CNN —
A Georgia school district approved a policy Thursday that allows some employees to carry weapons in schools, excluding teachers and staff who supervise classrooms.
The Cobb County Board of Education voted 4-2 to pass the measure intended to improve security in Georgia’s second-largest school district.
“This policy gives us other opportunities to enhance and increase the number of school resource officers in our district,” Superintendent Chris Ragsdale said during the district’s board meeting.
Ragsdale emphasized he doesn’t support arming teachers: “I have said from the start: I am not in favor, nor do I support, arming teachers in the classroom.”
The measure comes weeks after a gunman opened fire in May at a Uvalde, Texas, elementary school, killing 19 students and two teachers in the most deadly US school shooting in nearly a decade. The massacre has reignited debate over US gun laws and how schools could be safer.
While “federal law prohibits guns on K-12 campuses generally … many states allow schools to grant individualized permission to permit holders to carry,” according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
Ohio’s governor in June signed a bill that makes it easier for teachers and staff to carry guns on school premises, while a 2019 Florida law allows some teachers to carry firearms in classrooms. About half of states allow school employees who aren’t teachers to carry guns on K-12 school grounds, with varying permission requirements, according...
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