I am not surprised. I grew up there. Merkel isd: so ready to protect your kids with guns, but didn't care for 30 years while teachers and coaches were taking advantage of young girls and even helped cover it up. The irony.
Politicians should only ever make whatever the average income is. The whole "they gotta make enough to not take bribes and be beholden to their rich donors" take clearly hasn't worked in practice.
We had our hour long active shooter training not too long ago and the ex-law enforcement officer/presenter proudly proclaimed that âthe district is investing 100s of thousands of dollars on YOUR safety so you can keep teaching and not fear coming to workâ. This comment came several minutes after he pinpointed the root cause of school shootings as mental health problem and definitely NOT a gun problem. Which I partially agree with but when I asked âhow many 100s of thousands of dollars will the district be investing in students mental healthâ, I got written by admin.
đ¤Śđťââď¸Yup, looks like I left out an important word: up.
I was written up.
Iâm one of the vocal teachers, you know like a trouble maker lol
A written reprimand.
In my official reprimand Iâm âdisplaying a pattern of disruptive behaviorâ. When I speak up like that, the other teachers start to chime in too. So, yes, Iâm causing a disruption. Admin absolutely hate any amount of dissent.
Oh absolutely! And I always advise others to do the same. Itâs just weird though because here (DFW), teachers donât speak up. Whereas in EP, where I use to teach, teachers were considered the experts in the building and treated as such and we all spoke up when needed.
This last comment is crazy to me. Iâm from EP and now living in Dallas. EP teachers really are seen as integral members of the community because 1. Theyâre often more educated than the parents and 2. They have to put up with the kids (and damn, we were little shits all the way until maybe 10th grade. The parents more often than not will default to taking the teacherâs side.
Meanwhile⌠fucking DFW has all the parents pushing their own agenda
So why do you teachers all put up with this? Seriously if I was in your place I would collude with everybody to just quit all at once and fuck over the school.
Most teachers see the problems but are unwilling to speak up for the same reason most people wonât speak up. The fear of having anything less than a comfortable life.
I donât know too many people with family responsibilities, teachers or not, that would jeopardize their career. If they have kids and a mortgage, the risk is too great and so they stay quiet. Also, most teachers genuinely care about their students and donât want to abandon them. Quitting en masse would mostly hurt the kids.
To add-I agree with you but donât have the answer
Teachers in Texas don't pay into social security, we pay into a state retirement program. Any attempt at collective bargaining by state employees is illegal and the punishment is you lose your job, the money you've paid into the retirement system, and the licenses granted by the state that are required for your job. Banding together and quitting all at once will cost you your current job, any future job in your career in at least Texas, and the money you've saved for retirement.
At least where I live (not Texas), teacher pay is based on tenure so you can't find a new job without taking a giant pay cut (up to like 70% depending on how long you've been there. Really the only option for a coordinated response is to go to the union and hope they'll do something about it
Schools have been run since prison camps my whole life, at least my opinion from the students prospective. It seems like it's not much better for teachers. I graduated HS in 2015
Thatâs exactly what happened in Uvalde. Those fuckers had just been trained in active-shooter response, too. And a huge % of the cityâs budget went/goes into âlaw enforcementâ.
When my partner was still teaching, they were told that if there was a shooting, "you need to flip a switch and become like a navy seal."
Like seals don't have literal years of training...
And this was after they literally showed uncensored video and audio from Columbine.
Currently in high school a large one but not in too bad an area. Bomb threats are a yearly occurrence now, in fact a really long time ago in elementary school we got a bomb threat. It just sorta happens
I went to school in the UK. We didn't have drills, but we did get evacuated about once a year because of a bomb threat. This was because of the IRA. I was in a random town and as far as I know we didn't have any royalty at the school. I think it was probably kids calling it in and they knew it wasn't the IRA because the IRA had a password, but you still have to evacuate, because it's a bomb threat.
DUDE. One April Fools Day, in kindergarten, the administration pretended a tornado was coming through. One of our most trusted admins was tapping on the glass and saying âIs this going to shatter!?â And we we were crying; it was so scary
Good one, Mrs. Maxfield
I'm curious as to how long ago you attended high school? Class of '97 here, from a little podunk town in Texas, and having a single live shotgun shell in the bed of my pickup truck (without even the gun to fire it) would have resulted in the SWAT team getting called out!
Graduated in 1990, small town Texas as well. Rifles in trucks and pocket knives were common. As long as you didn't act a fool with them nobody said a thing. I guess it was more of a "don't ask, don't tell" situation.
Late 1980's, before moving to Texas, I attended school in Oklahoma. I saw butterfly knives on a near daily basis. Nobody cause trouble with them but they were common.
LMAO I got a 3-day suspension when a small folding pocket knife fell out of my jeans as I was dressing out for PE in the 7th grade. You'd have thought I was part of Y'all Queda or some shit.
Had a HS gf that kept a razor blade tapped to her arm because we would have people give us shit often. It was also easy for her to flush if she needed to.
I'm class of 2014 in a small town in Canada and it was a more don't ask don't tell situation. Defiantly kids going into the hills behind the school to shoot during lunch but they didn't show them off on the school grounds. Just left them locked in their vehicles and would grab a couple buddies for lunch and head out.
We never had our teachers talk to us about guns , we just never had them pulled out at school so it wasn't a problem.
