This past spring lawmakers approved House Bill 1177, which created an avenue for teachers to go through firearm training and have it paid for through the secured safety grant program.
(Devan Ridgway - WFIU/WTIU)
Being a teacher in 2023 is a far cry from what it was when Roma Jean Bradburn retired from the Fort Wayne Community School system in 2001.
“Parents today expect immediate response on how their child did on assignments and on tests,” she said. “We used to be able to stack the tests up and get to them when we could. Now they expect it to be done during the day.”
Technology in the classroom, testing, funding – it’s all different.
Roma Jean Bradburn taught home economics at the Fort Wayne Community school system until retiring in 2001. (Devan Ridgway, WFIU/WTIU)
Another big change is school safety. Since 2014, the state of Indiana has utilized the Secured School Safety Grant program, a $23 million pot of money that pays for everything from school resource officers to metal detectors.
This past spring lawmakers approved House Bill 1177, which created an avenue for teachers to go through firearm training and have it paid for through the program.
The identities of those who enroll, participate in, and complete the training are kept confidential.
That makes it difficult to determine how many school corporations intend to participate in the state-funded training. But teachers are only eligible if their district allows them to carry firearms at school.
For many, like Roma, the idea of arming teachers as an added form of security opens up a plethora of new questions. How would the weapon be stored? Would a teacher compelled to leap into action in the event of an emergency? And would having a gun in class make everybody safer?
“It wouldn't take much for anybody to overpower a teacher if they knew that you had a gun on you,” she said. “And then if you didn't have it on you, it has to be locked up, it has to be in a locked place. And most classrooms don't have very adequate places to lock things up.”
See the full list of schools that utilize the secured safety grant program here.
Representative Jim Lucas of Seymour authored the bill. He said the goal of the legislation is to prevent an event like the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting, where the shooter wasn’t neutralized for nearly an hour and a half.
“We had almost 400 heavily armed city, state and federal officers that stood around for almost an hour and a half many in the hallways as children were dialing 911, begging for help,” he said. “During that time, how many lives could have been saved had any of those teachers or staff had the means and ability to defend themselves?
The training required by the bill in order to receive grant money was developed by Lucas with the help of law enforcement officials. It covers the specific instance of an active shooter in a school environment on top of an existing 40 hours of standard firearm training.
“So actually, teachers and staff that go through this training are, some could argue, better qualified than an officer fresh out of the academy,” Lucas said.
And by his estimates, Lucas said that training teachers to use firearms is cheaper than hiring a Safety Resource Officer.
“The average salary and benefits for an SRO in Indiana is about $65,000,” he said. “For that one-year salary, you can train approximately 40 teachers and staff. So your deterrent factor, you have magnified that by a factor of 40 right there.”
Schools most likely to benefit from House Bill 1177 are those located in rural areas, where law enforcement resources are spread thin. And according to the Indiana Small and Rural Schools Association, there are only ”one or two” schools that allow teachers to carry a firearm on campus.
One of those, Jay County School Corporation, responded to our requests to interview with the following statement:
“At this time, we do not currently plan to send any teachers to training reimbursable by the school safety grant described in House Bill 1177. However, we will consider this new grant-funded program moving forward for future training needs.”
The full statement from Jay County School Corporation Superintendent Jeremy Gulley. (Clayton Baumgarth / WFIU/WTIU)
For Paul Farmer, a teacher and President of the Monroe County Education Association, there are better ways that state money could be re-allocated.
“The state had a $2 billion surplus this past year,” he said. “They're going to take that money and they're going to help pay for potentially teachers having handguns in the classroom? Most people I think, and me personally, are gonna go, ‘we could use this money better.’”
Specifically, Farmer said the money could help fund better mental health programming to prevent shootings in the first place.
“I would like to see more, and I think the association and teachers would like to see more, emphasis placed on help, the critical help that our students need today,” he said.
For Farmer and Roma Jean Bradburn, legislation like House Bill 1177 does little to make them feel safer in schools. In fact for Roma, only one law would do that.
“The only thing that will solve the problem is to ban assault rifles, automatic rifles and guns, and anything that makes a gun automatic,” she said.
