Park County School District 1 has a decision to make following the statewide repeal of gun free zones. Will they craft a policy for school employees?

Language exists in the bill allowing boards to pass a policy stipulating that staff who carry must have training and certification. Superintendent Jay Curtis briefed the board during a March 25 meeting on bills that had passed in this year’s legislative session.

Starting July 1, members of the public who legally have a concealed carry permit can carry in the schools without board regulation.

“If you don't have a policy, any staff member in the entire district can decide to conceal carry if they have concealed carry permit … the way they wrote this bill is they repealed the 2017 [law] and then they said, ‘you can have them do this, you can’t have them do more, and if they do that, you can't tell them no.’”

Under the legislation, boards can require employees and volunteers to keep the firearm on their person or in a locked, concealed container. They can also create “ongoing training requirements, curricula and instructor qualifications, in consultation with local law enforcement.”

This includes an initial course of no fewer than 16 hours of “live fire handgun training,” and eight hours of scenario training. An annual qualification and documented recurrent training of not less than 12 hours is also outlined in the bill. Boards can waive all or part of the ongoing training requirements. 

If the board does adopt a policy, trustee Beau Fulton questioned how much it would cost to pay for staff training; he noted that a conference the board had attended mentioned prices $3,000 per staff member. 

The district does not have to provide the training and can require employees to pay for their own training in order to carry, Curtis clarified.

He said in his personal opinion, employees who carry should have quality training. 

“I think that if somebody is going to carry a firearm in our buildings, we probably want them to have training, and we probably want to make sure that it's good training,” Curtis said, adding, “Personally, I feel like we probably get involved in that and say we're going to make sure you get high quality training if you are deciding to do this.”

If the district does pass a policy they can also outline actions regarding irresponsible use, Curtis said. He added that in other states, worst case scenarios some imagine, including shooting incidents at basketball games and parent teacher conferences, have not come true.

“We haven't seen all these scenarios that we've conjured in our brains to be fearful of, we haven't seen those. What we have seen, we have seen guns being left in bathrooms at times, we have seen people who change into a sports outfit and leave the firearm in their classrooms,” Curtis said, adding, “I think if we're looking at this from a practical standpoint, we number one, we don't need to be fearful.”

Curtis is going to let the district’s attorney, Scott Kolpitcke, create “a shell of some draft policy language.”

The board and administration can then evaluate the draft policy and determine if they want to make it fit Powell.

“My message when I go around to our employees … is, ‘I know you're scared, I can think of 100 scenarios where this can go wrong too, but the best predictor of future behaviors is past behaviors and you haven't seen it elsewhere,’” Curtis said. “So we're gonna take it in stride, do our thing, and like we do with most things, we're gonna do it better than anyone else.”