Wyoming district allows armed staff in area cited by DeVos

The Wyoming school district where US Education Secretary Betsy DeVos suggested that teachers might need to be armed to protect children from grizzly bears voted on doing just that, though concerns about school shootings worry parents more than the possibility of big bruins on the prowl.

The 4-2 vote by the Park County School District No. 6 board in the town of Cody near Yellowstone National Park came after more than six months of discussion and debate.

Under the proposed policy, school employees would need to have at least 24 hours of initial firearms training and annual recertification to carry concealed guns at school.

"Unfortunately we have people in our country who want to cause harm to students and at some point you have to respond to that threat. And that's what this board decided to do with the policy they adopted," said Superintendent Ray Schulte.

The policy was up for a final vote after passing two earlier votes 5-2.

Nationwide, some districts are discussing arming teachers not with guns but buckets of rocks (Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania) and tiny baseball bats (Erie, Pennsylvania). But in some rural areas including much of Texas, school officials have been quietly arming teachers for years.

A February shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killed 17 people but didn't really change minds in northwest Wyoming about whether to arm teachers, parents said.

"I think people are really entrenched," said Yancy Bonner, an opponent of arming teachers who said she may remove her fifth-grade daughter from the school district.

In January 2017, DeVos said during her confirmation hearings that elementary school teachers in Wapiti, a small community about a half-hour drive from Cody where DeVos' family owns land, might already be armed against grizzlies.

They weren't - and the remark drew widespread ridicule despite being rooted in a measure of fact. Grizzlies descend from the Absaroka Range into Wapiti and other areas near Cody in search of habitat and food.

A tall fence surrounds the Wapiti school grounds to keep bears out.

DeVos' comments did not come up during Tuesday night's discussion, according to a reporter for The Cody Enterprise. "It doesn't have anything to do with grizzly bears," Schulte said. "It has to do with the Wyoming Legislature."
"There are all kinds of requirements people have to meet, and only if they meet them would they be approved to carry a weapon on school property."