Sun staff
Buckeye Firearms Foundation is celebrating the success of their emergency response training program, which is available to teachers, administrators and other school staff in Ohio.
The Faculty/Administrator Safety Training and Emergency Response program was started in 2013, in response to the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn.
Since then, more than 400 teachers and administrators from 152 school districts in 63 of Ohio’s 88 counties, including Clermont County, have participated in the program, according to a press release.
Due to confidentiality agreements, Joe Eaton, program director, was unable to disclose which school districts in Clermont County have participated in the program.
“It’s all part of their school safety plans, and so it is not available through public records or in the public forum,” he said.
The FASTER program is designed to help school staff and administrators deal with active shooters. One aspect of the program involves having one or more certified and trained staff members armed with a gun.
It’s the school districts’ decision as to whether or not they want to disclose this information to the public, according to Eaton.
“There are districts where they have staff sitting together in meetings, and one of the staff is armed, and the rest of the staff doesn’t even know they have armed people in the building,” Eaton explained. “There’s a couple of different reasons for that, one being the safety of the people who are armed; if somebody knows there is effective resistance, that can be their first target if they want to commit a crime in the schools. The other more important thing is, these staff and teachers need to still be a part of the community.”
He added, “Not all of the community may be in agreement with the schools’ vision to have this as part of their security plans, and so [keeping information secret] keeps the dynamic in the whole community working well.”
The program also provides staff with medical supplies and training to treat injuries.
“In any other type of medical emergency, if someone’s drowning in a school pool, we call 911, but we don’t just stand around; we jump in the pool, pull them out and start [cardiopulmonary resuscitation],” Eaton said. “And that’s another huge part of the FASTER program, it’s giving them the skills, tools and equipment they need to start saving lives immediately while they’re waiting on the [emergency medical technicians] to get there.”
The training, which is provided at no cost to school personnel or districts, spans 26 hours over three days, usually during summer break. The curriculum offers hands-on instruction, by national experts, that exceeds the requirement of the Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy, according to a press release.
“This program only comes into play in the absolute worst scenario you can imagine,” Eaton said. “There are lots of other things that the school has to put in place ahead of time to circumvent these situations, but once somebody walks into that school with the desire to commit these types of crimes, at that time waiting on outside help cannot be your plan.”
He added, “You have to have people in the building that can stop the killing and start rendering the medical aide that the injured need.”
The program is funded by individual donations to the Buckeye Firearms Foundation, a nonprofit organization and the sister organization to Buckeye Firearms Association.
About 2,000 staff members have applied for the training, and priority is given to schools which have already approved and authorized staff to carry a gun, according to Eaton.
“The demand is getting so big now that we are probably going to outpace what we could do with private donations this year and we’ll have to start looking for outside help,” Eaton said. “That may come from churches and businesses participating in this as well; we just really don’t know yet how we can keep the funding to keep up with the demand.”
The FASTER program now offers a Level 2 class for advanced training in armed response, trauma medical aid and crisis and emergency management skills, and a Level 3 class, which takes place in the actual school district and includes local and county law enforcement officers, local emergency medical personnel and other school staff who will be at the school when an active shooter event occurs, according to a press release.
Eaton concedes that the program has been met with some opposition from parents and community members concerned about having teachers armed at school.
“But when you look at what the problem is, it’s not that the local law enforcement don’t want to help with this or don’t want to solve this problem, the truth of the matter is they can’t because they can’t always be there at the time that this occurs,” Eaton said.
He added, “These school districts are realizing that in these most extreme situations, they are on their own for the first few minutes of time. Waiting on outside help costs lives; it costs more casualties.”
Eaton expounded on the shooting that took place at Madison Jr./Sr. High School on Feb. 29. During the incident, which is still under investigation, two students were shot and one student was injured by suspect James Hancock, a student at the school.
“It sounds like, again, that what we see in just about all these situations. The school resource officer was there, the person committing the crime knew that there was effective resistance right then, and so the crime stopped as soon as the effective resistance showed up,” he said. “From the reports, that was just a few seconds after it started, and that’s the best that anyone can hope for.”