PARMA, Ohio — Last month, the Parma City School District Board of Education introduced a resolution to implement House Bill 99, which went into effect last year and enables school districts to choose to arm certain staff members and also lays out training requirements.

What You Need To Know

  • Parma City School District faced some backlash following miscommunication surrounding a resolution to arm some staff members

  • Initially, the district did not want to publicly announce who would be armed due to safety concerns

  • The district is likely moving forward with arming their security staff

The announcement caused some confusion in the community, with some wondering if teachers could be armed.

“The resolution said that we would be able to implement House Bill 99,” Parma City Schools Superintendent Charles Smialek said, “which the Ohio House of Representatives, the Senate and the governor passed approximately a year ago to allow staff members who have not gone through the full peace officer training program to take really an abridged course and be eligible to carry a firearm while on duty in our schools.”

Smialek said when this resolution was first introduced, the district made the decision not to disclose who would be armed due to safety reasons.

"We didn't really communicate our intent very well," he said. "At the time we were thinking, well, you know, the less we say about this in terms of who is actually carrying, the better."

It's a decision he said backfired with some parents, like Quinton Lawman, who spoke out against it during Thursday night's school board meeting.

“But this feels like a major decision that we should have public discourse and debate on,” Lawman said to the board. “There is a lot of data out there to suggest that this is not an actual, effective deterrent.”

After some consideration, the district decided to reveal that their intent was only to arm their security force, which is comprised of about four people.

“The next step for us is that we have two policy readings in front of us: the 24th of August will be our first, and the second will be the first week in September,” Smialek said. “And at that point our intent would be, again, just to arm members of our safety and security team.”

Smialek said the security force team will go through 24 hours of training, along with ongoing training, and they will have to recertify twice per year.

“We are taking steps to make sure our folks are trained, they're assessed, they are working through the law enforcement training that we provide,” he said. “I think it is the right decision.”