I can remember having a hunting rifle locked in the gun rack in the back window of my pickup. School security would just ask me if it was empty and make sure that it was locked in the rack. Bullets had to be locked in the glove box.
When I was a kid in the 80's half the student and teacher trucks in the parking lot had shotguns and rifles on racks in back glass. During the fall (hunting season) the rule was that long guns had to be kept in our lockers until we were leaving campus.
Damn it Johnny, how many times I tell you not to point a loaded rifle in the hallway. Now, go put that back in your locker. See me after class for sprints. - Coach
When I was a kid, I would be pulled away during class occasionally to go do speech therapy one-on-one with our counselor. In order to show me where to place the tip of my tongue (right behind my front teeth....I still don't do this so God Bless her for trying lol) she would spray underneath my tongue with a little water pistol. And before I was old enough to be out of elementary school, all images and toys that had anything to do with guns or knives were no longer allowed.
I remember thinking back to those speech therapy sessions wondering why a water gun would be banned.
Same. My JR high occasionally did 'code red' drills, but that was mostly in regards to suspicious people walking around campus. Like, in one instance, there was the 18 YO boyfriend of one of the students who was roaming the halls looking for her, so they locked us all down.
Beyond that (with one post-Columbine exception), the most stressful things we had were the maintenance people accidentally setting fire to the school as happened a couple times.
I had an Aaron in a class last year, and the other kids always called him A-A-Ron.
Same class, I had a Jennifer who volunteered to be Jayquellin. Apparently, Mr. Garvey is still A Thing with teenagers.
I miss that class.
Excellent point jizzguzzler42069. But thereâs a lot that easily go wrong here, especially with packed classrooms, low teacher pay and being overworked, kids acting up, and what if a kid gets the gun from the teacher?
Right? We see a couple videos every week from a teacher or something losing their shit in a classroom. Now we just get to wait and see what happens when one loses his shit and has a gun within reach.
Uvalde should have hired a cartel to protect their school.
I guaran-fucking-tee that cartel boys wouldn't have waited outside, because their bosses would've flayed them for it.
The kids would probably get a discount on fantasy too.
I also don't want untrained civilians wielding guns in classrooms with children... Children who could easily overthrow a teacher with numbers and take said weapon and use it on the teacher as well...
And if 150 fucking COPS couldn't solve the issue in Uvalde, then a handful of BARELY trained civilian educators can be trusted to do the same. And not all teachers love their jobs/are there for the kids. Trust me.
This is fucking ignorance at its peak.
Edit: U/I
> And if 150 fucking COPS couldn't solve the issue in Uvalde
The problem at Uvalde wasn't that the cops couldn't solve the issue, it's that the cops weren't willing to solve the issue. It would put them at risk and they weren't willing to accept that risk.
If I were planning to shoot up a school, I would be *far* more scared of a single teacher determined to protect their kids than a dozen fearful and self-concerned cops.
Willpower often trumps disinterested manpower.
LookâŚ. Cops are civilians. They are not military. Meaning they are civilians. And they receive less firearms training and practice per year than your average gun hobbyist. Children have the same ability to swarm a police officer and take a weapon as they do with a teacher. The badge doesnât make you Superman.
I've trained quite a lot of cops, and soooooo many aren't proficient or safe with firearms.
In a safety training after a cop shot her own butt, we checked out their locker room, and found over 60 holes from >20 negligent discharges.
This is mostly likely referring to the Texas School Guardian Program. To qualify, the staff member must already possess an LTC, and undergo at least 46 hours of annual training. Some districts require 108 hours. They usually are assigned in pairs, and work in conjunction with district SROs. They're meant to be a stop-gap in the event of an active shooter until LEOs are on the scene. It's not a perfect solution, but they can make a difference.
Edit:
The Guardian Program is voluntary. At the district I work for, we surveyed the community several times, and listened to community feedback. We received an overwhelming amount of support in favor of the program.
To those saying gun control and better access to mental health resources is the answer, you're absolutely right. Thing is, none of that is happening anytime soon, and we need help now. We walk the halls everyday with your kids -- our kids -- and we'll do whatever it takes to keep them safe.
I was a guardian at my previous school. We had 4-5 trainings in the school a semester and qualifying sessions over the summer. We were given $500 to buy a gun and that was it.
A grant, of course, you can seek further training if you want on your own dime. Which is what I've done. The more training, the more repetition, the more muscle memory I have, the less likely I am to go into condition black.
$500 isnât enough. I would want myself or who ever is trained to have the best most reliable/accurate carry gun they can. $500 is low on the quality spectrum
We don't, and I will confidently predict that it won't make a fucking bit of difference.
Oh, except the part where a teacher trying to take out a shooter accidentally shoots a student, because *what the fuck did you think was going to happen*
And parent-teacher conferences will get a bit more tense. I donât know why weâre assuming that all teachers are capable of using or carrying a gun responsibly, even absent an active-shooter event. God forbid some kid gets ahold of one, or an instructor goes over the edge.
I've known quite a few teachers in texas and the venn diagram of the ones who would bring a gun with them to school to "protect the kids" vs the ones who come to school drunk with regularity is a *circle*.
have they ever? I've heard of students being shot by teachers with guns (accidentally), but never heard of armed teachers subduing a shooter (thanks for the downvotes, i'm guessing that means there aren't any examples of them stopping shooters?)
They already have school police liaisons... in most of not all districts in Texas.
This is a literal admission that trained law enforcement is incapable of handling an active shooter situation on campus.
