SAN ANTONIO, Aug. 31 (UPI) -- Teachers in the north Texas school district of Harrold are allowed to carry concealed weapons as a safety precaution, a district official says.
School district Superintendent David Thweatt said by allowing some teachers to carry guns on school grounds, students in the small Texas town were protected from potential school shootings such as the one at Columbine High School in Colorado, the San Antonio Express-News reported Sunday.
"I don't want to call a parent and say, 'Some bad guy came in and your kid's dead and we didn't have a good plan to prevent it,'" Thweatt said.
Some parents in Harrold say the Texas town is not a likely location for such violence and have opposed the prospect of armed teachers.
"We're not exactly a downtown metropolis, a seedbed of crime," said resident Diane Brown, who once had two sons in the school system. "We've lived here for 45 years and can't recall the last houses that got burglarized."
The Express-News said Thweatt's position was strengthened last week when Texas Gov. Rick Perry openly said the decision regarding having guns in schools should be entirely in the hands of individual school districts.
