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Campbell County School District Holding Listening Sessions on Arming Teachers

St. Louis Circuit Attorney's Office/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International

The Campbell County School district is considering a conceal and carry policy for teachers. It's hosting listening sessions to provide information and get a public response.

At the first of three sessions, eleven people spoke and ten of them made statements against arming teachers. Campbell County Commissioner Del Shelstad spoke in favor of adopting a policy but with strict limitations on how and when teachers could use a gun.

Jennifer Carroll, a parent in the district, spoke out against the idea and said she thinks it would be an unfair burden to place on teachers to potentially put their lives on the line for students.

"I'm against this because I think it's really an unfair ask of our teachers to be able to do this. I think that it would be, to me, a very, very, very, very, very last step, and I think there's other things that we could do before we come to that most extreme step," she said.

Campbell County's deputy superintendent Kirby Eisenhauer said the district wants to make a thought-out choice.

"When you talk about safety, I think you need to consider all options. So our board is just listening to what the public has to say at this point," Eisenhauer said. "We'll probably put out a survey to our community as well, involve our teaching staff and our staff members as well in the process and eventually put all that together," he said.

Eisenhauer also said the district wants to use the listening sessions to take the community's temperature on the topic. At the meeting, Eisenhauer explained Wyoming Statute 21-3-132, which he said would be the minimum requirements for a conceal and carry policy in schools.

The statute passed the legislature in 2017.

The district will hold two more listening sessions on April 4 and 15, at 6:00 p.m. at the Educational Services Center in Gillette.

Catherine Wheeler comes to Wyoming from Kansas City, Missouri. She has worked at public media stations in Missouri and on the Vox podcast "Today, Explained." Catherine graduated from Fort Lewis College with a BA in English. She recently received her master in journalism from the University of Missouri. Catherine enjoys cooking, looming, reading and the outdoors.
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