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By Illinois Radio Network/Cole Lauterbach
SPRINGFIELD – The Illinois Association of School Boards won’t back a proposal that would support arming school teachers.
Association members voted against supporting a proposal last month that was endorsed by a dozen Illinois school districts to encourage the state legislature to allow teachers to carry guns.
Illinois Association of School Boards Deputy Executive Director Ben Schwarm said the proposal aimed to encourage changes to state law.
“State law now prohibits this from happening. That’s why this proposal asked us to support legislation to do this,” Schwarm said.
Schwarm said some rural school districts, especially in the southern part of the state, supported the idea because of lengthy response times by law enforcement.
“In more rural areas, you could have a school district in a town with one part-time police officer and a volunteer fire department,” Schwarm said.
The proposal would have allowed local school districts to decide the matter individually. Opponents said they didn’t think it would make schools safer. Schwarm said the idea of arming teachers has come up before the board a few times in previous years, but that now urban districts seem to understand the issue of slow police response times in more rural areas.
“Now I do think that they’re thinking, ‘yes, these school districts are simply trying to protect their students and there is a problem.’ They’re not convinced this is the solution,” Schwarm said.
Schwarm said there’s some common ground when it comes to the idea of providing more school resource officers in all school districts.
“There was some coalescence around why aren’t we pushing for some sort of state assistance and some funding to supply school resource officers, which are policemen in the schools,” Schwarm said.
Many suburban districts already have school resource officers, rural districts say they can’t afford them.