The Mat-Su school board recently passed a policy to arm classroom teachers. I’ve been struggling to find the right word to describe it.
The district claims the policy is about “maintaining a safe and secure learning environment.” In a profession obsessed with research-based decision making, nothing supports the claim that armed teachers make schools safer, especially when there hasn’t been a gun-related death in an Alaskan school in over twenty-five years. The board claims the policy will not “change the educational environment.” When you hide guns in classrooms, the environment changes immediately.
The board’s concealed carry program will cost an estimated four hundred and fifty thousand dollars — roughly forty-five thousand dollars per gun. With forty-nine schools and over one thousand teachers, guns will be in a fraction of schools. The chance a gun related incident will happen near an armed teacher is miniscule. The cost of “protecting” such a tiny number of classrooms is fiscally irresponsible.
This isn’t even the worst part of the policy. The school board is arming themselves. According to the policy, the superintendent can approve to arm board members. If the superintendent denies a board member’s request, they can appeal the decision… to the board!
I don’t support arming teachers, but arming board members is absurd. First, board members are rarely in school buildings. Their usefulness as security is next to nothing. Second, most board members have no training in classroom management, school procedures or deescalation. Third, because board members are not regular participants in classrooms they have no understanding of individual students, classroom dynamics or school culture necessary to understand volatile situations.
Finally, and I can’t stress this enough, board members are not school employees. In fact, they are barred from being employees by Alaska Statute AS14.14.140. It begs the question, why do board members need guns at all? To threaten people in board meetings? Outside a board meeting, individual board members have no authority.
There is simply no logic that justifies arming board members. Then again, logic is hardly a motivating factor these days. Guns don’t belong in classrooms, books do. An expensive lesson the Mat-Su board had to learn from a federal judge. And while they claim this policy will “maintain a safe” environment, they literally struck the phrase “safe spaces” from their library policy and have actively made their schools less safe for LGBTQ students.
All of this brings us to the real problem: school boards. Nothing prevents school boards from enacting irrational policies like this. Many board members have no experience in education. No training is required of board members. Every year we put the fate of our schools into the hands of people whose only requirement for eligibility is a pulse and valid voting registration.
It was a struggle, but I finally found a word to describe this situation: asinine.
