Down and Out Guardians, Poorly Trained Deputies and Other Rantings…
Florida’s Commissioner of Education, Richard Corcoran, appears to believe the best person to shoot a troubled student is a well-educated, caring teacher and predicts, someday soon, there will be armed teachers in every school. In contrast, Board Member Michael Olenick prefers allowing local districts the flexibility to make their own school safety decisions. We like Mike.
In 2018, in response to the Parkland tragedy, Florida passed SB7026 which, among other school safety measures, required school boards/superintendents to assign an armed “safe-school officer,” for “protection and safety,” to every public school (including charters). Safe-School Officers could be:
- School Resource Officers, certified law enforcement officers in the employ of a local law enforcement agency
- or a Guardian, school employees who complete specific training allowing them to be armed during the school day
- or a combination of both.
Initially, classroom teachers were prohibited from becoming guardians, but that changed with the passage of SB7030 in 2019. SB7030 allowed classroom teachers to participate (voluntarily) as armed Guardians and, also, dramatically expanded the oversight authority of the Commissioner of Education, allowing him to sanction non-compliant superintendents and school boards. Citizens, outraged at the idea of arming teachers, were constantly reassured that any such program would always be “optional.”
That does not appear to be the Commissioner’s plan.
Last week, we learned the Commissioner had spoken to a group of Central Florida school board members and had declared that:
- In 10 years, every school will have armed “Guardian” teachers in it.
- Guardians are better trained than law enforcement.
- Paying for an armed School Resource Officer (SRO) is a total waste of money.
On Friday, at the Florida Board of Education (FLBOE) meeting in Jaxsonville, Corcoran doubled down on these ideas, suggesting in 5 years, armed School Resource Officers will be a thing of the past and all of Florida will embrace the armed teacher, “Real” Guardian program.
New FLDOE Chancellor for Innovation, Eric Hall, Ed.D., was presenting updates on the Governor’s Executive Orders. Board Member Olenick had specific concerns regarding Executive Order 19-45 and the Guardian program. In Florida’s 3,717 schools, their are 3,170 Law enforcement Officers assigned to schools and 1,084 Guardians, indicating that some schools have more than one assigned safe-school-officer.
This is a map of the districts who are participating in the Guardian program. Many of the participating districts are using hired security guards as guardians, rather than arming instructional or administrative personnel.
Board member Olenick has significant concerns with the Guardian Program and wonders if districts choosing NOT to participate in the Guardian Program could have access to unused Guardian funds. You can watch the meeting here (the conversation begins at about 1:41:00).
Michael Olenick: “Where are we in terms of flexibility on the Guardian Program? There’s roughly $52 million dollars left… without question (I know the Commissioner and I have a disagreement on the Guardian Program) but there are significant populations, significant number of counties who do not, have not, and probably will not adopt the Guardian Program. My statement before the question is: that, in itself, does not mean those districts don’t believe in school safety, obviously. But, they may determine that that money might be better placed in hardening, or communication or other forms. So I guess my question is… is there any discussion, or will there be any discussion of the Guardian program having flexibility for those districts choosing not to have Guardians but obviously wanting to spend money for other school safety ideas?”
Eric Hall: “I can’t speak to what future conversations look like right now, I think what we’re focused on right now is to make sure that we use these funds so that every school who needs to access a Guardian, has the opportunity to do so. We’ve seen great expansion of it in our charter schools, that is something that got clarified last legislative session. We’ve seen multiple schools taking advantage of that, because it is a more affordable pathway to ensuring the safety and security of the schools. So, at this point in time… we’re continuing to stay focused on the expansion and introduction of new Guardian programs across the state. But I think if that conversation were to change, we would, obviously, come back to the board and make you aware.”
Michael Olenick: “One more time: I think we’re missing the boat here. I get the Guardian Program, I get the “conga line” to sign up, but, I think that’s diminishing now… yeh, we’re working on charter schools but what about those districts… they have certain rights as a district to make a determination on their own what they think is right for school safety. Again, I’d ask, and I’m assuming that I am just one voice, that we look at the flexibility in that $52 million to allow districts to make their own decisions.”
Commissioner Corcoran laughs and says “Hold my beer” (actually he laughed and said “You know I’m not going to let it go,” but it is really the same thing) and went on to defend what he calls the “Real Guardian Program,” insisting that armed educators are “the absolute best line of defense for school safety.” Here are some excerpts from his rant. It is long but really, you should try to watch the whole thing (beginning at 1:43:50). A word of warning the recording includes a graphic description of the MSD massacre, which we have not transcribed here:
“But again, I can’t say it enough… here’s what were going to do: Were going to act with urgency, once we say “what’s the best thing for our school children…” then were going to act with urgency and do it as quickly as possible and we’re going to measure, and make it based on forensic evidence, make it based on facts.
