While there is an ongoing national debate about the proposal by President Donald Trump to arm teachers in an effort to better secure the nation’s schools, in Texas there is no debate.
There have been armed teachers and staffers in Texas schools since 2008.
The Texas legislature passed the Protection of Texas Children Law in 2013, which allowed for the creation of a subset of law enforcement officer called a school marshal.
Among the qualifications required to become a school marshal is that the educator must undergo 80 hours of firearms training. That standard far exceeds the 1 to 2 hour requirement for a person to obtain a Texas License to Carry, previously called a concealed carry permit.
But a representative of the largest professional organization for teachers in Texas believes firmly that, instead of creating more school marshals, the effort to better defend schools and students should be focused on hiring more police officers and security guards.
“Teachers are not trained to be law enforcement officers, or to engage in shootouts in school hallways,” said Clay Robison of the Texas State Teachers Association. “You do not reduce violence in schools by putting more guns into the classroom.”
“What the teacher needs to be doing is what they do now – they need to try to secure their students as well as they can, lock the classroom door, hide the students away, keep them quiet, keep them as calm as possible," he says. "[They should] not be running around trying to find their gun and trying to engage in a futile shootout with an armed intruder who may be armed with a semi-automatic rifle.”
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Robison acknowledges that, although his message is the official stance of the TSTA, it is entirely possible many of his organization’s 68,000 members across Texas may have differing opinions.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story stated teachers and staff have been armed in Texas in 2014. There were teachers who practiced concealed carry in 2008.
