Super doesn't favor marshal program

Columbia Falls School District 6 and schools around the state may soon have a new option for dealing with threats as House Bill 567 is slated to go to the governor’s desk for final approval.

Proposed by Republican House Representative Derek Skees of Whitefish, the new law would allow schools to appoint a full-time employee to go through training to serve as a school marshal, giving them right to act as necessary to prevent or stop the commission of an offense that threatens serious bodily injury or death of persons on public school property as well as exempting them from certain concealed carry laws.

While state law already gives school boards the ability to allow someone to carry a weapon in a school, the new law would tack on mandatory training and calls for the Montana Law Enforcement Academy to establish a training program. Schools would also have to let local enforcement agencies know if they have a school marshal.

While the proposed program may work well for rural schools that would have a long wait for any law enforcement response in the event of a crisis, School District 6 Superintendent Steve Bradshaw thinks there would be no need for a marshal in Columbia Falls schools at this time and says he is adamantly opposed to the program.

“I know my opinion might not be popular with a lot of citizens, but I just don’t think arming our employees should ever be a possibility,” Bradshaw said. “We are pretty fortunate here that, most of the time, we can get law enforcement to any of the schools in two to three minutes.”

The Columbia Falls school district already has armed protection in the form of a school resource officer (SRO), a fully-trained police officer with additional training on how to deal with situations that may arise in the school’s classrooms and hallways.

Currently, the majority of the cost for the SRO is being picked up by the city and the county, but Bradshaw is worried that a new marshal position could cost the school as much as $80,000, once benefits are factored in. The bill does stipulate that a school marshal would not be eligible for retirement benefits normally provided by the state to a peace officer, but a portion, or all, of the cost for the marshal could be paid for by the city or county, much like an SRO.

Even if the school’s SRO position were to go away in the future, Bradshaw says he still would not be in favor of the marshal program.

“If the SRO position were to go away, we feel it would be important to have some protection in the schools. I just don’t know how the board would feel about it. The bottom line is that you don’t know how someone would react in any given situation, even with training,” he said. “For that reason, I am adamantly opposed to our school district employees being a part of this program. I am very supportive of having SROs in our schools and I would feel a lot better if we had one in each of our buildings, but right now we can only afford one.”

“The tough part about this to me is that we have a hard enough time trying to find the money to hire teachers and now we are being asked to pay for a marshal. That is not what education is supposed to be about, from my perspective,” he added.

Bradshaw is not alone in his opposition of the program, law enforcement agencies around the state have voiced their displeasure with the bill as it would force an already overtaxed training academy to develop and fund a new training program. There is already a waiting list of more than a year for Montana police departments to send new officers to training without the new program.

According to Columbia Falls Police Chief Clint Peters, who says he has no official stance on the bill, the new law would put in place a one-time training program for marshals while SROs go through 12 weeks of academy training along with ongoing additional training.

“The marshal would not be a law enforcement officer. They would not have the power to arrest anyone,” Peters said. “Really, all this bill is doing is freeing up the semi-trained person to carry a firearm in the school.”

Despite the opposition, the bill is still carrying a lot of support in rural school districts.

“I have some fellow superintendents at smaller districts that are 20 and 30 miles away from law enforcement that are pretty supportive of this,” Bradshaw said. “The way I see it, every dollar we spend outside of the classroom is one less dollar we have for educating our children. That bothers me, but this is the world we live in.”