More Colorado school staff registering for gun training

Several factors have combined to increase the demand for training sought by Colorado school faculty and staff who are authorized to carry weapons on campus.

Continued school shootings and increasing concern about school safety and security are fueling the trend.

On Thursday, KRDO NewsChannel 13 spoke with Laura Carno, executive director of FASTER Colorado, who helped organize the first statewide training class last summer in Weld County, for school personnel.

Carno said 48 people have registered for two three-day classes scheduled to be held in Adams County in June. There were 17 people at the debut class last year.

“Dozens of school districts in Colorado already have authorized school staff to carry concealed (weapons), she said. “All we’re talking about is having more armed good guys and gals on campuses to deal with (shooting) situations.”

FASTER, (or Faculty/Administrator Safety Training & Emergency Response), is an Ohio-based group of professionals who provide weapons and medical training. Last year, it trained Colorado active-duty law enforcement officers on how to provide future instruction to school personnel.

“One of the trainers responded to the (2013) shooting at Arapahoe High School,” Carno said. “Another trainer is on a SWAT team. They take vacation days to provide this training. They’re amazing people.”

Carno responds to critics who say one class isn’t enough to prepare a school staffer to face an active shooter.

“Most of the people who go through this training already are familiar with firearms,” she said. “So it’s not as if they’re picking it up for the first time. This training is very intense. We put them through some very high-stress situations so they can feel what that’s like if, God forbid, something happens in their schools.”

Carno said FASTER class attendees continue to train on their own after the three-day training session ends.

“Usually, they train as a team,” she said. “They also go through regular re-certification. This year, we’ll have some people return who attended last year. So it’s an ongoing process.”

Carno said around six school districts — including the Liberty Tree Academy, a new charter school in El Paso County — were represented in last year’s class.

“We don’t know yet exactly how many districts will be represented this year,” she said. “But we’ll have vastly more. It’s hard to say how many other school personnel who haven’t gotten FASTER training have gotten training on their own. There are other organizations that offer training, but we offer it specifically for school employees in the school environment.”

Ronnie Wilson, a Liberty Tree spokesman who attended last year’s class, said a decision hasn’t been made about arming school staff when classes start this fall.

“I think if anyone at the Florida school had received the kind of phenomenal training we had, they would have stopped that coward. But I don’t know what our school community thinks about it.”

Donors are providing the $1,000 tuition cost for each person who attends the classes.

Carno said that, in southern Colorado, only one district — Hanover District 28 — has authorized the arming of school personnel, but that district has not applied for FASTER training and received training from another source.

“Three people in the area who have registered for this year’s classes are going to be authorized soon, and a fourth hopes to bring the training back to his school,” she said.

Grant Schmidt, superintendent for the Hanover District, said the school board decided in late 2016 to allow school staff to carry guns.

“The only problem some people have with it, is what kind of training is provided,” he said. “Our training is equal to that of a police officer.”

Carno said rural schools can benefit most from FASTER training because it would take at least 30 minutes for first responders to reach them.

“But any school that has a school resource officer is a big school,” she said. “And if you have a SRO, you need more people who are armed at your school. Wednesday’s shooting was at a suburban school. The Arapahoe shooting was at a suburban school with an officer 45 seconds away and a student still was killed.”

Carno said much of the information regarding how many Colorado school personnel are authorized to carry guns on campus is kept private to avoid providing any details to a would-be active shooter.

“These decisions are made in executive sessions of school board meetings because it’s a personnel matter and a school safety matter,” she said.

Carno said FASTER training isn’t limited to stopping an active shooter on school grounds.

“It includes how to keep the bad guy off campus in the beginning,” she said.

Schmidt agreed.

“We’re starting to talk about how we can actually move our entry points so that we can see from the secretary’s perspective — or mine — that when people come into the door, we can truly recognize them,” he said.