armed guardians” must undergo 140 hours of firearms training and be tested regularly for their proficiency with a gun. But as one longtime local law enforcement officer told me: “Trained to shoot is not the same as trained to kill.”
It came as no surprise, then, that when contacted over the weekend, Flowers said Loar is still “against” arming teachers in this county. Likewise, none of our School Board members was eager to endorse the policy as a means of preventing – and responding to – on-campus shootings.
First-year board member Mara Schiff, an associate professor at Florida Atlantic University’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, said she was strongly opposed to the new law and wrote in a Facebook post that she has “absolutely no intention” of supporting any attempt to arm teachers.
“I am not uninformed about this issue,” wrote Schiff, who has spent nearly three decades as a scholar specializing in criminal justice and education, and who teaches a “Crime in Schools” class at FAU.
“Teachers are trained to teach students, not to decide when and how to shoot them,” she added. “I do not believe the answer to the problem of gun violence in our schools is to put even more guns in our schools.”
Schiff said her Facebook post reflected her opinion as a “knowledgeable private citizen,” not as a School Board member. However, she also wrote that she values the relationships the board enjoys with local law enforcement agencies, adding that any relevant board decision on school safety will be made in “close collaboration” with them.
School Board Chairman Laura Zorc, Vice Chairman Tiffany Justice and first-year member Teri Barenborg shared Schiff’s sentiments regarding the district’s partnership with local law enforcement. Of the three, however, only Zorc said specifically that she doesn’t support arming teachers.
Barenborg said she didn’t have “all of the facts I need to make an informed decision yet,” and she wanted more information from local law enforcement. Justice avoided a direct response to the armed-teacher question, choosing to focus on her support for having a police presence in every school. Jackie Rosario, another rookie board member, didn’t respond to a text message.
Not one board member expressed even a hint of support for giving teachers guns.
“I don’t know what the other board members think, but I believe we have the best situation with school resource officers (SROs) assigned to all of our schools,” Zorc said. “If we didn’t have them there, maybe it would be something we’d need to consider.”
The Sheriff’s Office has 26 SROs in 24 schools (19 public, four charter and one private), with two deputies assigned to each of the county’s public high schools, while the Vero Beach Police Department has three SROs in three schools (two public, one private) and Sebastian Police Department has SROs in three schools (two public, one charter).
Those officers also work with school officials to conduct active-shooter drills for students and teachers.
“We have been blessed to have strong relationships with law enforcement and municipalities in this county that have chosen to partner with us to ensure that our schools are manned by law enforcement officers,” Justice said, adding that she was grateful for “their commitment to sharing in the costs of making sure our schools are safe learning environments for our students.”
Board members are scheduled to meet with local law enforcement representatives June 11 in a closed session at which they will review the results of the safety and security measures recommended by Undersheriff Jim Harpring and implemented after the Parkland shooting.
Sure to be discussed are the three incidents that occurred in the past month, when the Sheriff’s Office arrested three teenagers – seventh-graders at Imagine School South Vero and Storm Grove Middle School, and an 18-year-old Vero Beach High School student – who made social-media threats to kill at their schools.
The threats were uncovered and thwarted by deputies and detectives before any harm was done.
Flowers said deputies rely heavily on information provided to SROs on campus, as well as through tips communicated through social media, the Sheriff’s Office’s anonymous-tip hotline and the FortifyFL suspicious activity reporting app.
“We’ll take the information any way we can get it, but having school resource officers on campus is huge,” Flowers said. “They’re at the schools every day, so they’re able to build relationships with kids who know they can come forward with information.
“We’re blessed that we live in a smaller community where you hear things,” he added. “And when we hear about a threat, we take it seriously. You never really know anybody’s intent, so we follow up on everything.”
