Escambia County Superintendent Malcolm Thomas said the school district has already implemented many of the security improvements recommended by a state public safety commission.

Still, Thomas has reservations about one of the body's proposals: arming teachers.

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission was formed in the wake of a Feb. 14 mass shooting that left 17 people dead at a Parkland high school, and the body has spent the past eight months identifying what went wrong at Parkland and determining how similar tragedies can be mitigated in the future.

Last week, the commission released a draft report of its findings, noting, "Our schools’ greatest vulnerabilities exist because of voids in basic security policies and strategies, such as effective Code Red policies, communications/notification systems, locked doors, limited access to campuses, and designated hard corners or safe areas within student occupied spaces, that will mitigate harm."

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Thomas said in terms of measures like designating safe areas, notifying teachers and parents of potential threat situations and securing classes and campuses, "I think for a lot of those kinds of things, we've already turned a corner. We haven't been sitting idle."

Escambia officials say they have been working to harden local schools since an armed intruder killed 20 children and six faculty members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on Dec. 14, 2012.

Some of the safety measures in effect this year include off-duty law enforcement officers providing campus security, regular active shooter drills and random metal detector sweeps.

Thomas notes potential pitfalls of arming teachers

One safety measure Thomas said he was not in favor of, however, was allowing teachers to bring firearms into the classroom. He said teachers' primary job is to teach and their focus should be on instructing.

He said it made more sense to him to leave security functions to law enforcement professionals who were trained, who could focus exclusively on security and who had powers to arrest.

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He noted some of the potential pitfalls of arming teachers, saying, "Eventually a student is going to get a hold of one. Or what happens when a teachers misses the bad guy and hits a student?"

He also questioned, if it came down to it, if a teacher would be capable of shooting one of their own students, and whether it was fair to ask them to.

Nonetheless, the state Legislature will likely hear a proposal to allow teachers who have a concealed carry license and meet certain training requirements to bring guns into the classroom.

Members of the Public Safety Commission voted 13-1 in favor of the measure. The lone dissenter was commission member Max Schachter, whose 14-year-old son, Alex, was among the students slain at Marjory Stoneman Douglas.

Superintendent Thomas noted that the commission's report was still in draft form and not yet finalized, and the district's security policy would continue to evolve as necessary.

"We'll just have to wait and see the final report," he said.

Kevin Robinson can be reached at krobinson4@pnj.com and 850-435-8527.

A closer look

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission recommended the following harm mitigation recommendations should be implemented immediately across all Florida schools: