Lt. governor wants more teachers with guns in schools, offers $10K yearly stipend

Richard Elliot
·2 min read
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Georgia’s lieutenant governor wants to see more teachers with guns in schools.

The plan would expand an existing state law and offer educators who pass a training program a $10,000 yearly stipend.

However, the Georgia Association of Educators, which represents thousands of teachers, is calling the plan “horrific”.

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But the lawmakers who support it insist it’s a way to keep the classrooms and schools safe, particularly in rural counties.

The images from Uvalde, Texas remain seared in everyone’s minds.

19 students and teachers were gunned down inside their elementary school.

At a Barrow County elementary school Wednesday, Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones said he doesn’t want to see that happen here.

“It’s becoming more and more dangerous for schools. Sad to say, schools have been a target,” Jones said.

So Jones and other Republican lawmakers plan to introduce legislation to bolster school security, including expanding access to state grants for security officers.

But they also want to expand on existing Georgia law which allows for specially screened and trained teachers to have firearms inside their classrooms.

Under this plan, the state would offer teachers a $10,000 yearly stipend to attract more people to the program.

But none of this would happen without the local school board’s approval.

“The board would have to approve it, and the school board would obviously have to select who they would want, you know, and you would assume that we’re not going to do anything without school board approval,” Jones said.

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Georgia Association of Educators President Lisa Morgan thinks arming teachers is a terrible idea and an impractical one.

“My initial reaction is horrified,” Morgan said.

She said the state shouldn’t add the job of security guard to the list of responsibilities that teachers already have.

“There’s a myriad of issues with this proposal that do not look at the reality of what would happen in these instances,” Morgan said.

The lieutenant governor plans to introduce this during the next session.

Many of the details of it still have to be worked out.

In a statement Wednesday afternoon, Georgia Congresswoman Lucy McBath said, “Georgia teachers should be armed with books and supplies, not guns.”

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