{"id":56197,"date":"2022-11-23T17:53:56","date_gmt":"2022-11-23T22:53:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=56197"},"modified":"2022-11-23T17:54:00","modified_gmt":"2022-11-23T22:54:00","slug":"lee-county-school-board-discusses-the-possibility-of-arming-teachers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2022\/11\/lee-county-school-board-discusses-the-possibility-of-arming-teachers\/","title":{"rendered":"Lee County School Board discusses the possibility of arming teachers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Several recent high-profile Lee County school threats have some of the newly elected school board members talking about arming teachers to keep schools safe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Lee County school district Tuesday seated its new school board members, and already they\u2019re talking about new priorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Many of the candidates running for office focused on issues like critical race theory and indoctrination of students, but since being elected, they now have bigger issues to focus on after Hurricane Ian is expected to have an impact on the district\u2019s budget.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Newly elected school board members like Armor Persons are also focusing on arming school teachers after threats at area schools early this month put many parents on edge and board members reconsidering their priorities.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cI was one of those who campaigned on the guardian program, and that is where a teacher volunteers and goes through an extensive 144-hour training,\u201d Persons stressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many school districts in Florida have already adopted the guardian program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a deterrent because someone has no idea who might be armed and who might not be armed,\u201d Persons said.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Persons appear to be leading the charge, and he stressed that teachers or administrators could volunteer to keep a gun locked up at school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey would not be walking around with guns on the side of their hips,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Persons seem to have the support of other new members who were recently elected, like Sam Fisher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are many facets to that program. Whatever we can do to protect our kids, mine is very important to me,\u201d Fisher responded.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But arming teachers was something the previous board rejected and may need to be convinced to go along with.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cI personally am not comfortable with teachers being armed. What does that look like?\u201d said Debbie Jordan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jordan recently won re-election and is calling for the sheriff\u2019s office and other law enforcement to weigh in on the matter before she makes a decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI absolutely want to hear from our police in our service department on what they deem necessary to do the job,\u201d Jordan said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Newly elected board member Jada Langford-Fleming did not return calls in an attempt to find out where she stands on the issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the things that the new school board members won\u2019t have to deal with is hiring a new superintendent. That\u2019s because Lee County voters gave thumbs up to electing the next superintendent. That will happen in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Current Superintendent Dr. Christopher Bernier has not said whether he will run for the job.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Several recent high-profile Lee County school threats have some of the newly elected school board members talking about arming teachers to keep schools safe. The Lee County school district Tuesday… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":56198,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,32],"tags":[1936],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56197"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56197"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56203,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56197\/revisions\/56203"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}