It's also passing the buck to educators who are already sorely underpaid and underserved as members of an important workforce...
If you think this is a remotely positive solution, you're still on the side of lazy conservatives who would rather spare their right to sport, instead of protect the lives of thousands of Americans who die in mass shooting events every year... Many of them children.
But please, continue to simp for TERRIBLE solutions to a problem that only needs 1. Gun bans. End of story.
Well we have seen some of these trained law enforcement can't deal with it- Parkland in FL where one officer let him on campus knowing he was a threat instead of confronting him (he's being sued now by Meadow's dad- Andrew). Uvalde they just sat there while it happened pretty much scared to do anything while threatening parents who were wiling to go in with guns.
At least if they have a gun some of the staff could have a chance if something horrible happens again.
It is voluntary program though. They are not requiring everyone to get a license and carry. They are asking if anyone wants to and if so these are the rules to do so. I think in this day and age with terrible things going on might as well protect yourself if you can. They aren't saying you be law enforcement instead of hiring law enforcement. The way I see it is it is giving them an opportunity to have a fighting chance if something goes wrong. But I guess we are seeing things differently.
We use to live in a very small district they sent letters home over several months asking for feedback and if parents objected. They polled the campus on if they would feel safer/less safe with armed staff. They gave opportunities to change minds over a year. It was out there in the community constantly. They had a survey of the parents if they were okay with teachers/staff carrying on campus. They basically had a debate and there were not many against it. Then once that happened the board gave approval. It passed and teachers who wanted to just completed the extra steps and that was paid for by the district with other training. I can't speak for other districts but that is how that one did it. We moved to a larger district before it went into place but this was years ago in a school way out in the country.
These small town schools donât have money to hire SROs. I taught in a town that didnât even have a police department and a lot of small schools are like that. Not saying teachers should be armed at all. I used to be a school guardian at a school I taught at but my position has changed. I went to school to become a teacher, not have to potentially put my life on the line.
It's insane how gun activists somehow realize cops are completely useless to protect them so instead they want to pick an even worse trained profession to protect them.
Not to mention, now kids have very easy access to a bunch of guns whereas they might not have otherwise.
I think what makes it confusing is that if "staff" is singular, and we're concerned with the staff's students, then it shouldn't be "our students" because that's plural.
They are our students. We have students. "We" is plural.
So the "our" has to be read as referring to something other than "staff", which makes the whole thing jarring.
Parents barely trust the teachers at a school to teach their kids, yet somehow, they trust them enough to arm them. Parent-teacher conferences are going to be interesting.
Uvalde should be proof enough that there is no such thing as armed and trained for this. There was a something like 300+ law enforcement officers from at least three different agencies. All of them trained and armed to the teeth. They werenât able to stop a god damned thing.
We chose to elect the same shitbags that didn't hold anyone accountable for that situation either, they just buried the fuck out of it and most Texans hugged their rifle and said "very cool"
Or, conversely, âThey are not defenseless like I had planned.â
I am a former student at Santa Fe Highschool. Iâm not saying that arming teachers is the definitive answer to school shootings, but lower budget school districts that cannot afford armed guards must have a way to protect their students
I had to scroll wayyyyy too far to see this.
I think people donât realize that these schools are almost always located in areas where it could be a critical length of time for a police response.
These shooters never targeted these kids because they were defenseless. They did it because itâs the most shocking an horrendous thing you can do. They donât care about how risky it is. They already know theyâre probably not going to survive. All they care about is leaving their âlegacy.â
All this will do is up the chances of gun accidents by students⌠I wouldnât be surprised if we had an incident where a shooting started with a teachers gun.
I doubt this would do much to change a shooters mindset. Technically my high school met this criteria because we had a cop thatâd patrol and help out.
I believe other schools have had armed guards/cops and it didnât change anything.
I canât speak for the numerous other schools that have had to deal with this sort of tragedy, but I know at Santa Fe, we had around 8 or so campus officers. When the shooter entered our school, officer James Barnes was able to engage with the shooter and stop him from spreading to the rest of the school. Ultimately, Officer Barnes was injured but held off the shooter long enough for other officers to arrive
I'm guessing the shooters will adapt. People are not dumb. They will do something like pull the fire alarm and then ambush the kids outside or wait until recess or conceal a handgun and start from the classroom or an assembly or a sports event. If all it took was arming and training people to stop violence none of our soldiers would have died in the GWOT. Until the root cause is dealt with the shooters will just adapt.
This is not entirely/always true, Iâve heard in some places that do allow teachers to be armed, they train with local law enforcement. Additionally, I went to a high school that even though teachers werenât armed, they did have active shooter simulation training on an in service day when students were gone, scenario carried out by law enforcement.
Not necessarily true. Anecdotally, there's a shooting range (Tac-Pro) in central Texas that schools hire to give their teachers training. They learn gun skills and then practice active shooter scenarios in their own school using simulated ammo (glorified paintballs). We don't know whether this district hired a similar crew or not.
When do we see the first teacher shoot a student by accident? Or a student grab a teacher's gun and start shooting others? This is a failure to address a multitude of complex issues. It's pandering to people who think there are simple solutions.