So here’s the fact world that we know right now, the fact world is number 1, every single person who was against the Guardian program a year ago, was against SROs three decades ago. Not one single person, every horror story, oh my gosh, you’re going to give a principal a handgun, this is a disaster… what if somebody comes in and… we go into crazy hypothetical world… an alien comes down, doesn’t recognize the teacher and shoots up… I mean it is just crazy world… same crazy world existed for SROs: as soon as we were going to take an armed law enforcement officer and put them on a school… what if 5 kids tackle him, take his gun, take his taser, and shoot up the school… all those things… never happened… never happened with SROs.
So we create a Guardian program, and then, for flexibility for the districts, we say, they want it to be “a security guard,” that’s not… it… the Guardian was based on Aaron Feis. Aaron Feis was a heroic coach who stood in the hallway and took umpteen bullets saving kids without being able to fire back, and died…
Aaron Feis deserved to be able to protect those kids as fully and as beneficially as possible to the safety of those students. And that’s where that brainstorm came for the Aaron Feis program.
So now we have a Guardian program. The Guardian program basically is this… Real Guardians, that’s what was anticipated by the legislative body and the governor… and the Real Guardians are principals and Aaron Feis-es – professionals. And yet, now we allow the flexibility to the districts and they call the Guardian program a security guard program. And so, basically, they go out and get these security guards. Well guess what, we’ve had like 4-5-6 incidences, just in the Guardian program… we have incidents, guess what, in the SRO program… ever since it’s been in place: incident, incident, incident… and now we have them in the Guardian program… 100% of the incidents are, guess what, the security guys… never anticipated, you want to know why? 1.) If you’re a security guard Guardian, you’re probably somehow as we’ve seen… down on your luck… you were dismissed from Tampa Bay Police Department; you were dismissed from the sheriff’s department; you didn’t pass something; you couldn’t whatever, whatever, whatever… And so now these Guardian “Security Guards” are getting hired, they’re somewhat down on their luck; none of them, almost none of them, have a college degree; and almost all of them have zero experience hanging out, on a day to day basis, hanging out with middle school, elementary school and high school kids so we’ve had incidences… incidences like inappropriately touching students, incidences like right here in Duval, where the guy took his gun and sold it so he could make an extra 750 bucks… but not one incident, not one single incident with somebody who loves those students, somebody who has a college degree, somebody whose been in that school for 5-10-15-20 years, and somebody who has more training than an SRO on the streets.
And here’s what’s going to happen, I get the world we live in… we do this every single time… the status quo fights and fights and fights because, God help us we have change, though the facts, the facts overwhelmingly say its the best way to protect our school children. Sheriff Gualtieri, who chairs that commission, was dead set against the Guardian program, today is the biggest proponent for the Guardian program, the Real Guardian program, in the entire state… He has flat out said, as a career law enforcement officer, the only way to effectively protect those students, and the safest way, the most efficient way, and the most effective way is the Real Guardian program where the person has that kind of experience, they love the students, and they are experience with interacting with those students…
Here’s where we’re going to be. In 5 years, this won’t even be a discussion… it really won’t. Just like today, you know what’s not a discussion? Nobody in this whole room has ever come or said to anybody in the last 5-10 years, “I have an issue with an SRO being on school property” and in 5 years nobody will have a problem with Real Guardians in the schools protecting our kids. And we’ll be doing it more effectively, more efficiently, and you can drop off your child at that school knowing that they have the absolute best line of defense for school safety.
That’s where we’re headed but I get right now we’re in the “status quo is… God help us we can’t fight the status quo,” but we will, and we will succeed and our children will be safer.”
