TAMAQUA - Tamaqua Area school board members are exploring a policy that would allow certain staff members to carry firearms in school in the wake of the Connecticut school shooting.
Talks on ramping up safety have increased in area school districts in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in which a gunman fatally shot 20 students and six staff members. But Tamaqua Area is the first local district to take action at a voting board meeting, giving unanimous approval to a recommendation authorizing district administrators to develop a policy that sets the rules for arming school personnel.
School board President Larry Wittig stressed at a meeting Tuesday that talks are very preliminary and school board members are far from arming school employees.
"We are charging administration to explore a policy that allows certain staff members to be trained in handling firearms," Wittig said.
"That's a very broad statement and we are very cognizant of the complexity of the whole thing. When is it going to happen? I don't know. It depends on what administration finds out. The devil is in the details and that is what we don't know yet," he said.
Kathleen Barker, a member of the public, sat with a half-dozen other district residents listening to board discussions.
"Who is going to have the (guns)? How will they be trained? How will we, as parents, know which teachers are armed?" Barker stood and asked the board.
The first hurdle is to determine whether it would be legal to arm district employees.
"We have to make sure we are doing it legally," Wittig said. "Existing law makes schools a gun-free zone, but even within existing law, there are exceptions for certain people in certain situations."
The plan as discussed at Tuesday's board meeting would keep the identity of the armed personnel a secret. Only district administrators would know who is armed.
Only district employees who are already trained and licensed to carry firearms and other employees who are willing to be trained and licensed would be called on to carry a weapon during the school day.
The armed employees will not only be teachers but also qualified custodians, cafeteria workers, office staff and administrators.
"That leaves the question to the perpetrator, who will know that any person he comes up against inside the building might be armed," Wittig said, adding that the board wants news of the action to be widely known because the knowledge that school personnel are armed is, in itself, a deterrent.
"The people who commit these crimes are supreme cowards," he said. "They know that schools are gun-free zones. If they have even the utmost inkling that there will be confrontation, they don't want that. That bird in Connecticut, as soon as he heard sirens, he took his own life. So, to have an armed person on the property who is trained and the community knows about it, that would be a deterrent," he said.
Baker asked why not armed guards instead of employees secretly armed.
Wittig said he would rather have armed employees than armed guards and metal detectors, which would make the school more like a prison than a learning institution. Plus, an armed guard at the door is a single target for a gunman, where anonymously armed employees are a shell game a would-be gunman is not likely to risk.
"It's about having a deterrent in each building," he said.
A man in the audience named Brian, who declined to give his last name because a member of his family is employed by the district, said he supports the concept.
"We have armed people protecting our government leaders. We have armed people protecting movie stars. Why wouldn't we have armed personnel protecting our children?" he said.
Although Wittig was the only board member to speak on the proposal and answer questions, the motion to craft the policy won the unanimous approval of the full board.