I am a teacher in the Anchorage School District. I read that Rep. Lynn proposes in HB 55 to allow districts to have armed teachers in classrooms. While we both believe that our children should be kept safe, I feel that this is unnecessary legislation and represents an incomplete sense of what teachers should do in a crisis.

My responsibilities, professionally and morally, are to be the adult in a crisis situation. I must keep the students out of harm’s way, account for their whereabouts and collecting “stragglers,” and provide a calming influence in crisis. Engaging with an armed assailant would necessitate that I abandon those duties, leaving students in potentially more danger and panic.

In the event of an armed gunmen making an incursion into a classroom, the teacher would have to get access to the hopefully locked up weapon while a gunman was firing at the students and the teacher. A scenario where the outcome favors the teacher is improbable and belongs in a Hollywood movie, not in an adult world.

— Todd Heuston

Anchorage