Number of Ohio Schools With Armed Teachers Skyrockets After Law Drops Training From 700 Hours to 24

The number of Ohio schools with armed teachers has skyrocketed after a new law dramatically lowered the training requirements.

There are currently 46 school districts across the state where staff and teachers are allowed to arm themselves, according to The Columbus Dispatch. That's up from 22 school districts with armed staffers in April.

Ohio previously required about 700 hours of training for staff carrying a weapon in class.

But House Bill 99, which went into effect in September 2022, lowered the number of training hours needed to carry guns to 24 hours.

It also gave local school districts the ability to decide who is allowed to carry weapons, and the requirements for staff to be armed.

The trainings were developed and approved by the Ohio School Safety Center (OSSC), and include de-escalation techniques, crisis intervention, mitigation techniques, the history of school shootings and tactical live firearms training.

Previously, the Ohio Supreme Court had ruled that teachers had to have police training—which is hundreds of hours—before they could be allowed to carry a gun in class.

“What the bill does is essentially reverts back to the prior practice of allowing local school districts to make a local decision on whether or not they will permit certain school staff members to be armed on school grounds,” DeWine said last year when he announced he would sign HB99 into law, according to NBC News affiliate WKYC.

Of the 46 districts with armed teachers and staff, most are rural, according to the Dispatch.

All of the school districts in Ohio's biggest cities—including Columbus, Cincinnati, Akron, Cleveland, Dayton and Toledo—have voted not to allow teachers to be armed.

"We do not have a local police department, and in the event of an active shooter or armed intruder situation, we are at the mercy of these individuals until a sheriff’s deputy or Ohio State patrolman is dispatched,” Hardin-Houston Local Schools Superintendent Ryan Maier told the newspaper in November 2021.

The school district in rural east-central Ohio farmland has about 786 students.

While the names of or number school staff carrying guns are not public records, the Ohio Department of Public Safety provided a list of participating schools, the Dispatch reported.

State law also requires districts to notify parents when it authorizes "one or more persons to go armed within a school."