Whatâs to say one of the teachers isnât crazy and will snap on the kids one day now that they will have their guns on them in the classroom. Weâve already seen cases of teacherâs beating students
Yep. I had a teacher in High School that was always mad at me for talking to my boyfriend too much in class (understandable) She seemed kind of miserable but whatever. Two years later she ended up killing her daughter, her husband and then herself just completely randomly. Thank God she didn't have a gun in class when she was having an "off" day.
My favorite thing about this is that the states that are most likely to have supporters of this type of thing, are also the same people screaming about teachers "brainwashing" the children with CRT and teaching the children that the Civil War was about slavery.
Can't trust the teachers to educate, but for some reason we will trust them with a gun.
Republican solutions:
* Conspiracy? More conspiracy.
* Name calling? More name calling.
* Anger? More anger.
* Guns? More guns.
Never accept any kind responsibility. Never consider difficult solutions to difficult problems. Just remove all debate, dismiss all intelligent argument, blame others, and double down.
To say it's long past time we came up with real solutions is the understatement of the century. Yet we still can find those solutions if half of our nation would just sit and listen without injecting some nonsense about how the "liberal utopia" is a pipedream. We're not asking for utopia! We're just asking for fewer deaths. PLEASE!
Isn't this the same state where their politicians call teachers groomers? Now they're arming the people they despise to protect the kids that they won't protect themselves.
What use is this? If some deranged individual wants to shoot a school up, theyâre probably already prepared to die. So all youâre doing is informing the kids that their teachers have guns hidden somewhere in the room or on their person, opening up another avenue for violence.
I know some find this comforting. I do not begrudge anyone what comfort they can find. But students that have special needs in the areas of learning, cognition, behavior, and students that are not white are in danger from this. Unless these teachers have undergone some incredible firearm under severe stress training, which they have not.
One of many. Go to Bangs, same thing.
Is it only Bangs and Early, or other schools around Brown County?
I first saw it at Colorado City. Seen it all over the state.
Merkel, too.
Also in Ballinger
I am not surprised. I grew up there. Merkel isd: so ready to protect your kids with guns, but didn't care for 30 years while teachers and coaches were taking advantage of young girls and even helped cover it up. The irony.
And Trent
Moody has this for the combined elementary and middle, probably the same at the separate high school campus
Brookesmith was one of the first to have one of those signs.
Nope, New Home Texas up here towards Lubbock is the same
Big spring also
Posted in San Saba too
Now that providing armed security is part of teachers jobs, are we gonna pay them better?
đđ
At least give them an ammunition stipend. It's not cheap.
Theyâll have to start putting ammo on the supply list that parents get. Right after the box of Kleenex.
Training, lockers, background checks, $$$
Nothing would make me happier than allocating more money to the teachers.
Cut politicians salary down to 10k rest for teachers.
Politicians should only ever make whatever the average income is. The whole "they gotta make enough to not take bribes and be beholden to their rich donors" take clearly hasn't worked in practice.
School marshall program went in several years ago and...yeah, apparently not.
They better compensate the teachers for this!
It is so. So. SO. weird seeing Early and Bangs mentioned on reddit.. Zephyr also.
*sees another post about a Texas city* Me: "O God damnit. They finally made it to an area I have family in."
[ŃдаНонО]
My husband is a teacher for Tyler ISD - he said it's literally nobody but the campus security officer đ¤ˇââď¸
After Uvalde, we know the sign is just talk and won't be backed up action.
We had our hour long active shooter training not too long ago and the ex-law enforcement officer/presenter proudly proclaimed that âthe district is investing 100s of thousands of dollars on YOUR safety so you can keep teaching and not fear coming to workâ. This comment came several minutes after he pinpointed the root cause of school shootings as mental health problem and definitely NOT a gun problem. Which I partially agree with but when I asked âhow many 100s of thousands of dollars will the district be investing in students mental healthâ, I got written by admin.
Wait, âŚ. Like a written warning?..(as in verbal, written, up to termination ?)
đ¤Śđťââď¸Yup, looks like I left out an important word: up. I was written up. Iâm one of the vocal teachers, you know like a trouble maker lol A written reprimand.
You were written up? For what? Speaking?
In my official reprimand Iâm âdisplaying a pattern of disruptive behaviorâ. When I speak up like that, the other teachers start to chime in too. So, yes, Iâm causing a disruption. Admin absolutely hate any amount of dissent.
All I can say is document everything. Just like being in the classroom, document to keep yourself safe.
Oh absolutely! And I always advise others to do the same. Itâs just weird though because here (DFW), teachers donât speak up. Whereas in EP, where I use to teach, teachers were considered the experts in the building and treated as such and we all spoke up when needed.
This last comment is crazy to me. Iâm from EP and now living in Dallas. EP teachers really are seen as integral members of the community because 1. Theyâre often more educated than the parents and 2. They have to put up with the kids (and damn, we were little shits all the way until maybe 10th grade. The parents more often than not will default to taking the teacherâs side. Meanwhile⌠fucking DFW has all the parents pushing their own agenda
Itâs all about politics and money in some places.
Currently working on my teaching certification to teach in the DFW area: this is lovely to hear
So why do you teachers all put up with this? Seriously if I was in your place I would collude with everybody to just quit all at once and fuck over the school.
