Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is looking into a plan that would allow states to use federal funding to buy firearms for teachers, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
The Education Department is considering using a an existing grant program that does not specifically disallow the purchase of guns as a way to give funding for the firearms sales to states or school districts, the Times reported, citing multiple people with knowledge of the plan. Because the Student Support and Academic Enrichment Program does not discuss whether firearm sales are prohibited, DeVos would have the discretion to approve grant proposals that intended to use the funding for that purpose, according to the Times.
In response to the Times report, Education Department spokeswoman Liz Hill told CNN that “the department is constantly considering and evaluating policy issues, particularly issues related to school safety. The secretary nor the department issues opinions on hypothetical scenarios.”
The discussion around arming teachers has been a deeply controversial one. President Donald Trump floated the proposal to arm educators and school staff on multiple occasions in the wake of the deadly school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in February 2018.
“If you had a teacher who was adept with the firearm, they could end the attack very quickly,” Trump said during a listening session on school safety a week after the shooting.
The idea of arming school staff has been met with sharp condemnation.
Former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords said in a statement Wednesday that “arming teachers is not a solution.”
“It recklessly puts American children in even more danger,” she said in response to the Times report. “It’s time for Americans to find the courage to take on the powerful and fight for our own safety.”
The American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association also lambasted the proposal. Nicole Hockley, whose six-year-old son was killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, took the microphone and told Trump she would rather arm teachers with ways to prevent shootings in the first place rather than with a firearm.
Despite the criticism, Trump doubled down on the proposal on several subsequent occasions, and in March, the Trump administration proposed providing some school personnel with “rigorous” firearms training.
In the wake of the Parkland shooting, the Trump administration also created a federal school safety commission, which is chaired by DeVos. In June, she testified before a congressional committee that the commission would not focus on looking at the role the role of guns in school safety. That stance was panned during a public forum. Democrats on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce have called on DeVos to explain how the commission will explore the role of guns.
“The Commission was charged with recommending policies and funding proposals to prevent school violence,” 17 members of the committee wrote in a letter in June. “A core element of combating school violence is addressing gun violence, both in school and in our communities.”