Parma Clarifies Teachers Will Not Be Among Armed Staff in Schools

The Parma City School District has specified that only district security staff who have received certification by the Parma Police Department and district approval will be allowed to carry guns on school property.

Smialek’s clarification comes after the Board of Education earlier this summer unanimously passed a resolution to authorize arming trained staff.

“We never had any intent to arm teachers; I think that’s important to say,” said superintendent Charles Smialek. “We understand how the resolution was explained in some media outlets and we understand that I, personally, didn’t do the best job of communicating. It will be our security team only that we are planning to arm.”

The district had previously said it would share the names of armed staff with Ohio Department of Public Safety’s School Safety and Crisis Center but would not make them publicly available in order to avoid informing anyone who could be “selecting sites in which to enact a tragedy.”

“We have clearly learned that the gain of some type of mystery of who might be armed, in comparison to the loss of us really honoring our second district goal–which is you know to be as transparent as possible across our communities, just didn’t didn’t match at all,” Smialek said. “We were not really gaining nearly as much as we were losing as a school district in terms of credibility.

This will be the first time Parma City Schools will allow armed staff, but the district already hires police officers to serve as school resource officers, or SROs, at Normandy High School, Valley Forge High School, Greenbriar Middle School and Shiloh Middle School.

Although the policy is expected to go into effect during the 2023-2024 school year, Smialek says it won’t be at the start of the academic year.

“This won’t be in place by the beginning of the school year, but we’re hopeful that by that second board meeting we have been able to amend policy to allow our safety and security team to carry a firearm while on our campuses,” said Smialek.

Details about the mental health assessments armed staff will be required to undergo, what sort of guns will be used, where firearms will be stored and more information about who will be armed will be discussed at the board’s August 24 meeting.

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