ATKINS, Ark. — The new school year is officially in full swing, and the Atkins School District has a new security measure— and it sits on the faculty's hips.
"I think as a teacher, you know, your main goal is to make sure your kids are safe," Austin Dobbs, a middle school teacher at the district, said. "You wanna keep kids safe, and this is just another added layer of protection for our kids."
There will be 14 staff members who will have guns on their person this school year. District administration explained that those staff members underwent multiple rounds of interviews and over 60 hours of training before they were selected.
Guns, holsters, and ammunition were bought and provided to those 14 by the district.
"I was almost relieved, just because, if they were willing to take that responsibility, and if they were trained properly," Hope Spence, a parent with kids in the Atkins School District, said. "I knew that that was just an extra blanket of security for my kids."
No one except administration members, school resource officers, and those 14 staff members know who is carrying. Spence said that while this is extra security, it does come with its own sets of risks.
"If it was one of their own students coming in, I mean, that's a huge responsibility to have to choose," she said.
Anna Morshedi with the Greater Little Rock chapter of Moms Demand Action explained that she agrees with those risks.
"It should not fall to them as their responsibility to make that life or death situation of whether to pull a gun at a current or former student," Morshedi described.
While she does understand wanting to have more protection in schools, she believes there are ways to do that outside of school walls.
"How to properly store their firearms separate from their ammunition, locked up, is one way to make sure that people don't get access to the gun in the first place," Morshedi explained.
The goal is to never have to use those guns, but they're there just in case.
"Having the teachers here, it puts peace in my mind to know that there is help," Spence said.