The schools may arm janitors as well as other staffers to fight school shooters.
A proposal to allow school staffers to carry guns and spring into action in the event of a school shooting has divided a Florida district.
After the Brevard County sheriff’s office recently suggested the idea, hundreds of school employees quickly volunteered to do double duty as armed undercover marshals.
But the pitch has stoked controversy in the 75,000-student school district, intensifying the debates about gun control that followed the Parkland massacre in February. Many educators and parents fear the proposal could make the county’s schools more dangerous.
“It’s a non-solution and it’s not going to make schools safer,” said Dan Bennett, the president of the Brevard Federation of Teachers, a local union.
Critics of the plan, known as the Sheriff-Trained Onsite Marshal Program, or STOMP, are gearing up to try to derail it before the county school board votes next month.
A spokeswoman for the county sheriff, Wayne Ivey, said he was not available to comment on Thursday.
In the wake of the Parkland shooting, which killed 17 people, lawmakers and school districts across the country have debated various measures to combat gun violence. President Donald Trump proposed arming America’s teachers with concealed weapons and training them to “immediately fire back if a savage sicko came to a school with bad intentions” — but the idea was panned by experts.
Last month, Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed into state law a “school safety” bill that, among other provisions, allows trained school workers to carry handguns.
STOMP would be limited to full-time personnel like vice principals, cafeteria workers and custodians — but not classroom teachers.
The district recently polled 700…