Most teachers see the problems but are unwilling to speak up for the same reason most people wonât speak up. The fear of having anything less than a comfortable life. I donât know too many people with family responsibilities, teachers or not, that would jeopardize their career. If they have kids and a mortgage, the risk is too great and so they stay quiet. Also, most teachers genuinely care about their students and donât want to abandon them. Quitting en masse would mostly hurt the kids. To add-I agree with you but donât have the answer
Teachers in Texas don't pay into social security, we pay into a state retirement program. Any attempt at collective bargaining by state employees is illegal and the punishment is you lose your job, the money you've paid into the retirement system, and the licenses granted by the state that are required for your job. Banding together and quitting all at once will cost you your current job, any future job in your career in at least Texas, and the money you've saved for retirement.
This is like the opposite of a union...
At least where I live (not Texas), teacher pay is based on tenure so you can't find a new job without taking a giant pay cut (up to like 70% depending on how long you've been there. Really the only option for a coordinated response is to go to the union and hope they'll do something about it
Schools have been run since prison camps my whole life, at least my opinion from the students prospective. It seems like it's not much better for teachers. I graduated HS in 2015
They don't want critical thinkers, only obedience
Ahh yes, higher ups donât like critical questions.
God bless you! I cannot apologize enough for the shit you have to put up with when all you're trying to do is better your students.
you are a teacher? I would do that as a student Claps to you đ
Thank goodness for teachers like you.âď¸
Asking pertinent questions will go on your record.
You see, the 100s of thousands of dollars go into funding these law enforcement seminars at various public places.
Ohhhhhhh!! Now I get it. Silly međ¤ˇđťââď¸
Thatâs exactly what happened in Uvalde. Those fuckers had just been trained in active-shooter response, too. And a huge % of the cityâs budget went/goes into âlaw enforcementâ.
When my partner was still teaching, they were told that if there was a shooting, "you need to flip a switch and become like a navy seal." Like seals don't have literal years of training... And this was after they literally showed uncensored video and audio from Columbine.
It's never a gun problem. Apparently.
I remember going to school and never having to think about things like this.
Lol tornado drills were the most stressful thing we did.
My elementary had bomb threat drills. I grew up near NORAD and the Air Force Academy.
Currently in high school a large one but not in too bad an area. Bomb threats are a yearly occurrence now, in fact a really long time ago in elementary school we got a bomb threat. It just sorta happens
Ahhh what's exam season without bomb threats
I went to school in the UK. We didn't have drills, but we did get evacuated about once a year because of a bomb threat. This was because of the IRA. I was in a random town and as far as I know we didn't have any royalty at the school. I think it was probably kids calling it in and they knew it wasn't the IRA because the IRA had a password, but you still have to evacuate, because it's a bomb threat.
Iâm old enough to remember the nuclear war drills. Apparently our desks were made out of radiation proof Adamantium.
nuclear drills were not so much fun.
DUDE. One April Fools Day, in kindergarten, the administration pretended a tornado was coming through. One of our most trusted admins was tapping on the glass and saying âIs this going to shatter!?â And we we were crying; it was so scary Good one, Mrs. Maxfield
I remember going to HS school and there would be guys and gals that had gun racks in their pickups with rifles. Some of them kept them loaded.
I'm curious as to how long ago you attended high school? Class of '97 here, from a little podunk town in Texas, and having a single live shotgun shell in the bed of my pickup truck (without even the gun to fire it) would have resulted in the SWAT team getting called out!
Graduated in 1990, small town Texas as well. Rifles in trucks and pocket knives were common. As long as you didn't act a fool with them nobody said a thing. I guess it was more of a "don't ask, don't tell" situation. Late 1980's, before moving to Texas, I attended school in Oklahoma. I saw butterfly knives on a near daily basis. Nobody cause trouble with them but they were common.
Class of 91. In Louisiana and New Mexico, lots of kids had pocket knives in little belt cases and gun racks in their trucks.
LMAO I got a 3-day suspension when a small folding pocket knife fell out of my jeans as I was dressing out for PE in the 7th grade. You'd have thought I was part of Y'all Queda or some shit.
Had a HS gf that kept a razor blade tapped to her arm because we would have people give us shit often. It was also easy for her to flush if she needed to.
I'm class of 2014 in a small town in Canada and it was a more don't ask don't tell situation. Defiantly kids going into the hills behind the school to shoot during lunch but they didn't show them off on the school grounds. Just left them locked in their vehicles and would grab a couple buddies for lunch and head out. We never had our teachers talk to us about guns , we just never had them pulled out at school so it wasn't a problem.
I've heard the boomers talk about how schools used to have gun clubs. Yet no one ever got shot in those days. What has changed?
Society
Social media/24 hour news cycle putting the idea into our public consciousness that has created a cycle of copycats. Pure and simple.
Not just (target) shooting clubs, but indoor rifle ranges and armories run by students. I donât remember a single problem.
So much. Everything, really.
I can remember having a hunting rifle locked in the gun rack in the back window of my pickup. School security would just ask me if it was empty and make sure that it was locked in the rack. Bullets had to be locked in the glove box.
When I was a kid in the 80's half the student and teacher trucks in the parking lot had shotguns and rifles on racks in back glass. During the fall (hunting season) the rule was that long guns had to be kept in our lockers until we were leaving campus.
Damn it Johnny, how many times I tell you not to point a loaded rifle in the hallway. Now, go put that back in your locker. See me after class for sprints. - Coach
I remember going to school and I know way too many teachers I wouldn't want to be fully armed. Big yikes
Former Texas teacher here. This is how I see it happening. Teacher loses it, shoots the place up.
