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Lawmakers advance bill for Iowa school districts to arm trained staff
Bill would also require some districts to hire armed guards, school resource officers
Tom Barton
Feb. 12, 2024 5:01 pm, Updated: Feb. 13, 2024 8:47 am
DES MOINES — Iowa House Republican lawmakers advanced a bill through a subcommittee Monday to create a pathway for Iowa school districts to arm trained staff.
The legislation would also require Iowa’s 11 largest school districts — among them Cedar Rapids, Davenport, Council Bluffs, Iowa City, and Sioux City — to have at least one private security guard or school resource officer in each district high school.
"The fastest way to respond to a school shooting is to have armed personnel on site, trained and available to respond at a moment's notice," said Rep. Phil Thompson, R-Boone, lead sponsor of the bill and chair of the House Public Safety Committee.
“With this bill, we create a new permit with a strict training regimen that will result in more men and women in school buildings ready to respond to keep students safe,” said Thompson, who voted Monday along with Rep. Skyler Wheeler, R-Hull, to advance the bill to the full House Public Safety Committee.
Wheeler also chairs the House Education Committee.
The move comes in the wake of a shooting last month at Perry High School that killed 11-year-old Ahmir Jolliff, a sixth-grader, and Principal Dan Marburger. Six other people were injured in the shooting. The 17-year-old student who opened fire died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot.
Marburger was critically injured during the Jan. 4 attack, which began in the school's cafeteria as students were gathering for breakfast before class. The longtime Iowa principal has been hailed as a hero for sacrificing his life to save students.
The day after the shooting, the state Department of Public Safety said Marburger “acted selflessly and placed himself in harm’s way in an apparent effort to protect his students.” Law enforcement, family members and school officials have said Marburger approached and tried to calm the teenage gunman, giving other students time to escape.
Rep. Beth Wessel-Kroeschell, D-Ames, voted against the bill, saying students would be less safe.
Opponents said an armed teacher is much more likely to shoot a student bystander or be shot by responding law enforcement than to be an effective solution to an active shooter in a school.
Wessel-Kroeschell noted the only armed school resource officer at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, failed to confront the school shooter and stayed outside during the February 2018 massacre.
“People who are fully trained — fully trained — and that’s their job have a hard time protecting our students. We are asking teachers, who have a completely different skill set to do this?” she said.
Rather, lawmakers should instead pursue an evidence-based intervention plan that addresses school gun violence, Wessel-Kroeschell said.
Most professional education organizations have rejected the call to arm teachers, as has the National Association of School Resource Officers and the American Bar Association.
Bill does not specify types of guns or how they would be secured
House Study Bill 675, titled the “Students First Safety Act," would create a new permit that allows employees at Iowa’s public and private schools and colleges to carry a firearm.
Employees would be required to undergo a one-time “in-person legal training, including training on qualified immunity, annual emergency medical training, and annual communication training" approved by the Iowa Department of Public Safety.
This bill would also require the Department of Public Safety to host an annual “live-scenario training” and quarterly live firearm training for school employees of educational institutions that opt-in to the program.
School staff issued a professional permit to carry weapons by the Department of Public Safety and who are up-to-date on their training would also “be entitled to qualified immunity from criminal or civil liability for all damages incurred pursuant to the application of reasonable force at the place of employment.”
The bill does not specify which type of firearms staff would be allowed to carry, who would supply the firearms to school staff or how they would be secured and stored.
The Spirit Lake and Cherokee school districts rescinded policies last summer allowing trained staff to carry guns within the schools, which Iowa law already allows, to avoid being dropped by their insurance carrier after attempts to find other insurers failed. District officials cited the 2022 mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, as one of the reasons for wanting to arm staff.
The districts’ insurance carrier, EMC Insurance Co., said it insures districts that provide qualified law enforcement officers in schools, but that coverage does not extend to armed teachers or school staff.
Some supporters of the bill said providing qualified immunity insulating armed school staff from legal liability will help, while others said the insurance issue still needs to be addressed for districts that wish to move forward with selecting, training and equipping armed staff.
Angela Olsen, director of special projects for the Spirit Lake School District, said her district had armed staff for six months before rescinding the program after struggling to find an insurance carrier.
Olsen said having a school resource officer in the high school isn’t enough.
Catherine Lucas, a lawyer with the Iowa Department of Public Safety, told lawmakers the agency has a lot of unanswered questions about the bill, like what kind of weapons would school staff be allowed to carry and who would do the required training for armed school staff.
HSB 675 also mandates that school districts with a student population of at least 8,000 are required to have at least one armed private security guard or school resource officer in each district high school. School districts would not receive additional funding to cover the cost, but could apply for up to $50,000 in financial assistance through a new school security personnel grant program that would be established by the Iowa Department of Education.
For districts with a student population of less than 8,000, it would be optional to require armed security at high schools.
'Adding more guns to schools is not going to make me safer’
Democrats and gun safety advocates panned the measure.
“The more guns that are coming into the equation, the more volatility and the more risk there is of someone getting hurt,” said Hannah Hayes, a senior at Roosevelt High School in Des Moines, speaking on behalf of Students Demand Action, a student-led group advocating to ending gun violence.
Hayes said the bill fails to provide adequate training for armed school staff, and that its provision of qualified immunity to armed school personnel raises concerns about accountability and oversight.
“As a student myself, I can tell you that adding more guns to schools is not going to make me safer,” she said. “ … It takes resources away from actual solutions, such as mental health support, conflict resolution programs and other preventable measure, and impacts the learning environment by making us feel like we’re living in war zone and not at school.”
Separate bill would bolster school security infrastructure
Parents, law enforcement and school superintendents from rural communities, as well as gun rights activists, said while school resource officers play an important role in Iowa schools, it is unrealistic to expect a single police officer is always going to be at the right place at just the right time should tragedy strike.
They noted the Perry Community School District employs a full-time school resource officer, and said rural districts do not have the same access to fully-staffed police or sheriff’s departments as those in urban Iowa.
“The people who were carrying in our district love our kids, know our kids. They’re willing to put their lives on the line to … protect kids that are not their own,” Spirit Lake Superintendent David Smith said. “All I’m asking is to give those people a chance to go home to their families, unlike the Perry principal.”
Panora Police Chief Matt Reising and superintendents of Panorama Community Schools and Interstate 35 Community School District in Truro voiced similar support for the bill.
Separate legislation, House Study Bill 692, aims to bolster school security infrastructure. The bill would:
- Require schools to complete a comprehensive review of their safety and emergency response plans and submit the review to law enforcement before the 2024-25 school year.
- Create a fund to install radios capable of accessing the Statewide Interoperable Communications System in all school buildings that don't currently have them. The radio system helped law enforcement coordinate their response to the shooting at Perry High School.
- Implement firearm detection software in three Iowa schools through a pilot program.
- Establish a task force to create recommended school safety standards in building code.
- Require schools, starting in 2026, to meet these school safety standards before using any SAVE funds on athletic facility projects.
"Our kids and teachers deserve the gold standard when it comes to safety in our schools,“ said Rep. David Young, R-Van Meter, who co-sponsored the bill with Rep. Carter Nordman, R-Panora.
”Right now these school safety building standards do not exist,“ Young said in a statement. ”But we can fix this and give our students, staff, and parents the safety they deserve."
Comments: (319) 398-8499; tom.barton@thegazette.com