Clark County principals told not to OK armed staff on campus

Geoff Watson, with information technology for the state of Nevada, right, and Jon Vietti, a facility supervisor with the state of Nevada, prepare video feeds for a roundtable discussion on school safety with Nevada school superintendents hosted by Gov. Brian Sandoval in Carson City and teleconferenced at the Sawyer Building in Las Vegas Monday, March 12, 2018. (K.M. Cannon/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @KMCannonPhoto

Clark County principals who receive a request from a teacher or staff member to carry a weapon on campus should contact their supervisor and school police before granting permission.

That’s the latest guidance from Superintendent Pat Skorkowksy, sent to principals in a memo on Monday. The message also noted that it will “take some time” for officials to craft a policy implementing a 1989 state law that allows people to carry weapons on campus with written permission from the principal.

“We are currently telling principals that granting written permission to an employee to carry a weapon could violate current policy and would expose schools to significant legal liabilities. We will review any grants of permission on a case-by-case basis,” district officials said in a statement.

Despite the 1989 law, Clark County has never had a formal policy on what principals should consider or do in cases where staffers seek permission to carry a gun. There have been very few requests over the years, and officials did not track how many questions there were, according to district officials.

Officials declined to comment how they handled requests in the past “due to safety concerns.”

No record of approval

The district has no record of anyone receiving written permission, according to the district’s response to a public records request.

With the Feb. 14 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, and Tuesday’s shooting at a high school in Maryland, the Nevada law has come back into the public discussion, prompting the district to begin working on what Skorkowsky called “administrative guidance.”

“For now, if you receive a request from an employee to carry a weapon on campus, you must contact your school associate superintendent and school police before granting that request,” he wrote in the memo. “I want to let you know that this procedure could take some time to develop.”

According to the memo, issues the district will consider in developing the policy include:

— The type of weapons that will be allowed, since the law is not specific.

— Whether additional background checks are necessary for individuals seeking permission.

— What kind of training an individual should have before being allow to carry.

— What kind of new liability concerns allowing staff to be armed would create.

Liability is one of the main reasons Humboldt County has an unwritten directive from Superintendent Dave Jensen for principals to deny any requests to carry, he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal last week. Jensen is also the superintendent representative on the State Board of Education and current president of the Nevada Association of School Superintendents.

Jensen said about $400,000 of his $40 million budget goes toward liability insurance already.

“What would that go up to if we go in this direction?” he wondered.

Jensen said he also believes teachers have enough on their plates already without adding guns into the mix.

Contentious idea

Both nationwide and in Nevada, the idea of arming teachers or staff to deter violence on campus is contentious. A Gallup poll published last week showed 75 percent of teachers across the U.S. oppose the idea, and so do about 56 percent of Americans, according to a separate Gallup poll. Pollsters noted, however that the 42 percent supporting the tactic is a “significant” minority.

Last week, Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval held a roundtable with the state’s school superintendents, which was closed to the public. Afterward, Sandoval reported there was no consensus on the issue.

“There’s a difference of opinion there,” Sandoval said last week. “The consensus was most of the school districts choose not to do that.”

Sandoval and the superintendents indicated that at least one rural district in the state already allows staff to carry weapons on campus. They declined to identify it or disclose how many staff are authorized to carry weapons.

In Clark County, unions representing teachers, principals and school police officers all are wary of the idea.

The issue may be part of the discussion for a new statewide school safety task force created by Sandoval through an executive order signed Monday. The task force is slated to deliver recommendations to the governor by Aug. 1 about improving school safety.

The recommendations will include “any bill draft or budgetary requests necessary to enact the recommendations, a draft of any executive order necessary to enact the recommendations, any proposed model policy for adoption by individual school districts and any other information the task force deems necessary,” according to the governor’s office.

The task force is slated to meet soon, although there’s no firm date yet, according to the governor. Task force members may include superintendents, parents, lawmakers, law enforcement, social workers, parents and a student.

Contact Meghin Delaney at 702-383-0281 or mdelaney@reviewjournal.com. Follow @MeghinDelaney on Twitter.

Memo to CCSD Principals by Las Vegas Review-Journal on Scribd