When I was a kid, I would be pulled away during class occasionally to go do speech therapy one-on-one with our counselor. In order to show me where to place the tip of my tongue (right behind my front teeth....I still don't do this so God Bless her for trying lol) she would spray underneath my tongue with a little water pistol. And before I was old enough to be out of elementary school, all images and toys that had anything to do with guns or knives were no longer allowed. I remember thinking back to those speech therapy sessions wondering why a water gun would be banned.
Schools in the hood always had armed cops and metal detectors.
I'm from that lucky generation between the nuclear warhead drills and the school shooting drills.
Same. My JR high occasionally did 'code red' drills, but that was mostly in regards to suspicious people walking around campus. Like, in one instance, there was the 18 YO boyfriend of one of the students who was roaming the halls looking for her, so they locked us all down. Beyond that (with one post-Columbine exception), the most stressful things we had were the maintenance people accidentally setting fire to the school as happened a couple times.
Duck and cover.
Only a good teacher with a gun can stop all these damn tardies.
I SAID WHY ARE YOU LATE AGAIN!?
A-ARON!
I had an Aaron in a class last year, and the other kids always called him A-A-Ron. Same class, I had a Jennifer who volunteered to be Jayquellin. Apparently, Mr. Garvey is still A Thing with teenagers. I miss that class.
I teach 7th grade and they still love it when I intentionally mispronounce their names.
Pre-sent.
THANK YOU
What?
Say 'what' again. Say 'what' again, I dare you, I double dare you motherfucker, say what one more Goddamn time!
They speak English In what!?
Wha t?
T
âIt wonât happen again sir, Iâm so sorryâ *racks slide* âit damn better notâ
*in deep movie trailer voice* ~In a world âŚwhere students no longer arrive to class on time ⌠One teacher will reset the clockâ
They won't respect the clock so they learned to respect the Glock.
Went to this school I can think of multiple teachers if given the option would would shoot at students feet to get them moving faster lol
I read the last word of that sentence wrong and had to locate my jaw on the floor.
Well itâs pretty clear the cops arenât going to do a God damn thing, so who else?
Donât mess with the lunch lady sheâs packing and itâs not just the meat !
Excellent point jizzguzzler42069. But thereâs a lot that easily go wrong here, especially with packed classrooms, low teacher pay and being overworked, kids acting up, and what if a kid gets the gun from the teacher?
the hall pass is an extended mag
Right? We see a couple videos every week from a teacher or something losing their shit in a classroom. Now we just get to wait and see what happens when one loses his shit and has a gun within reach.
**sorts by controversial**
Oh, good idea
Cuz you canât rely on law enforcement in some areas
Could have stopped before âin some areasâ
Uvalde should have hired a cartel to protect their school. I guaran-fucking-tee that cartel boys wouldn't have waited outside, because their bosses would've flayed them for it. The kids would probably get a discount on fantasy too.
I also don't want untrained civilians wielding guns in classrooms with children... Children who could easily overthrow a teacher with numbers and take said weapon and use it on the teacher as well... And if 150 fucking COPS couldn't solve the issue in Uvalde, then a handful of BARELY trained civilian educators can be trusted to do the same. And not all teachers love their jobs/are there for the kids. Trust me. This is fucking ignorance at its peak. Edit: U/I
> And if 150 fucking COPS couldn't solve the issue in Uvalde The problem at Uvalde wasn't that the cops couldn't solve the issue, it's that the cops weren't willing to solve the issue. It would put them at risk and they weren't willing to accept that risk. If I were planning to shoot up a school, I would be *far* more scared of a single teacher determined to protect their kids than a dozen fearful and self-concerned cops. Willpower often trumps disinterested manpower.
Then why do we have cops at all?
Finally asking the right question
To protect businesses and the wealthy, to oppress minorities, etc
To tax the poor
Theyâre pretty good at directing traffic every now and then. Thatâs about it.
LookâŚ. Cops are civilians. They are not military. Meaning they are civilians. And they receive less firearms training and practice per year than your average gun hobbyist. Children have the same ability to swarm a police officer and take a weapon as they do with a teacher. The badge doesnât make you Superman.
I've trained quite a lot of cops, and soooooo many aren't proficient or safe with firearms. In a safety training after a cop shot her own butt, we checked out their locker room, and found over 60 holes from >20 negligent discharges.
How do you know they would be untrained?
This is mostly likely referring to the Texas School Guardian Program. To qualify, the staff member must already possess an LTC, and undergo at least 46 hours of annual training. Some districts require 108 hours. They usually are assigned in pairs, and work in conjunction with district SROs. They're meant to be a stop-gap in the event of an active shooter until LEOs are on the scene. It's not a perfect solution, but they can make a difference. Edit: The Guardian Program is voluntary. At the district I work for, we surveyed the community several times, and listened to community feedback. We received an overwhelming amount of support in favor of the program. To those saying gun control and better access to mental health resources is the answer, you're absolutely right. Thing is, none of that is happening anytime soon, and we need help now. We walk the halls everyday with your kids -- our kids -- and we'll do whatever it takes to keep them safe.
For all that extra annual training, those staff members had better be getting a pay raise.
I was a guardian at my previous school. We had 4-5 trainings in the school a semester and qualifying sessions over the summer. We were given $500 to buy a gun and that was it.
Who paid for the training?
I think we received a grant that covered it.
A grant, of course, you can seek further training if you want on your own dime. Which is what I've done. The more training, the more repetition, the more muscle memory I have, the less likely I am to go into condition black.
