By: Rishika Dugyala – texastribune.org – March 22, 2018

All of Harrold Independent School District is packed into a two-story red brick building that sits off U.S. Highway 287, nestled among windmills, a water tower and farmland.

The district serves kids from a 200-square-mile area in Wilbarger County near the Texas-Oklahoma border. Everyone knows everyone in this rural district with 24 employees and 115 students, about 100 of whom commute from other towns.

It takes the county sheriff’s department about 15 minutes to respond to the average emergency call. So to close that gap, Superintendent David Thweatt created a plan in 2007 to arm certain staff members, including teachers and administrators.

“We take care of ourselves,” Thweatt said. “I don’t want to be anybody’s victim.”

Harrold ISD was the first of more than 170 Texas school districts — mostly in rural or isolated areas — to arm educators and other employees to prevent a possible tragedy. So far, Thweatt said, the armed employees in his district haven’t had to pull their guns.

But since the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in which 17 people died, districts with such a policy have come under national scrutiny as more politicians have pushed for arming teachers or other school personnel.

Critics argue that allowing guns in schools makes students and staff less safe and adds another burden on schools. But proponents say it helps districts more quickly respond to active shooter situations, and the chosen employees often have to pass psychological or shooting tests.

“People always picture the absentminded woman who couldn’t find her gradebook,” Thweatt said. “They picture the worst candidate for this. And not everybody in our system is a candidate for this.”

Texas schools have two options if they want to arm staff members: The Guardian Plan allows local school boards to determine training standards and authorize specific employees to carry on campus at all times. The School Marshal Program also allows local boards to authorize employees, but they must be specially trained and licensed by the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, which oversees the program. Under the marshal program, they can’t carry firearms around students.

Both programs require anonymity — only select officials can know who is armed in a school district — and both allow districts to offer armed employees a monetary stipend.

About 10 years ago, following the 2006 Pennsylvania Amish schoolhouse shooting that left five dead and the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting that left more than 30 dead, Thweatt created the Guardian Plan, fearing a similar incident could happen in Harrold.

Thweatt wrote the policy, got school board members’ approval and had a team of attorneys look over the proposal to ensure it didn’t violate state or federal law. After Harrold ISD began arming employees, Thweatt shared what they had done with the Texas Association of School Boards, which compiles school district policies, and the idea began to spread.

Harrold ISD employees chosen to carry at school go through at least 15 hours of training that includes videos of hostage scenarios and shooting drills.

Thweatt said he uses his own judgment to determine whether an employee is a good candidate for such a potentially deadly responsibility.

“There’s no one on the Guardian team that I haven’t worked closely with for at least three or four years,” he said.

Source: Rural Texas school district began arming staff years before Parkland in 2007 | The Texas Tribune