Richard Corcoran at 1:43:50
Wow! The Commissioner doesn’t think much of the “uneducated, down and out, security guard Guardians” that have been hired with the vast majority of the Guardian funds over the past two years and currently provide armed security at many of Florida’s schools. Corcoran insists the best person to shoot a potential school shooter is a teacher or principal who loves those students (who, by the way, he/she may be asked to shoot). Sigh…
Mr. Olencik was not willing to concede :
“Well… I appreciate what you are saying, I just want to distinguish the fact that someone’s love for children, someone’s love for students, doesn’t make them a protector of students, and I firmly believe that the training that an SRO gets, the training that a police officer gets, routinely as part of their role as a police officer, is what is needed. I just don’t believe… I’m not aware of the security companies and the people being down on their luck… What I do know is, I am concerned that that teacher, that impassioned teacher, who has been trained by a Guardian program, who now has a gun… it’s frightening to me. They are not trained to be police officers, they are trained to be teachers, trained to be good teachers, their love for a student and their love for their school does not translate into protecting that school or the children… It is a discussion that you and I have had from moment one… we disagree… but I will never get there…”
Michael Olenick (at 1:51:17)
The Commissioner had to have the last word (at 1:53:00):
“…The fact is, what you’re saying Mike, isn’t accurate. So, how the training got established for a Guardian was looking at exactly what that police officer is trained for, then they backed out those things… they looked at the entire 7-800 hours of training that a law enforcement officer on the street takes, through the Police Academy, and they backed out those things that they don’t need… there’s like 120 hours for a DUI stop… I’m not asking Coach Feis to do DUI stops, so we took it out. There’s a 100-some hours on how you present in a Court of Law, how you testify on the stand, not asking them to testify. So we got down to the hours, and it was like 80 or 90 hours of gun training, active shooter training, all the training that’s required for a deputy on the street, and then we doubled it, we doubled it… for a law enforcement officer to be on the street, storm into this classroom, this building right now to protect children, he has to have to have a 70 or 75% efficiency on the gun range. And we said, “OK, for Guardians let’s make it 80%” and we went higher on every level. Factually, that Guardian is better trained than a law enforcement personnel on the street, that’s a fact, it’s a fact… and they have the same background screening, they have the same psychological screening… It’s an excellent, excellent program and I assure you, I assure you, long after maybe all of us are here, it will be the way of schools and our schools, already, I will tell you our schools in Florida are already the safer than any other schools in the nation because of where we’ve gone with our school safety program and it will continue to go there and it won’t be an issue, it really won’t…
Richard Corcoran at 1:53:00
Board member Gibson then made it clear (at 1:55:25) that this is “unchartered territory” and he is merely an appointed board member who doesn’t make the laws… “there’s gonna be speed bumps,” he said and, presumably, he doesn’t want to be blamed for them.
Mr. Olenick is not the only person concerned about the Guardian program. At Monday’s Senate Education meeting, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle questioned how the remaining unused $50+ million Guardian funds was being spent and why the state isn’t more closely monitoring the Guardian program. For example, it was discovered that the state doesn’t track is how many of those 1,084 “guardians” are classroom teachers who have elected to carry a gun on campus.
As reported in the Tampa Bay Times:
“That ambivalence on the part of the agency that ostensibly oversees the program drew fire from lawmakers who never supported the idea of arming teachers in the first place.
Sen. Oscar Braynon, D-Miami Gardens, told the Times/Herald on Tuesday that for the state to not be closely tracking this program is “b——t.”https://www.tampabay.com/news/gradebook/2019/09/16/florida-doesnt-track-how-many-teachers-have-volunteered-to-be-armed/
“For you to implement a program that does more harm than it does good — and we don’t even know who does it — is absolutely asinine and it’s counterproductive to what the agency for school safety is supposed to be doing,” he said. “This is the dumb, backwards stuff that we do here.”
Local law enforcement has, also, had difficulty determining whether local schools are compliant with the armed “safe-school officer” mandate. As the school year began in Broward County, about a third of the county’s charter schools were reported to remain out of compliance with the law, despite the mandate being in place for more than a year. When the FLDOE stepped in to debate the true number of under-protected charter schools, Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony described a system that was “not fair to the kids who are falling victim to what I’ve referred to as politics.”
We wonder how Commissioner Corcoran can be so confident that his so-called “Real Guardians” are better trained than law enforcement professionals “on the street” if his Department doesn’t even keep track of how many “Real Guardians” even exist? We will leave it to the sheriffs to debate whether the limited training required for guardians exceeds the ongoing training required of their personnel or whether paying for armed School Resource Officers is a total waste of taxpayer money.
Many thanks to Michael Olenick who continues to be the FLBOE’s voice of reason. Placing more guns in the classroom continues to sound crazy to many, but placing more guns in the classroom without closely monitoring the program might just move Florida from “crazy hypothetical world” into just plain “crazy world.”
Featured image of Commissioner Corcoran is a Screen Shot from the broadcast of the 9/20/19 FLBOE meeting.
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