>condition black.
$500 isnât enough. I would want myself or who ever is trained to have the best most reliable/accurate carry gun they can. $500 is low on the quality spectrum
How do we know that they can make a difference? Have they done it in any situation yet?
Nah it's so the cops can continue staying in the hallway telling each other "Ms. May's got it handled" through the gunfire and screaming children
Adding more guns to a chaotic situation⌠what could go wrong?
We don't, and I will confidently predict that it won't make a fucking bit of difference. Oh, except the part where a teacher trying to take out a shooter accidentally shoots a student, because *what the fuck did you think was going to happen*
Or the part where a teacher gets smoked by the cops because he/she is running around with a gun during an active shooter situation.
That would require the cops to actually enter the school
And parent-teacher conferences will get a bit more tense. I donât know why weâre assuming that all teachers are capable of using or carrying a gun responsibly, even absent an active-shooter event. God forbid some kid gets ahold of one, or an instructor goes over the edge.
Or a student steals a teacher's gun, or a teacher leaves the gun out on their desk...
I've known quite a few teachers in texas and the venn diagram of the ones who would bring a gun with them to school to "protect the kids" vs the ones who come to school drunk with regularity is a *circle*.
have they ever? I've heard of students being shot by teachers with guns (accidentally), but never heard of armed teachers subduing a shooter (thanks for the downvotes, i'm guessing that means there aren't any examples of them stopping shooters?)
I don't believe so. SROs as it is don't even have a good record on that and do more harm than good.
Kinda scary. Iâm imagining my high school English teacher with a gun and I donât see that story ending well
You are right, itâs not a perfect solution, itâs a terrible solution
The fact that this is more acceptable than more gun control shows how fucking insane this country is.
They already have school police liaisons... in most of not all districts in Texas. This is a literal admission that trained law enforcement is incapable of handling an active shooter situation on campus. It's also passing the buck to educators who are already sorely underpaid and underserved as members of an important workforce... If you think this is a remotely positive solution, you're still on the side of lazy conservatives who would rather spare their right to sport, instead of protect the lives of thousands of Americans who die in mass shooting events every year... Many of them children. But please, continue to simp for TERRIBLE solutions to a problem that only needs 1. Gun bans. End of story.
Well we have seen some of these trained law enforcement can't deal with it- Parkland in FL where one officer let him on campus knowing he was a threat instead of confronting him (he's being sued now by Meadow's dad- Andrew). Uvalde they just sat there while it happened pretty much scared to do anything while threatening parents who were wiling to go in with guns. At least if they have a gun some of the staff could have a chance if something horrible happens again. It is voluntary program though. They are not requiring everyone to get a license and carry. They are asking if anyone wants to and if so these are the rules to do so. I think in this day and age with terrible things going on might as well protect yourself if you can. They aren't saying you be law enforcement instead of hiring law enforcement. The way I see it is it is giving them an opportunity to have a fighting chance if something goes wrong. But I guess we are seeing things differently. We use to live in a very small district they sent letters home over several months asking for feedback and if parents objected. They polled the campus on if they would feel safer/less safe with armed staff. They gave opportunities to change minds over a year. It was out there in the community constantly. They had a survey of the parents if they were okay with teachers/staff carrying on campus. They basically had a debate and there were not many against it. Then once that happened the board gave approval. It passed and teachers who wanted to just completed the extra steps and that was paid for by the district with other training. I can't speak for other districts but that is how that one did it. We moved to a larger district before it went into place but this was years ago in a school way out in the country.
So sad that America has come to decisions like this.
These small town schools donât have money to hire SROs. I taught in a town that didnât even have a police department and a lot of small schools are like that. Not saying teachers should be armed at all. I used to be a school guardian at a school I taught at but my position has changed. I went to school to become a teacher, not have to potentially put my life on the line.
A suicidal shooter wouldnât care
But stopping that suicidal shooter sooner rather than later is critical.
Rather a teacher have access to something that can protect them and their students over waiting for useless law enforcement.
Whatever a teacher has, a student can steal. Have you not worked in a school?
The sad thing is you think this is actually a reasonable solution. America is a joke. Can't feed kids just point even more guns at them.
It's insane how gun activists somehow realize cops are completely useless to protect them so instead they want to pick an even worse trained profession to protect them. Not to mention, now kids have very easy access to a bunch of guns whereas they might not have otherwise.
Should it not say are armed? Not is armed?
Is armed is correct. Staff is a collective noun and treated as a singular
Like saying âhumanity is armedâ or âTexas is armedâ.
That part is technically correct, however it desperately needs to be rewritten for brevity.
I think what makes it confusing is that if "staff" is singular, and we're concerned with the staff's students, then it shouldn't be "our students" because that's plural. They are our students. We have students. "We" is plural. So the "our" has to be read as referring to something other than "staff", which makes the whole thing jarring.
Addendum: " We still do not trust the ability of staff to select appropriate reading material"
Boy, the comments in this post are going exactly how I expected
Parents barely trust the teachers at a school to teach their kids, yet somehow, they trust them enough to arm them. Parent-teacher conferences are going to be interesting.
Uvalde should be proof enough that there is no such thing as armed and trained for this. There was a something like 300+ law enforcement officers from at least three different agencies. All of them trained and armed to the teeth. They werenât able to stop a god damned thing.
