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Midstate senator proposes ‘civilian protection force’ in schools

school_shooting_drill.jpg

Fayetteville Elementary School faculty members barricade a door during active shooter training on Wednesday, August 16, 2017. Chambersburg Area School District is doing active shooter training sessions for its faculty. The school adopted the Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter Evacuate (ALICE) method for all employees. (Photo: Markell DeLoatch, Public Opinion)

(Harrisburg) — State Senator Richard Alloway II, R-Chambersburg, said he likes the idea of a “volunteer civilian protection force” in Pennsylvania schools.

Alloway recently posted the suggestion on his Facebook page. It’s just one of many ideas that are being kicked around locally in the aftermath of a deadly school shooting on Feb. 14 in Parkland, Florida. Seventeen were killed and 14 taken to hospitals.

Threats and incidents at the nation’s schools continue to roll in at a rate of 78 each day, according to the Educator’s School Safety Network. In 21 of the 38 verified incidents since the mass shooting, a gun was found. More than half the threats were made on social media, and more than half the threats mentioned guns.

The Greencastle-Antrim School Board is considering tighter school security at a cost of about $351,000. The board on Thursday, March 1, is to hear a presentation by McClure Company and vote on further securing the main entrances to the district’s four school buildings. The money would come from the district’s capital reserve.

“I’m personally open to listening further, but at present expect to speak and vote against it,” school board member Paul Politis said.

Also, The Pennsylvania General Assembly’s education committees in March will hold hearings on school safety – the Senate committee on March 2 and the House on March 15.

“There is no set direction for the committee at this point,” said Sen. John Eichelberger, R-Hollidaysburg, who chairs the Senate Education Committee. “This will be an information gathering hearing.”

The Pennsylvania Senate last year passed a bill allowing trained and vetted school personnel to access firearms on school property, if a school district would so choose. The legislation (Senate Bill 383) has been in the House Education Committee since June. Both Alloway and Eichelberger voted in favor of the bill.

“I’m absolutely certain that one thing we need to do is to harden the schools,” Alloway told a reporter on Friday. “We need some kind of armed protection in schools.”

A civilian protection force would be comprised of volunteers, possibly retired military or police officers, according to Alloway. They would be vetted, trained and cleared through background checks.

Susan Spicka, a parent in the Shippensburg Area School District, sees the proposal as penny-pinching.

“Unfortunately, many state lawmakers, including Sen. Alloway, keep looking for ways to avoid putting resources into our schools,” she said. “He voted to have teachers, custodians, and lunch ladies work as unpaid armed guards in our kids’ schools. He wants to send public dollars to private schools through a voucher scheme. Now he has another scheme for roving bands of what in our children’s schools? Volunteer militia.”

Spicka is a member of the Shippensburg Area School District board, but said she made her remarks as a parent of two children.

“We’d like to have elected officials who value the public school students in our communities and who take time to understand an issue and think about how it impacts their constituents,” she said.

Alloway said he currently does not have legislation in mind. Alloway, backed by the National Rifle Association, in 2011 successfully championed Pennsylvania’s Castle Doctrine, a law allowing people to use deadly force against an attacker any place where they have a legal right to be.

“Right now I just want to hear what’s on people’s minds,” he said. “I don’t have the answer to this serious problem. I’m trying to get feedback from constituents. What we need now is honest, open dialogue.”

Don Blattenberger, president of the Tuscarora School Board, said he did not want to discuss Alloway’s idea about a protection force.

“I’m not going to enter into that discussion,” Blattenberger said. “If the state wants to help, they could reinstate money that we could apply for” to fund school security, such as school resource officers.

Alloway has called for more money in the 2018-19 budget for the grant program that helps schools protect against violence and prepare for emergencies.

The Pennsylvania School Boards Association is neutral on the issue of arming teachers in schools, according to Steve Robinson, PSBA senior director of communications. Individual school boards should decide for themselves, but there may be “far more effective and less dangerous alternatives than arming teachers.”

PSBA does not offer policies or guidelines on school safety and does not recommend specific technology, such as cameras or metal detectors, according to Robinson. Again, the local district should decide.

PSBA however has endorsed legislation that would allow school boards to discuss security issues behind closed doors, according to Robinson. The bill never made it to a vote. Currently, school safety must be discussed in open session.

“We think that defies logic,” Robinson said. “You want to discuss things in private so bad guys aren’t tipped off to what needs to be corrected.”

The Morning Call reported that since the Parkland shooting Pennsylvania legislators have introduced 11 bills intended to curb gun violence. 

This story comes to us through a partnership between WITF and The Chambersburg Public Opinion

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