School employees with guns?

WORLAND –The Ten Sleep School Board unanimously decided to delve deeper in to the new state law that allows possession of firearms by school district employees.

During Monday’s meeting Ten Sleep School Superintendent Jimmy Phelps said, “The last legislative session the legislature passed a bill into law that allows school boards to have a policy addressing or allowing employees or certain employees to carry a concealed weapon. Tonight I ask that you let me know if you want to continue that discussion in the future or if you are just not interested at all in doing it and we shut it down and not even worry about it. But if you are interested in pursuing the discussion about whether we do this or not, I have talked to Sheriff Rakness [Washakie County Sheriff Steve Rakness] and he is prepared to be here at our October meeting to discuss his recommendations and give his advice and discuss this further.”

He added that if the board decided to move forward, because of the seriousness of the issue, moving forward would be done slowly and methodically.

According to the bill, “The board of trustees in each school district may adopt rules and regulations, in consultation with local law enforcement, to allow the possession of firearms by employees possessing a valid concealed carry permit under W.S. 6-8-104 on or in any property or facility owned or leased by the school district.

“The district must also establish ongoing training requirements and the employees must pass an initial training course.”

All board members agreed to move forward and ask Sheriff Rakness to attend the October meeting. Ten Sleep School board member Jane Thurston added that she would also like to hear some input from stakeholders as well.

Phelps stated in an earlier interview, “Sheriff Rakness informed us several years ago that in the event of an ‘active shooter,’ it could take them up to 20 minutes to get to our campus.  It would depend upon the location of the deputies at the time of the call.” He added, “Over the past several years, our district has done a lot of work to improve the security of our buildings and individual classrooms.  At a moment’s notice, we can now lock down the building, each classroom, restrooms, and make individual hallways inaccessible to an intruder.  At the same time, all individual key fobs become inoperable, so that if an intruder took a key fob away from a person, that intruder could not use it to gain access to the building or classrooms. This new statute gives us the ability to take aggressive action against an intruder in our building, not just lockdown and hide.  Sheriff Rakness and the Washakie Sheriff’s Department do a great job, but because of our distance from law enforcement, we need the ability to take aggressive action.”

In other business the board had to reapprove the demolition or removal of the two houses on the properties purchased with the intent of creating additional parking due to a misunderstanding.

“Last month you approved the contract to demolish or remove the houses next door, the two that we recently bought. Evidentially I got my cart before my horse. I called the school’s facilities department to ask permission to use major maintenance funds for it and I was informed that we had to have their permission before we could do that. Before they give us permission we have to have a public hearing to give the public an opportunity to say something. We advertised about 10 days ago this public hearing (Sept. 1) so that people could be here to give input. The statute is that any public building before it can be demolished you have to have a public hearing. They also recommended that we have an asbestos inspection, so we have contacted someone who gave us a recommendation on who can do that,” Phelps explained to the board. He added that the monies to pay for the demolition could not come out of major maintenance but out of the general funds maintenance budget.

Although Phelps apologized for the misunderstanding, several board members stated that they as well were under the same opinion as Phelps. Ten Sleep Board member Jared Lyman specifically mentioned his frustration with the fact that what the board was initially told was not what they were told later.

Only one person who attended the public hearing commented. “I think that moving forward with demolishment and opening up some opportunities for the district is a good thing,” Dan Rice said.