After the Lee County School Board voted unanimously in July 2018 to become the first locality in the Commonwealth to decide to let teachers carry firearms to protect students, the move was swiftly denounced by both Governor Ralph Northam (D) and Attorney General Mark Herring (D). In a legal opinion from the office of Virginia’s top legal officer, Lee County’s plan to arm its teachers “is unlawful and cannot proceed.”
Lee County School Board Chairman Michael Kidwell and Superintendent Brian Austin have explained that school employees would seek circuit court approval to be deemed “conservators of the peace,” a designation the school system believed would have exempted the employees from state law prohibiting firearms on school campuses. However, after a school employee sought the designation in early 2019, the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services denied it, which was upheld even after the superintendent appealed.
In an August news release, the attorney general said: “Virginia law expressly limits who may possess firearms on school grounds for safety purposes, and the General Assembly declined to enact bills presented every year from 2013 through 2017 to extend this authority to school teachers and administrators.”
Nevertheless, a lawsuit against the Commonwealth is now moving forward as the division superintendent filed another appeal and request for relief in the Lee County Circuit Court. Representing the division is Ken Cuccinelli, a former Virginia attorney general from 2010 to 2014 and a 2013 Republican gubernatorial candidate.
In July, 50 of the school district’s 700 full-time employees were said to be interested in applying to carry a firearm on school grounds, all of whom would go through a screening and training process beforehand.
Although the General Assembly’s bipartisan Select Committee on School Safety – the first select committee formed in 155 years – has provided 24 priority recommendations to bolster security at schools like increased mental health counseling, infrastructure upgrades, among other remedies, the Lee County School Board says the county could not afford to hire more school resource officers (SROs).
Currently, the division has four officers among its 11 schools, but received some state grant money in September to hire a fifth.
Regardless, in protecting over 3,000 students throughout the division, Austin said recently that, depending on the school, it could take half an hour for local police to respond to an emergency in remote areas with geography that restricts access to just a few points on narrow, two-lane country roads. Unfortunately, without the funds to hire the necessary amount of SROs and fix the languishing school infrastructure that pre-dates WWII – including multiple unsecured building and trailers – Lee County students could end up becoming open targets during a crisis on school grounds.