Idaho school Makes Their School a Hard Target

[AlanM]

Wow!
I thought my relatives up in the Idaho panhandle were in the boonies.
They're in the big city compared to this school.
I once lived in a town that had a 300 student 4 year high school.
Before I started 8th grade we moved to Spokane and 5 years later I graduated in a senior class of 865 from a 3 year high school whose student body outnumbered the entire population of the town I used to live in.

This school has a K thru 12 enrollment of 235!!!

An Idaho Town Makes The Case For Guns In School

During the winter, it can take 45 minutes for police to arrive at Garden Valley High School — one of several reasons the district trains teachers to use guns stored in their classrooms. To some outsiders, it’s foolish. But to the people who live here, the solution meets the challenges that distinguish their home.

That's the starting paragraph of a long, but IMHO well written, article on this school district and their area and school.

[AlanM]

As I said, it's a long article and I'm still reading it as I post this but this "factoid' and their solution jumped out at me.

Still, every year, a handful of school districts across the country consider arming their educators.
And for many, what hinders their efforts isn’t community opposition, but insurability.
In 2012, insurance companies in Kansas and Indiana informed districts that any schools where teachers carried guns would be declined coverage; in Oregon, the school board association has implemented a policy in which each school must pay a $2,500 premium per staff member who carries a weapon.
For districts already struggling with dwindling budgets, the premium is untenable.

Garden Valley’s weapons policy was approved by its Boise-based insurance company, and the board has assembled a plan to deal with the psychological and legal after-effects of an active shooter situation.
“Not everyone has thought of that,” Alexander told me.
“It’s going to be a difficult thing for that teacher to have to deal with that, if he shoots someone.
We feel like that’s part of the cost, part of the liability, and we accept that.”