Ohio legislators pass bill to make it easier to arm teachers
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The Ohio Senate on Wednesday passed a bill that would make it easier for school boards to allow teachers to carry guns on campus to provide protection.
Controversial H.B. 99, which passed the Senate 23-9 after passing the House 59-33 on Nov. 10, 2021, is intended to “expressly overrule” a divided Ohio Supreme Court decision from June 23, 2021, that found state law prohibits a school from employing a person “who goes armed while on duty in his or her job unless the employee has satisfactorily completed an approved basic peace-officer-training program or has 20 years of experience as a peace officer,” according to Gabbard v. Madison Local School Dist. Bd. of Edn., filed in Columbus.
The issue landed in court after several parents sued the Madison Local School District in Madison, Ohio, whose board approved a rule in 2018 that permitted teachers with limited training to carry weapons on campus following a school shooting at Madison Junior/Senior High School in 2016 that injured four students.
The Supreme Court, in affirming an earlier decision, wrote that “because the board’s April 2018 resolution purports to authorize certain school employees to go armed while on duty without also requiring that those employees satisfy the training-or-experience requirement under (state law) the resolution” is in violation.
In addition to eliminating the stringent training requirements,
H.B. 99 would “establish the Ohio School Safety Crisis Center and the Ohio Mobile Training Team to develop a curriculum and provide instruction and training for individuals to convey deadly weapons and dangerous ordnance in a school safety zone.”
