Legislation that became effective last September is being put to use in an effort to increase school safety. In the 134th General Assembly, House Bill 99 enacted legislation to expressly overrule a court decision by permitting a school district or governing body to elect to arm specific staff members and mandating training requirements for those individuals.
According to the Ohio School Safety Center, a division of the Ohio Department of Public Safety, the Adams County Christian School is among the 22 schools in the state to have staff members who are either authorized or in the training process to carry weapons on school grounds.
House Bill 99 lowered the required training hours for armed school personnel from 700 hours to at least 24, but a local school board has the authority to require more hours. The Ohio School Safety and Crisis Center will begin offering training courses for interested districts in June, according to the department.
So far, the Adams County Christian School is the only local school to put in motion the plan to arm school staff.
Within the region, one school district in Scioto County and one in Clermont County also joins the list of 22 schools around the state that who plan to take advantage of House Bill 99.
When the bill was before the General Assembly last year, the Ohio Education Association strongly opposed the bill. At the time, the OEA said that 24 hours of minimum training was “woefully inadequate.”
