Superintendent Adam Wickham expressed two primary reasons for the district to choose the controversial route of arming certain teachers and staff members.
“Our schools will no longer be soft targets and unprotected,” he explained. “Most active shooter events occur in areas of ‘gun free zones’ or with minimal safety measures in place.” Wickham emphasized that area schools will not be soft targets.
His second reason comes from the location of the school district. “As a rural community, response times can often be minutes away in the event of an active shooter.” The superintendent lauded the ability of armed staff to provide a more immediate response to an immediate threat.
The sheriff’s office, for example, is 10 minutes away from the high school.
He noted that school shootings in Nashville, Uvalde, and Parkland demonstrated that response time may be the difference between lives saved and lives lost.
Wickham said the reception from the local community has been mostly positive, though some have expressed concerns. The superintendent said that some in the area voiced worries about selecting the right personnel and properly training them.
However, “the vast majority of parents have expressed appreciation for the proactive approach in protecting their children. That is really the main reason for adopting the use of armed staff.”
A local grandparent, Krista Schweinfurth, believes it is a good idea to have armed personnel in the buildings. “I think it’s a quicker response as long as they are trained. And [from] everything I’ve read, they will be very well trained. More so than what’s required.”
A parent who chose to remain anonymous told local media that she is torn on the “complex issue.” She expressed worry that a teacher would be able to fire the weapon when needed and would suffer post-traumatic stress afterward.
The River Valley district utilized a law signed by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine last June that permitted school boards to choose to arm certain approved staff members.
The law mandates appropriate training requirements for teachers and staff to be armed.
The River Valley Board had already approved the practice of armed staff during the 2020-21 school year. However, the district decided to delay putting the measure into practice until House Bill 99 went into force. Wickham noted that it was legal in Ohio at the time, but in 2021 the Ohio Supreme Court issued a ruling that forced districts to end the use of armed staff.
HB 99 cleared the path to resuming the security measures.
It created the Ohio School Safety and Crisis Center to implement instruction and training for individuals to be armed in a school safety zone. The state also took steps to ensure that training staff members to be armed on campus would not be burdensome.
The law states, “Initial instruction and training may not exceed 24 hours and annual requalification may not exceed eight hours. An individual district or school, however, may require additional training.
River Valley Local Schools is one of the districts that goes above and beyond the state recommendation for training. Armed personnel must receive six hours of prep training, 24 hours of initial training, one hour of range training per month to equal 12 per year, and eight hours of quarterly training to handle specific scenarios.
The total district requirement is 50 hours of training.
The district’s four school buildings are currently protected by one resource officer employed through the Marion County Sheriff’s office, and that will remain in effect.
In a perfect world, armed teachers and staff members in schools would not be a consideration. However, we are far from living in a perfect world, and recent tragedies laid bare the need for an immediate response to a violent threat on campus.
