Wild fight between teacher and school security has implications for arming staff
If school staff members are carrying guns on campus, the risk of a dispute between them escalating into a shooting increases.
The state legislatures who are passing bills to arm teachers and school staff don't seem to understand the real-world situation inside schools. The presence of firearms increases the risk of simple disputes turning into shootings.
Being an employee of a school doesn't preclude someone from being violent and impulsive. Arguments between adults that escalate into shootings are the most common situation when shots are fired in public places like grocery stores, malls, parks, sports venues, transit, and shopping centers.
Last week, a teacher and a school security monitor have been put on administrative leave after they got into a fight inside an occupied classroom at the Harrisburg High School during morning classes. The security monitor entered a classroom full of students and confronted the teacher about a personal issue. The verbal altercation escalated into a fistfight that required other teachers, security staff, and a student to break it up.
Questions about this video:
What happens in this situation if the teacher, security guard, another security guard, or all of them are armed?
Would the armed teacher be justified to shoot the security monitor in self-defense?
If shots are fired inside the classroom and a bystander student is struck, is the school system legally responsible for allowing (or providing) the firearm used?
When shots are fired, is a lockdown immediately ordered (or automatically triggered by a shot detection system that is connected to access control) causing these armed adults who are fighting to be isolated in the same room as students?
These questions are completely plausible in a classroom fight scenario between armed staff members. Once school staff start physically fighting their bodies are in a high state of stress and their decision-making is altered. A risky, compulsive action like firing their gun inside a classroom may be an instinctive rather than carefully calculated decision when a school staff member is under acute distress.
Over the last five decades, teachers (12) and other staff (18) have fired shots at schools during at least 30 different incidents. Last year, Prairie View A&M was locked down when a former employee fatally shot a coworker on campus. At Episcopal School of Jacksonville, a teacher who was fired for poor performance returned to the campus the same day where he fatally shot the principal and then himself. When a teacher at Inskip Elementary School was told his contract wasn’t being renewed, he shot the principal and assistant principal.
The Lockdown Problem
Lockdowns are designed to keep an unauthorized person away from students. This doesn’t match the real world because most shootings at schools are committed by someone who is allowed to be on the campus and knows the lockdown procedures.
At a Maryland high school in 2022, a student shot another student in the school bathroom. When the lockdown was issued, the armed teen was ushered into a classroom with other students. Once police realized the shooter was inside a barricaded room, it took 3 hours for police to figure out a tactical plan to get him out without harming other students.
At the high school in Maryland, the lockdown caused a more dangerous situation than if students simply evacuated from the school when shots were fired. The shooter would have fled from the campus and been arrested later after police figured out what happened. Instead, the lockdown created a worst-case scenario where the teenage shooter could have easily taken hostages or killed other students inside a classroom.
In the scenario with the teacher and staff fighting, the lockdown creates a new problem of isolating students inside a classroom where the staff are fighting. A basic assumption is that staff are keeping student safe inside the locked classroom but in the real-world, it may be the staff member who poses the threat.
Last year in Alabama, a teacher with a gun attempted to set a fire inside a school during morning classes. If a classroom has a fortified door with a one-way lock on the inside, other staff members and police would not be able to get inside to stop the violence.
Risk Assessment and Written “Use of Force” Policy
Just like police officers, thirty-two states currently allow school staff to be armed. State lawmakers in Idaho, Iowa, Nebraska, and West Virginia are hearing bills this session to expand and incentivize teachers to be armed in the classroom.
While a state law may allow a staff member to carry a gun, every school district needs formal, written “Use of Force” procedures that explain when a teacher is justified in using deadly force against a student.
School districts should also implement and conduct a formal risk assessment with the insurance provider and legal team to determine if there are criteria that should disqualify specific staff members or types/roles of employees from carrying firearms. For example, if a gym teacher is wearing athletic clothing and running around during the day, the risk of dropping or accidentally firing a concealed handgun that cannot be easily secured to gym shorts could be a high-risk job type disqualifier.
Just because a state law is passed that allows staff to be armed inside a school building, doesn’t make it a good idea. School officials need to think carefully about how to implement these policies and assess if the risks to students are being decreased or increased by the presence of firearms inside their classrooms.
David Riedman is the creator of the K-12 School Shooting Database and a national expert on school shootings. Listen to my recent interviews on Freakonomics Radio, New England Journal of Medicine, and Iowa Public Radio the day after the Perry High shooting.