Some Tecumseh Local School District teachers and staff members have objected to a new policy to allow them to be armed on campus to respond to an active shooter situation.
In January, the school board unanimously voted to allow employees to have a gun.
The Tecumseh Local School District serves nearly 2,600 students in Clark County.
In the Miami Valley area, 21 school districts have armed staff. Statewide, 67 districts have a similar policy across 36 counties. Most of them are in rural areas.
Greta Eber is the library aide at Donnelsville Elementary and has three children in Tecumseh schools.
"I worry that your fear for student safety has caused you to make a hasty and extreme decision that does not take into consideration the best interest of your staff and students," Eber said during a board of education meeting last week.
She then described a hypothetical scenario in which an active shooter attacks her son’s middle school while he’s in the bathroom.
"In a panic my child attempts to run back to his classroom. At the same time a sixth grade teacher has left her classroom of 25 students and taken her firearm into the hallway to confront the shooter. Running on adrenaline, she shoots the student running down the hallway because her fear has caused her to shoot first rather than being shot. Now my son is dead," Eber said.
Tecumseh’s new staff gun policy has several requirements:
- Staff must volunteer.
- The superintendent will select who can participate.
- All participants must pass a required 24-hour training with the Ohio School Safety Center, with additional training possible.
- Participants must also pass a psychological assessment, a yearly background check, and complete a minimum of eight hours of training to re-certify.
- Their names won’t be publicly released.
- Firearms must be stored in a locked safe.
- In addition, the board must pay all training fees and submit the list of staff authorized to carry a firearm to the Ohio School Safety Center.
Some Tecumseh teachers also accused the board of a lack of transparency.
Jessica Freeman teaches high school math.
"Teachers were excluded from the conversation," she said. "We are not merely employees; we are the backbone of this district."
Arming staff will impose a financial burden on the district, she said, which is already navigating financial struggles.
"For just one-armed person per building across six schools, with an average of 10 years teaching per teacher, the first-year training cost alone is around $10,000," Freeman said. "This does not include cost for firearms, safes, ammunition, vests, ongoing range training, insurance, or legal fees. This expenditure could be used for mental health resources, security improvements and more resource officers."
Freeman also doesn’t like that the identity of the armed staff will be kept secret. She believes it will breed a lack of trust.
Tecumseh Superintendent Paula Crew said while she respects the teachers’ concerns, the board followed the district’s safety team’s recommendations.
"We have a director of safety and a safety team, they’ve done a lot of research and talked to a lot of people in places that already have these in place," Crew said. "They’ve met with the board and made those decisions, and I support those decisions. Again, while I respect our teachers immensely, there are some things related to safety that have to be kept in confidence."
Freeman and Eber also told Tecumseh board members many of their colleagues don’t want the responsibility of defending students and staff.
"We already have trained professionals, our school resource officers who specialize in law enforcement and crisis management," Freeman said. "Even among highly trained officers, hitting a target in a crisis is extremely difficult. Numerous studies show police officers, despite extensive training, miss their targets nearly 70% of the time in high stress situations. If trained professionals struggle with accuracy in crisis, how can we expect teachers with minimal training to be effective?"