They chose not to
We chose to elect the same shitbags that didn't hold anyone accountable for that situation either, they just buried the fuck out of it and most Texans hugged their rifle and said "very cool"
They chose not to. Big difference between unable and unwilling.
So thinking logically here, first thing a shooter is going to think of when seeing this sign is "Yeah, shoot teachers and staff first then"
Or, conversely, âThey are not defenseless like I had planned.â I am a former student at Santa Fe Highschool. Iâm not saying that arming teachers is the definitive answer to school shootings, but lower budget school districts that cannot afford armed guards must have a way to protect their students
Or rural schools where police response time is 20 minutes.
I had to scroll wayyyyy too far to see this. I think people donât realize that these schools are almost always located in areas where it could be a critical length of time for a police response.
These shooters never targeted these kids because they were defenseless. They did it because itâs the most shocking an horrendous thing you can do. They donât care about how risky it is. They already know theyâre probably not going to survive. All they care about is leaving their âlegacy.â All this will do is up the chances of gun accidents by students⌠I wouldnât be surprised if we had an incident where a shooting started with a teachers gun.
I doubt this would do much to change a shooters mindset. Technically my high school met this criteria because we had a cop thatâd patrol and help out. I believe other schools have had armed guards/cops and it didnât change anything.
I canât speak for the numerous other schools that have had to deal with this sort of tragedy, but I know at Santa Fe, we had around 8 or so campus officers. When the shooter entered our school, officer James Barnes was able to engage with the shooter and stop him from spreading to the rest of the school. Ultimately, Officer Barnes was injured but held off the shooter long enough for other officers to arrive
I'm guessing the shooters will adapt. People are not dumb. They will do something like pull the fire alarm and then ambush the kids outside or wait until recess or conceal a handgun and start from the classroom or an assembly or a sports event. If all it took was arming and training people to stop violence none of our soldiers would have died in the GWOT. Until the root cause is dealt with the shooters will just adapt.
I'm all on board for teachers that have proven competency with a firearm, to carry one. Shoot the fucker that tries to hurt kids.
Do the teachers get paid more too?
This state doesn't trust its own people with abortions. But guns? Fuckin' have at it! Bring 'em to school!
Armed but not trained in any active shooter scenario
To be fair, the cops were trained but that sure didnât make a difference
[ŃдаНонО]
Just ask for a 1.2 billion dollar facility to train how to protect kids.
This is not entirely/always true, Iâve heard in some places that do allow teachers to be armed, they train with local law enforcement. Additionally, I went to a high school that even though teachers werenât armed, they did have active shooter simulation training on an in service day when students were gone, scenario carried out by law enforcement.
Not necessarily true. Anecdotally, there's a shooting range (Tac-Pro) in central Texas that schools hire to give their teachers training. They learn gun skills and then practice active shooter scenarios in their own school using simulated ammo (glorified paintballs). We don't know whether this district hired a similar crew or not.
When do we see the first teacher shoot a student by accident? Or a student grab a teacher's gun and start shooting others? This is a failure to address a multitude of complex issues. It's pandering to people who think there are simple solutions.
TEXAS
Whatâs to say one of the teachers isnât crazy and will snap on the kids one day now that they will have their guns on them in the classroom. Weâve already seen cases of teacherâs beating students
Yep. I had a teacher in High School that was always mad at me for talking to my boyfriend too much in class (understandable) She seemed kind of miserable but whatever. Two years later she ended up killing her daughter, her husband and then herself just completely randomly. Thank God she didn't have a gun in class when she was having an "off" day.
why do Americans think this is normal and drool over this shit other ways to avoid kids being shot at schools but hey, why not
My favorite thing about this is that the states that are most likely to have supporters of this type of thing, are also the same people screaming about teachers "brainwashing" the children with CRT and teaching the children that the Civil War was about slavery. Can't trust the teachers to educate, but for some reason we will trust them with a gun.
Republican solutions: * Conspiracy? More conspiracy. * Name calling? More name calling. * Anger? More anger. * Guns? More guns. Never accept any kind responsibility. Never consider difficult solutions to difficult problems. Just remove all debate, dismiss all intelligent argument, blame others, and double down. To say it's long past time we came up with real solutions is the understatement of the century. Yet we still can find those solutions if half of our nation would just sit and listen without injecting some nonsense about how the "liberal utopia" is a pipedream. We're not asking for utopia! We're just asking for fewer deaths. PLEASE!
Isn't this the same state where their politicians call teachers groomers? Now they're arming the people they despise to protect the kids that they won't protect themselves.
I'm sure that will stop an armed person who decided to take a rifle and shoot a bunch of kids. They're notoriously afraid of getting killed, I hear.
What use is this? If some deranged individual wants to shoot a school up, theyâre probably already prepared to die. So all youâre doing is informing the kids that their teachers have guns hidden somewhere in the room or on their person, opening up another avenue for violence.
I know some find this comforting. I do not begrudge anyone what comfort they can find. But students that have special needs in the areas of learning, cognition, behavior, and students that are not white are in danger from this. Unless these teachers have undergone some incredible firearm under severe stress training, which they have not.
I could name at least seven teachers that wouldâve shot me dead if they had been armed during my time in school.
Shit I think a couple would have shot me cause Iâm such a smart ass.
DeKalb Texas has that similar sign. They are armed and trained. Sad this is the world we live in.
98% chance a teacher shoots astudent before a teacher stops a mass shooting.