By now a good many of you have heard of the predicament at Spirit Lake Community School District and the Cherokee Community School District regarding their insurance. This has been a big topic of late in both local and national news. My take on this is that a small number of vocal people have made it known their feelings on this and that those feelings in turn have stalled out a positive decision with multiple insurance carriers for both Districts.
To understand this, we must first talk about the school I am most familiar with, Spirit Lake Community School District, whom I will refer to as “the school or school”. The school developed, what I consider to be, one of the most comprehensive and complete school safety and active threat response plans in the entire state, if not the nation. That plan includes how to respond to fire, floods, dangerous weather, emergency service issues, and active violent actor responses.
In dealing with a violent aggressor the school first developed a plan to responsibly and prudently harden the building using cameras, double door entrances, additional door locks, staff and student training and other measures to keep the aggressor out of the school. As a last line of defense, the school did train and arm several employees (teachers are not allowed to be armed in this plan) to react to active violent aggressor incidents.
It is sad that the one item in the entire plan that has garnered attention is the fact that part of the plan to deal with a violent aggressor were the highly qualified and trained employees who were authorized to deal with an incident of violence using firearms. These employees, many who have been given more instruction and training than most Iowa police departments, were taught and meticulously trained specifically on how to deal with a violent aggressor that intends to inflict harm on students and teachers.
I urge all citizens to let the school and the insurance companies doing business in Iowa know that you approve of this plan (especially parents). I have been told that “The state needs to supply enough money to hire more resource officers”. The problem is to put one Resource Officer in each school building in the state is projected to cost around 80 million dollars. Is that a practical use of money especially when a University of Albany and RAND study from U.S. schools between 2014 and 2018 evaluated the impact of school resource officers and found that these officers may effectively reduce some forms of violence in schools but they do not prevent school shootings or gun-related incidents from happening. And unfortunately, in 2022 and 2023, it feels like we read about these events weekly.
Furthermore, per the Guardian and U.S. News, in the 2015 to 2016 school year, in all U.S. schools, 43% had armed guards present at least once a week but violent active aggressor events continue to increase year over year. The big argument that I heard from those who were opposed to armed staff was that children would be less safe with guns present in the school. Well, we don’t hear about children being hurt all over the United States when those schools have armed guards present and so that argument appears to be false. In fact, authorized employees of school districts can carry arms in 28 states and I’m not aware of any harm to any student in the presence of an authorized armed staff member.
In the 70’s and 80’s, Palestinian terrorists sought to kill Jewish children in Israel and the response in Israel was to put armed security into each school. This move effectively stopped the terrorist assault on Israeli schools. I hate to compare our schools to the schools being targeted and assaulted in Israel but in a sense these cowards who attack innocent children and school staff are terrorists. They want nothing more than to put fear into the world. If armed security staff in Israeli schools can stop a concerted effort by terrorists, a similar plan of armed staff can do the same in Iowa.
Finally, the evidence concludes that a cowardly terrorist who is intent on killing and maiming children in the name of their own deficient crusade can shoot or kill 1 child every 6 seconds. When we have a response time of minutes by local law enforcement, every single second counts, don’t we want a response to be immediate?
Again, I ask you to reach out to the school to encourage them as they have been put under a cloud of confusion by a few loud voices, while I believe the majority are in support of the school. I would also ask you to contact the Iowa Insurance Commissioner and let him know that insurance carriers doing business in Iowa are wrong not to give a fiscal, legal or risk-based reason for failing to provide insurance to Iowa schools who choose to protect students and staff. Let them know that the few loud voices do not represent you!
