14 minute read
OPINION
BY NINA JOSS NJOSS@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM
As of Oct. 28, students at Fort Lupton High School are permitted to wear hats indoors and expose two inches of midriff, due to recent changes in the Weld RE-8 dress code policy.
The modifi cations come after two Fort Lupton High School students presented their desired changes to the RE-8 Board of Education on Sept. 22.
The students, Anisty Hernandez and Victoria Ingino, asked for hats to be allowed indoors and for students to be allowed to show three inches of midriff.
The board granted these changes to the high school only and decided to permit two inches of midriff instead of the three the students asked for.
The motion passed in a 4-3 vote, with board members Matthew Adame, Michelle Bettger, Cristian González and Jaime Sierra in favor of the dress code changes.
Earlier in the meeting, Fort Lupton High School Principal Doug Gordon spoke about why his administration team supported the dress code adjustments for his students.
“Approving this request will have an exponential positive impact on our students, validating that they are heard, that (we) are responsive to their needs and we are invested in making their learning environment the best it can be for them,” he said.
Gordon said the midriff rule, something he called a “mild modifi cation,” would not objectify the young women at FLHS, but instead would empower them to be leaders and use their voices.
Gordon’s support of the changes was the main reason Bettger voted in favor.
“If we don’t approve it, then we’re saying we know more and we know better than Doug, who is in the building every day,” she said. “We sit behind this table and we make decisions all the time that affect those buildings that we’re not in every day. And we don’t know those kids. And we don’t know how our decisions affect their everyday school life.”
Before the group voted, Bettger suggested that the board adjust the district policy even more to allow school administrators to change dress code rules wherever they see fi t for their buildings.
LeBlanc said he was in favor of Bettger’s idea even though he did not support the specifi c modifi cations the students proposed. He said he did not want “school-specifi c” changes to be made for the whole district, but he liked the idea of giving principals more leeway to adjust dress codes as needed for their students.
“I think that the building principals know best how to manage their students and push for the best learning environments,” he said.
Bovee expressed concern about making the policy more subjective.
“We’re already having kids dresscoded based on very clear rules. If we don’t have very clear bullet points… are we going to have more kids being dress coded?” he asked. “Are they going to push the boundaries more?”
He also said he didn’t want to vote on a new policy unless it was specifi c.
“If we’re gonna vote on a new policy, it needs to be a total redlined something-we-can-read-and-voteon-100% — not an idea,” he said.
After approving the changes for the high school, the board agreed to discuss possible further restructuring of the dress code policy at the next workshop on Nov. 10.
SCHOOLS
FASTER Colorado
Colorado law allows school districts and charter schools to designate a policy of armed school staff.
Although the state does not specify training requirements for staff members who will carry a fi rearm, school district insurance providers such as the Colorado School Districts Self Insurance Pool, which covers Weld RE-8, often have requirements for training.
Laura Carno is the executive director of FASTER Colorado, a provider of armed staff training for schools. She presented her program to the Weld RE-8 Board of Education at a Sept. 8 work session.
FASTER Colorado is a project of the Independence Institute, a Denver-based think tank that has received funding from the National Rifl e Association, as reported by the Denver Post.
In the program’s three-day level one course, class members learn tactical emergency casualty care, participate in scenario-based training and simulations, learn advanced handgun basics, spend time on the range to work on marksmanship and tactical skills and complete the Colorado Peace Offi cer Standards and Training qualifi cation in handgun profi ciency test, according to the website.
School staff in a district where it is authorized would choose to be armed on a volunteer basis, Carno said. School boards have the power to determine specifi c vetting processes to decide which staff members can participate in the program, she added.
Carno said having an armed response to mass shootings would lead to lower death counts and would discourage school shooters in the long run.
“Once it’s known in society that you can’t go… unchecked – you can’t try and kill children on a campus where they’re innocent and they’re there to learn – when that stops happening because they’re stopped in their tracks, the killers will stop going to schools,” Carno said.
“You can’t take a bullet back”
But not everyone agrees. During a Weld RE-8 work session on Oct. 12, district instructional coach and former Fort Lupton High School teacher Judy Callaway expressed concern about arming teachers in the district.
