OPINION: Tell Secretary DeVos, no guns in N.Y. classrooms; not now, not ever
If they haven’t already, many public-school teachers will be spending next weekend at Staples, Target or Walmart stocking up on classroom supplies that their schools can no longer afford to provide.
At the same time, there are reports that U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is considering a loophole that would allow school districts to pay for firearms and firearm training through a grant program in the federal law governing K–12 policy known as the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA.
This is an obscene misuse of well-intended and badly needed federal funding. Proponents of using the $1 billion in federal funds to put guns in classrooms say the ESSA Act makes no mention of prohibiting weapons purchases, and that omission could allow DeVos to use her discretion to approve any state or district plans to use grant funding for firearms and firearm training, unless Congress clarifies the law or bans such funding through legislative action.