BURLINGAME – In response to President Trump’s misguided ideas about arming educators to prevent mass shootings, CTA President Eric Heins issued this statement:

“Arming educators or other school employees with guns to prevent mass shootings does nothing to protect students. Bringing more guns into schools is a misguided and dangerously flawed idea. What’s more, thinking more firearms on our campuses is the answer is the most irresponsible solution you could imagine.  Instead, we should be arming our schools with more counselors, more books, art and music programs, and more school nurses. We stand with parents, local law enforcement and many other experts in opposing bringing more guns into our classrooms. We need to listen to our students and work with our communities to find commonsense solutions to keeping guns out of the hands of those who target innocent children and educators.

“In the meantime, school safety plans for responding to violent intruders must be developed and reviewed to guarantee their effectiveness. Educators, parents and community members must be part of these reviews. We owe it to the students, educators, parents and communities who have lost love ones to come together as a nation and demand commonsense solutions that will keep our children safe.”

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The 325,000-member CTA is affiliated with the 3 million-member National Education Association.