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Teachers must have firearms training

Ohio Supreme Court justices have agreed to hear a case with enormous ramifications for public schools throughout the state. It involves how much training school personnel must receive before they can be authorized to carry firearms while at work.

Justices will hear a case from Butler County.

In essence, it involves whether school personnel must have law enforcement-level training to carry guns while on the job. A school district had voted to allow armed school staffers after a shooting in 2016. A group of parents later sued the district to prevent teachers from being armed without extensive training.

But a Butler County judge dismissed the lawsuit, saying school staff did not need extensive training because they are not law enforcement officers.

Clearly, law enforcement officers, deputies and agents require some firearms-related training that school personnel do not.

Just as plain, however, is that school personnel simply must be trained extensively on safe carrying — and, when required, use — of guns.

A significant number of school districts, including some here in the Mid-Ohio Valley, have decided schools are safer if a few carefully selected staff members have access to firearms.

As those folks have discovered, these decisions are not simply a matter of understanding how to use a firearm. There is psychological, tactical, logistical training too. This is not a matter of flipping a switch.

Justices MUST ensure school personnel are trained adequately to ensure allowing them to be armed in school does, indeed, make schools safer across the state.

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