“I think it puts kids at greater risk,” she said.
Callaway, who grew up in a family that hunted, emphasized the seriousness of fi rearms.
“Growing up, if you messed around with the guns, you didn’t get dinner,” she said. “You gotta be really confi dent if you’re gonna handle a fi rearm, I feel. Really confi dent. You can’t take a bullet back, so you gotta make sure it’s going where you want it to go.”
Fort Lupton Police Chief John Fryar also commented on the weight of responsibility that arming teachers would place on them.
“I look at what training our offi cers go through to prepare them, and there’s a fair amount,” he said. “Then they have to be able to justify exactly what they did, why they did it, and then the outcome. And you know, that’s part of our job every day. But it’s not part of a teacher’s job.”
Carno said the FASTER program recognizes that there are risks involved in arming staff and it trains
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people to be as prepared as possible to mitigate those risks. This includes teaching staff proper weapon retention techniques and safety protocols for keeping their concealed weapon on their body.
But at the end of the day, she said the biggest risk is that of an unopposed school shooter.
“I know that (people who oppose armed teachers) are hoping fewer guns means less death,” she said. “But if the only gun on that campus is the killer, having no response to that is not okay. It’s a unilateral gunfight.”
Emergency response concerns
According to Carno, arming school staff would give them the opportunity to act while they are waiting for law enforcement officers to arrive on the scene, just like someone would react during a fire.
“If there’s a kitchen fire, I dial 911 because I want… the experts to get here,” she said. “But I also have a fire extinguisher and I’m not going to stand around while things could get worse. I’m going to stop the fire.”
According to Fryar, the Fort Lupton Police Department’s average response time for critical emergencies is three minutes and 38 seconds. Although several RE-8 schools are just down the block from the station, he said his officers could be anywhere in the city during a potential active shooter situation.
Reams, whose department would be part of the response chain for an active shooter situation in Fort Lupton, said his team’s average response time for high-priority emergencies is seven minutes or less because they respond to calls across the entire county.
Fryar said he sees both pros and cons to arming teachers. For him, the primary benefit would be the ability to divert a shooter more immediately.
“The sooner a shooter is confronted, the more likely that shooter is to stop,” he said. “A teacher or administrator being able to do that before we get there may improve the odds of the situation turning out better.”
Friendly fire
When officers arrive to the scene, however, some people worry that a dangerous situation could occur. In the study session, Superintendent Alan Kaylor said he had heard the concern that a “good guy” intending to help could be shot by a police officer.
“The most dangerous part of this whole thing aside from confronting an active killer is that link-up with law enforcement,” Carno acknowledged.
She said in addition to training for the transition, a technology called LifeSpot can help address the risk of accidentally shooting an armed staff member. The application displays a live virtual map of where authorized armed individuals are in the building so officers can identify who the threat is.
Fryar said the risk of confusion is still a concern for him, even with the availability of risk-reducing tools.
“You get that call and your set of priorities start running in one direction. Where’s the shooter? Where do I go?” he said. “Your mind really isn’t going to say, ‘I need to look at that database and see where the guns are.’ It sounds like a great idea, but when the stress is on, I’m concerned about the ability to manage that successfully.”
For Reams, confusion about which armed person is the threat would still be better than the alternative.
“As a law enforcement officer, I would much rather be faced with (that scenario) than showing up to a school where everyone is just set to be a victim,” he said.
“Those that it immediately affects”
As the conversation about armed staff begins in Weld RE-8, the board of education members have repeatedly emphasized the importance of including the community in the conversation.
“We can go very far with school safety,” board member Matthew Bovee said. “We have to find out where that line is and what’s right for Weld 8. And in order to do that we need to get feedback from staff and we need to get feedback from the community. I’m in favor of what the community and staff would like to see.”
Fryar also said the community’s perspectives are important in making this decision.
“There’s good parts to it, and there’s bad parts to it,” he said. “And I think the weighing those out needs to be done by those that it immediately affects.”
The school board members will speak to the principals at their respective schools in the coming weeks to gauge interest in the program and gather opinions. At the RE-8 study session on Nov. 10, the board will discuss the next steps for how to involve the community in the conversation.
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