"Keep Military Gear Out of Texas Schools"

          Brennan Griffin is the development director at Texas Appleseed, the organization that promotes social and economic justice for Texans. He shared his opinion in an editorial he wrote in the Texas Tribune, called “Keep Military Gear out of Texas Schools.”

          Recently, public schools, grade K-12, have been armed with weapons and military equipment in 10 Texas school districts. The federal 1033 Program provides “military surplus for free or at a very low cost to local police departments” assisting in monitoring the safety of public schools. The individual school districts can voluntarily return the guns. Some school police departments claim that they need the weapons in instances of active school shootings, even though they are rare.

          Griffin argues that the government should “keep military gear out of Texas schools.” Local and National civil rights, and advocacy organizations are against the distribution of the guns into public schools. They have called the U.S. Department of Defense to end the transfer of the weapons to the local school district police department. Few school police department do not have the proper resources to train their officers to use the military weapons. The organization suggest that the weapons could pose a dangerous risk if guns were handled by untrained hands in school settings.

          Current federal guidance advised instead that schools emphasize more on evacuation plans and early identification, and intervention with the potential aggressors. The school police department should focus on common scenarios in more effective ways, such as, working with students with mental disabilities, and practicing de-escalation techniques intended to prevent and reduce further violence in hostile situation.

           The Texas school police department has a history of having aggressive techniques to subdue violators at school. In the past 2 years, Texas Appleseed filed 2 complaints against school districts whose policing policies were violating students’ civil rights. In Bastrop, a Hispanic student was tased by a sheriff deputy while  the boy was breaking up a fight at school.  The taser caused the boy permanent brain damage. This incident showed the people if we cannot trust regularly armed school police department to act appropriately to a basic school fight, what makes any parent feels safe with their child at school where the police officers are armed with military grade weapons.

          The tone of the editorial was formal and informative. The audience intended was for the parents of the K-12 schools that were affected by the 1033 Program. Brennan introduced the subject well. He began b defining what the Federal 1033 Program was and the reasoning for the program. He brought the problems with the schools handling the guns issue to light. Brennan mentioned of the actions he and other organizations did to speak out on the distribution of the guns. He then continued by including examples of why the program was not necessary and gave alternative techniques school police officers could use to help lower the level of hostile situations. The piece could have ended on a stronger note. Brennan ended on a lighter note commending the school police officers on how they did on reducing the numbers in issuing misdemeanors to the students.