DALLAS — Glynn Wilcox can’t remember which school shooting prompted him to attend a firearms defense class for educators in the Dallas area.
More than anything, it was curiosity. He’d been around guns all his life — he owns several firearms — and has taught high school for nearly a decade.
But that day of training solidified his feelings: Even after Sandy Hook, Parkland and now Uvalde, Wilcox never wants to bring a gun into his AP Human Geography classroom in Duncanville.
“Why would I insert a thing that, you know, has a distinct possibility of making the situation worse?” he asked.
Almost immediately after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas’ Republican leadership returned to a familiar policy push: arm more teachers.
The state has two programs in place that allow some educators to bring guns into their classrooms. And after a gunman killed 19 children and two adults in a fourth-grade classroom at Robb Elementary, some lawmakers and school leaders want to expand them.
The Dallas Morning News spoke with teachers about how the tragedy in Uvalde is shaping their thinking over whether staff should carry guns in schools. Their opinions range from reluctant support to staunch opposition.
How teachers can carry on campus
In the aftermath of Uvalde, Gov. Greg Abbott asked for special legislative committees to address school safety, though the specifics of what they will pursue are unclear.
Many expect more debate on arming more teachers, something Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton promoted.
“We can’t stop bad people from doing bad things,” Paxton said on Fox News recently. “We can potentially arm and prepare and train teachers and other administrators to respond quickly. That, in my opinion, is the best answer.”
Texas AFT has called the push to arm more school staff an illogical idea that hasn’t been proven as effective — and is widely opposed by teachers. The idea chafes against their job description to create welcoming environments for kids to learn and grow.
“We don’t need more guns in schools,” AFT President Zeph Capo wrote in a letter to members. “We don’t need another round table to explore options; we’ve done that. We need legislation that addresses common-sense issues and ensures our children and their teachers can learn and work without constant fear for their lives.”
Texas school districts, private schools and community colleges can appoint one or more school marshals per campus. These marshals, who may be teachers or staff members, have access to a handgun at school.
The names of districts with school marshals in place and the names of the employees who are marshals are confidential. Texas has roughly 250 marshals across the state, which is home to more than 1,000 public school districts.
Under the more loosely regulated “guardian plan,” local school boards can authorize employees to carry guns on campus. District officials are directly responsible for determining training and vetting.
There’s no guarantee that having an armed teacher — or guard — on campus will influence the outcome of a school shooting. During the 2018 school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, an armed school resource officer never attempted to engage the gunman during the attack — or even go inside the building where students and teachers were being killed.
In Uvalde, state officials said 19 police officers waited in the hallway, outside of the classroom where a gunman wielded his AR-style rifle, despite repeated pleas from children calling 911 for help.
Willing to shoot your students?
Wilcox pictures his students when he contemplates what being an armed teacher would mean.
What if a teenager manages to snatch the gun off his hip? If he brings a gun into school, doesn’t that mean he’s essentially saying he’s willing to shoot one of his students? Then, there’s the big-picture question: Should he bring into his classroom the very thing we want to keep out of schools?
“Why would I insert a thing that, you know, has a distinct possibility of making the situation worse?” he asked.
Wilcox knows that, statistically speaking, the chance of him ever encountering a gunman in his school is low. Still, each time a similar story dominates the news cycle, he does a gut-check that’s especially hard for the single father of four children.
“There is that moment that you sit down with yourself, and you have to make that decision over and over and over again, after every one of these school shootings, on whether or not you’re willing to die for your students,” he said.
It’s a serious thing to ask yourself, Wilcox said.
“To throw the bravado of sitting there and saying, ‘Well, if I just had a gun, it would be OK’ … It is a level of bravado I don’t think a rational person can have.
“Policy overcomes bravado,” Wilcox said. “Policy overcomes the feeling that the ‘good guy with a gun’ gives you. … At the end of the day, it’s easy to say, ‘if only I had a gun,’ but good policy, background checks, that’s what will keep kids from getting shot.”
‘Not my first choice’
Better gun regulations would make arming teachers unnecessary, said Nitasha Walder, a special education teacher who has taught in Dallas.
Walder doesn’t see Texas leaders doing much to limit access to guns, which is one reason why she would be willing to carry a firearm on campus.
“That is not my first choice,” Walder said. “But in order to protect myself and my students, that is why I would be willing to carry.”
But she wants better standards in place to ensure school staff are qualified to carry a firearm. Anyone who carries a gun should go through an extensive mental background check, an overall background check and a monthly check-in, Walder said.
She also suggested a requirement for anonymous recommendations from people who know the educator who wants to carry a gun. If a school district asked the person who wants to carry for a recommendation, they might provide only favorable information.
“I don’t think I know anyone that’s going to put something down that will say something negative,” Walder said. “If I know that a person doesn’t handle conflict well – something small, something big – that’s not someone that I would want to put my life in the hands of.”
Regular training should also be required as well as a pay increase for the added responsibility, she said.
Districts should also arm teachers with pepper spray and provide panic buttons within classrooms, Walder said.
More guns aren’t the answer
Every day when Whitney Dickinson enters her sixth grade classroom at Mesquite’s Agnew Middle School, she reckons with how she would protect her kids.
She grew up at the time of the Columbine school shooting and knew when she accepted her job that she would have to make difficult decisions in the same circumstance.
Shooting drill days are serious in her classroom, as the educator explains to students that they need to act as they would in a real-life situation.
Dickinson stresses to her students that she will do everything she can to protect them, even if that means putting herself in front of them.
“But as far as guns in the classroom, to me, that is an absolute no, that is a never,” she said.
While guns can be locked away at school, it isn’t impossible for children to get their hands on them, she said.
Educators are flawed humans and have many other things on their plate to address without thinking about how to keep a firearm secured, Dickinson emphasized.
She grew up in Texas and knows more gun owners than not but having more firearms in schools would make her uneasy.
“There’s so many things that could go wrong,” she said.
How would students feel knowing if one of their teachers had a gun? Would they be uneasy around that teacher or act differently in class? How would their school experience be affected?
“More guns is not the answer,” she said.
Defending children
More than a decade ago, Elizabeth Akin was teaching at a school in Oak Cliff with the windows open when she heard a horrible scream followed by gunshots.
Akin’s administrator came on over the intercom, voice shaking, to lock down the campus.
“It was certainly the most terrifying 20 minutes, half an hour, 40 minutes, I don’t even know, of my professional life,” Akin said. “I’m locked into this room with my class of nearly 30 little teenagers. I was looking around at them, and I realized I had absolutely no way to defend them.”
Akin pulled a hammer she kept out of her desk to keep in hand as questions raced through her mind: How am I going to protect these kids? What happens if a gunman busts through the window?
“If I’m being forced to ask those questions of myself, then I should be given the opportunity to protect [the kids] appropriately,” Akin said.
Akin owns handguns and has gone through the training for a concealed carry license.
Teachers should be allowed to have a firearm on campus, she said, but concedes that it is a complicated issue carrying its own danger. And it isn’t the best solution to gun violence on campuses, she added.
The middle school educator would rather see tightened security and working with armed veterans to staff entrances and exits. In lieu of better safety improvements, she thinks teachers who undergo an extensive training course and psychological evaluation can carry a weapon.
Akin still posed complicated questions that schools would have to grapple with: what happens if a teacher panics and shoots a cop coming into the classroom or if a teacher loses the weapon to a student?
Ultimately, the decision should be left up to teachers, Akin said.
“Let us vote for it and then we live with the consequences of that vote,” she said.
