Reno legislators divided on armed teachers

Members of Reno County’s delegation in the State Legislature are split over the idea of armed school teachers.

When the lawmakers participating in a Saturday legislative forum at Hutchinson Community College were asked if they favored teachers "packing heat," they responded:

State Rep. Ed Berger, R-Hutchinson: Thinks the decision should be made at the local school board level but doubts many teachers would be comfortable taking the risk and want to be armed.

State Rep. Jason Probst, D-Hutchinson: Thinks this “is not the solution we should be looking for.” A police officer told him, he said, that if he responded to a school shooting and saw a teacher with a firearm, he would assume he was the one shooting kids and would shoot that person.

State Rep. Steven Becker, R-Buhler: Does not support arming teachers and he’s not sure he agrees it’s a policy to be set at the local level. Usually, he favors local control, but this issue might be better determined by the State Legislature, he said. He favors a “professional law enforcement-type” presence in schools.

State Rep. Jack Thimesch, R-Spivey: Agrees with the idea of local control, and he also said later that rural schools do not experience the same situations as large schools. He decried that an officer responding to a shooting would think that a teacher would pull a gun on students. He suggested armed teachers could be “red-flagged” so officers would have the information that a teacher was carrying a weapon. Probst responded that it was expecting too much for an officer in a middle of a incident to know that information.

About 50 people attended the 90-minute forum, co-sponsored by the Hutchinson/Reno County Chamber of Commerce and AT&T. Absent was State Rep. Joe Seiwert, R-Pretty Prairie. Audience members included people rom business, education, local government and political parties. They wrote questions that were posed to the legislators.

• Revenue outlook: It’s looking better and the Legislature may be able to put together a package of increased school funding without seeking new revenue sources, Becker indicated.
• School finance formula: The Supreme Court has told the Legislature its formula and level of school funding are unconstitutional. The Legislature is currently waiting for a consultant’s report due March 15 regarding the formula.
• Schools suing the state: Thimesch noted that 10 governors have presided when school lawsuits against the state over funding were pending. He questioned if the schools would not have been better off by not spending the money on litigation. “We have to be careful there,” Becker said, because calling for litigation to stop could border on denying access to the court by schools.
• Gut-and-go: Probst is the lead sponsor of a bill to ban the practice of gut-and-go, where the contents of one bill are dumped and replaced with entirely new subject matter so it can move through the legislative process faster. Berger said addressing such a change in the process should be done in January or February. Becker and Thimesch agreed that a legislator’s name on the original bill can still show up when the bill’s contents have completely changed. “It sounds like I have everyone’s support,” Probst said.
• Medicaid expansion: Berger, Becker and Probst are for expansion. Thimesch said, the state is facing a Supreme Court ruling to increase school funding, and it can’t support either greater school funding or Medicaid expansion. We have to stop looking at theses things as expenses, they're investments, Probst said. 
• Compensation to those wrongly imprisoned: The House and Senate both voted for legislation to do so. “It was a bill that was needed,” Thimesch said. Becker tried unsuccessfully to amend the legislation to include a death penalty ban.

The next legislative forum in Hutchinson is slated to be held April 7, but the Legislature likely could be working that day as it strives to pass a school finance formula and send it to the Supreme Court for review. Tentatively, the forum is planned for April 14.