Cherokee School Board modifies weapons policyUnanimous decision will allow trained staff to carry firearms

The Cherokee School Board approved a policy change that will allow teachers to carry firearms on school property.

The board voted 4-0 Monday to amend a broad-based ban on firearms and other dangerous weapons. The new policy reads: “Weapons under the control of law enforcement officials and staff approved by an administrative team are exempt.” The previous policy only exempted law enforcement. 

“No one wants guns in school. But we want a killer less,” said Supt. Kim Lingenfelter after a half-hour discussion with a crowd of around 40 people. “And the board has taken a very serious and measured approach to the challenge of keeping students and staff safe. And they have family in the buildings.”

The board issued a statement after the meeting that claimed all interested staff members must undergo “extensive training and screening with experts, who will determine if each individual is competent to carry and act in a crisis situation.” The board hasn’t contracted with a training firm yet, according to Steve Avery, the board’s attorney of Spencer.  

Avery said he was impressed with a recent firearms training of Spirit Lake School District teachers who expressed interest in taking arms on school grounds. The teachers were subject to 40 hours of training and month-by-month continuing education, he noted. The training included gun storage, recognition during an active-shooter scenario and intelligence sharing with the county sheriff and police department. 

“I went through the training at Spirit Lake so that I could see it, experience it and know something about it,” said Avery, noting that a firearms defense group from southern Minnesota administered the training. “They are totally top-shelf experts. I was shocked at how intense it was.”

But the training program isn’t mentioned in the policy. 

Neither were any other protocols Avery mentioned: 

• An assessment committee that reviews an applicant’s fitness after a 40-hour training with Peterson.
• Collaboration with law enforcement, which would receive a list of carrying staff members and the types of guns and ammunition they had, Avery said. 
• Require continuing education for those approved by the assessment committee. 

The only change the board approved was an “administrative team” could exempt staff members of a district-wide ban on “weapons, other dangerous objects and look-a-likes.” 

Supt. Lingenfelter declined to specify who would serve on the administrative team.

She also declined to comment on why the training wasn’t included in the new policy. She wouldn’t discuss how the board arrived at its policy update — a one-sentence change — or the closed session in which the change was discussed and drafted. Doing so would compromise the district’s emergency operations plan, she claimed. 

“I don’t think I can say what we talked about in closed session. We were instructed not to,” said Board President Jodi Thomas. 

She described the district’s weapons policy as a “work-in-progress” that will be frequently updated as staff members start carrying on campus. 

She claimed those who carry firearms on school grounds will be subject to the rigorous protocols Avery outlined, even though the policy doesn’t refer to them specifically. 

“We’re figuring it out,” she said on Tuesday. “No one will be able to carry firearms in the school without being trained.”

Arming teachers has cleaved the Cherokee community more than any issue the board has faced under Thomas’ tenure. 

The crowd of around 40 was the largest she has ever seen at a board meeting. The issue is essential to the community as protecting kids is equally important to educating them, she said. 

“As a parent, I have a maternal instinct to protect my kids, but when they’re in school, and I’m not here, I think people are reverting to protecting their kids,” she said before the vote. “ We’re talking about this because there’s bad guys.”

After the meeting, Thomas said she was uncertain whether a majority of the community actually supported the measure. In the last month, the board received 32 messages in favor of arming teachers and 11 against. Thomas noted a slight majority of the community members she has talked to were supportive of the measure. 

But a slim majority of crowd members were against it. 

The board decided against polling parents about the issue. The 43 messages she received in advance of Monday’s meeting were generated by a Cherokee Chronicle Times story that reported the board was considering passing the measure in October. Supt. Lingenfelter didn’t hold a staff survey either. 

“I must have missed if there was like an email because I don’t remember or haven't heard of others who got that as like an anonymous poll to get the accurate recount of the thoughts and feelings of all of our buildings,” said Veranda Johnson, a high school teacher opposed to the policy change. 

Lingenfelter acknowledged community feedback wasn’t essential to the board’s discussions. And she claimed it shouldn’t be. The discussion on weapons is part of the district’s emergency operations plan, which is supposed to be discussed in closed session. 

Connie Ladwig, a Cherokee resident since 1971, lambasted the board and Lingenfelter for not seeking more community input. The first time the board’s deliberations were mentioned in public, she noted, was a Cherokee Chronicle Times story that reported the board was considering a change to its weapons policy. 

Ladwig said the two law enforcement agencies in Cherokee did not provide an opinion before Monday night’s meeting. Cherokee County Sheriff Derek Scott deferred comment to Cherokee Police Chief Nate James, who told the crowd he was not opposed to the idea.

Ladwig said the district hasn’t discussed the effects to its insurance rates. 

“The superintendent said she had gotten little feedback,” Ladwig said. “But I don't know when it was ever put to the public.”

Asked about whether the approach would generate mistrust, Thomas claimed it would not. She said the half-hour discussion was sufficient to generate the input necessary to make a decision. 

Lingenfelter declined to immediately answer the question.

“Let me ponder that,” she replied. 

Board member Brian Freed said the weapons policy is a small part of a broad plan to secure the school in an era when school shootings are more frequent. 

Freed said the board discussed door security with Police Chief James; it scheduled a security and vulnerability assessment Nov. 9 and it discussed arming teachers with other experts. 

 “We’re much more interested in prevention than we are response, but by the same token, we’re not willing to ignore the response,” Freed said before the vote. 

Proponents highlighted the specter of a mass shooting. 

Jodi Feser, a longtime teacher at a neighboring district, said an armed teacher would’ve mitigated some of the carnage at recent school shootings. 

“Sadly now we've come to this. Well, maybe we need to arm people in the building. I can support that. I trust that if you do that, they have trained you to have safe places for the guns. It's not something you're going to do lightly,” Feser told the board. “I just think of the difference that could have made at Sandy Hook or down at Texas or at any of these. I’m a mother, an educator and I love children and I would support you on whatever decision you make. But I wouldn’t be comfortable having a coworker who is armed.”

Opponents pointed to research that suggests guns on school campuses do not prevent school shootings.   

Tyler Puettmann, the high school choir director, referenced an FBI analysis that found in 160 active shooter incidents, unarmed civilians were four times as likely to stop the shooter. 

“Research over time has shown us time and time again that despite our best intentions, more bullets flying will not prevent violence but instead lead to more accidental damage, injuries and even deaths,” Puettmann wrote in a letter to Lingenfelter and the board. 

Puettmann, a decorated Boy Scout and a marksman, disagreed with the notion of guns on campus. He fears the student-teacher relationship “would be changed forever.” Students would view their teachers not as educators, but as “enforcers, jailers or threats,” he argued.

“There would forever be the unspoken statement ‘My teacher has a deadly weapon on their person right now and could pull it out at any time’ lingering in the air,” Puettman’s letter reads. “This implicit threat would drastically alter the dynamic between teachers and students, likely irrevocably.”