After Texas school shooting & recent gun incident at South, parents renew call to arm SROs

While Elizabeth Bullock was preparing to attend Tuesday’s Monroe County Community School Corp. board meeting to talk about school safety, she learned of the Texas school shooting that killed 19 children.

She thought about her daughter, who is around the same age as the children: 7 to 10 years old.

She also thought of her son, an incoming sophomore at Bloomington High School South — where, last week, school administrators and security detained a student carrying a toy gun that was designed to look like a handgun.

“This should scare us,” Bullock told the board. “The next time this happens, how are you going to know that a gun tucked down the pants of another youth is just another toy?”

Bullock and several other parents — mainly those with children at South — have been attending school board meetings every month, asking the board to reconsider its May 2021 decision to disarm its two student resource officers. The district also has more than a dozen security guards who are not armed.

More: After gun incidents at Bloomington South, parents want MCCSC to take more action on safety

How many school shootings have there been in 2022?

Counting this week’s shooting in Texas, there have been 27 shootings in schools this year. In the past two school years, there have not been any school shootings in Monroe County, but there have been several incidents of students bringing guns — real and toy — into Bloomington South.

Incidents at Bloomington High School South

On Sept. 30, 2021, South school officials learned a student had a 9mm Glock handgun at the school. Less than a month later, on Oct. 15, 2021, a student brought in an airsoft gun with the orange tip painted black to look like a real firearm.

No active threats were found in either incident, according to the Bloomington Police Department.

Last month, police were called to the high school after discovering a 17-year-old had sent a Snapchat video waving a handgun and threatening a school shooting. The boy was not a current student in the district, according to the MCCSC.

Then, last week, another student brought in an airsoft gun. Law enforcement was notified of the situation, and the student was disciplined based on district and state law, according to a statement from Principal Mark Fletcher. The school was not put on lockdown.

Guns in Bloomington: Teens arrested in gun violence cases on Bloomington's northwest side

Disarming School Resource Officers in Monroe County Community School Corp.

When the school board chose to disarm SROs last year, it brought criticism from some and praise from others. Proponents of arming SROs argued the officers enhance school safety, while opponents argued armed SROs create a culture of fear, especially for students of color or those who live in unsafe homes.

After the 2021 vote, school board members discussed how some research shows no SROs have prevented school shootings with the discharge of a weapon.

A 2021 study from the Journal of the American Medical Association found in 133 school shootings in the past 40 years, three times as many people were killed when there was an armed officer on the scene.

Maria Douglas, mother of students at South and Jackson Creek Middle School, told the board members Tuesday SROs need to be armed and properly trained, and schools need to follow safety protocol even if it’s disarming a student with a toy gun. She said she felt last week’s situation was “minimized” by telling everyone it was a toy.

“I truly wonder how many guns are walking around in our schools at any given time at this point,” she said.

Douglas and Bullock also expressed concern about how, starting July 1, Indiana law will eliminate the license requirement to carry a handgun. The law will not permit youth under 18 to carry, but the parents worry that won’t matter.

“It does reinforce the American message that carrying a gun anywhere you want is your constitutional right,” Bullock said. “We are absolutely insane if we think this isn’t going to trickle down to students.”

Bullock begged the board to rearm the district’s SROs before schools such as South run out of luck.

“How many guns have to come in and out of South high school before we wake up? Do we need a weapon fired in our school?” she asked. “Are we just waiting for a mass shooting like in Texas, praying that the police can get to the school faster than students can fire rounds into his or her classmates and teachers?”

Contact Christine Stephenson at cstephenson@heraldt.com.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Some parents want MCCS to arm SROs after Texas school shooting