Arkansas’s attorney general, Dustin McDaniel, issued an opinion at the end of last month stating that Arkansas law doesn’t allow school districts to employ teachers and staff as armed security guards.
Simply put, the code in my opinion does not authorize either licensing a school district as a guard company or classifying it as a private business authorized to employ its own teachers as armed guards.
Don’t misunderstand this opinion. School districts in Arkansas can negotiate contracts with private businesses to provide security services or with local police agencies to provide school resource officers. And the state’s General Assembly could at some point change an existing law that prohibits school employees from carrying firearms on school property. But the 12 school districts that have obtained licenses from the Board of Private Investigators and Private Security Agencies that allow them to train, license, and arm teachers and staff themselves, he believes, is not supported under current Arkansas law.
Some districts, notably the one in Clarksville, have already invested tens of thousands of dollars to train and arm schoolteachers as security guards. Officers from a local SWAT team provide the training, which resembles that given to police cadets and occasionally has involved students playing various roles in the training.
Last month, we reported on a story in the New York Times that showed how school districts that arm teachers might have to pay higher premiums for liability insurance coverage. This is yet another point in the argument against teachers carrying guns in our schools.
Some politicians in Arkansas have expressed a desire to change the law and specifically authorize school districts to conduct training and issue licenses for people to act as security guards, the Arkansas News reports. The paper quoted state Sen Gary Stubblefield, Republican of Branch, whose district includes Clarksville, as saying he was surprised by the opinion and didn’t think it necessarily meant the district had to abandon its program.
“Clarksville’s already spent the money to send these people to get trained, and apparently the school board has approved it—and the community has to be behind it or they would have already objected to it,” he said. “This is a non-binding opinion. I would tell the superintendent, hey, call your people together. If they want to go through with it, I would say go ahead and do it. … It shouldn’t be a mandate, but if they choose to do it, yeah, I think they should be allowed to do it and protect their kids.”