{"id":16041,"date":"2013-01-15T07:34:36","date_gmt":"2013-01-15T12:34:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/?p=16041"},"modified":"2013-01-15T10:23:55","modified_gmt":"2013-01-15T15:23:55","slug":"bennett-wants-an-intense-discussion-about-arming-florida-teachers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2013\/01\/15\/bennett-wants-an-intense-discussion-about-arming-florida-teachers\/","title":{"rendered":"Bennett Wants An &#8220;Intense Discussion&#8221; About Arming Florida Teachers"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_16045\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 225px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2013\/01\/15\/bennett-wants-an-intense-discussion-about-arming-florida-teachers\/firearms\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-16045\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-16045\" title=\"firearms\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/files\/2013\/01\/firearms-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/files\/2013\/01\/firearms-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/files\/2013\/01\/firearms.jpg 375w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">frankenstoen \/ Flickr<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Should Florida teachers be allowed to carry guns on school property?<\/p><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/tag\/tony-bennett\/\">Incoming Florida Education Commissioner Tony Bennett<\/a> used to be a teacher himself.<\/p>\n<p>And when StateImpact Florida asked him what he thinks about a growing conversation to arm public school teachers, he spoke as a former teacher.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not going to speak as the education commissioner, I&#8217;m going to speak as a former science teacher who loved what I did every day teaching science,&#8221; Bennett said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t get up in the morning to teach science with ever believing I would need to carry a gun. Okay?<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Now it pains me and it saddens me to think that the society we live in today is so drastically different than it was maybe when I was teaching, but I still hold that value,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n\n<p>Bennett was the state superintendent in Indiana from 2009-2012 before losing his re-election bid in November.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>He said Indiana has a comprehensive safety training programs for school personnel, which was put in place before he was the schools chief.<\/p>\n<p>He said many Indiana employees are certified safety specialists who work in schools examining what the best local policy is to ensure the safety of children.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a passion of mine because I was a trained school safety specialist in Indiana,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And [arming teachers] is something that I want to have a very intense discussion about in Florida because again it saddens me that the ills of society have spilled over into our day-to-day life in schools that we are even having this conversation.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The head of the Florida School Boards Association believes school security upgrades <a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2013\/01\/14\/additional-florida-school-security-could-cost-100-million\/\">could cost $100 million this year.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Incoming Florida Education Commissioner Tony Bennett used to be a teacher himself. And when StateImpact Florida asked him what he thinks about a growing conversation to arm public school teachers, he spoke as a former teacher. &#8220;I&#8217;m not going to speak as the education commissioner, I&#8217;m going to speak as a former science teacher who [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18],"tags":[783,452],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16041"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16041"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16058,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16041\/revisions\/16058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}