Claymont officials discuss safety, possibility of arming staff again
DENNISON (WJER) (June 29, 2022) – The Claymont Board of Education could soon be deciding whether to reinstitute the district’s concealed carry policy.
The 2019 policy arming select staff members has been on hold since the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that school employees needed more than 700 hours of training to carry concealed weapons. But with the governor recently signing a bill reducing the required number of training hours to 24, Superintendent Brian Rentsch says it’s something they will be revisiting.
“It’ll be 90 days before that is enacted into law. The Safety Committee is waiting to reconvene as far as what they have to do to take the next step to reenact it.”
The topic came up at Monday’s school board meeting during a discussion about school safety. Member Michelle Wolf was in favor of hiring a resource officer rather than arming educators, whom she says have enough on their plates already. But Aaron Cottrell didn’t think that was a viable option because of the configuration of the district’s school buildings.
“We’re not basically a campus ordeal. We have schools everywhere. So premeditating, if you were going to do something over at the Intermediate, you would wait if we had a resource officer [until they’re] over at Trenton or at the high school before you would do something.”
Rentsch says he and Operations Manager Beth Lint have also been meeting with representatives from a local engineering firm to discuss ways to make the building entrances more secure.