MORGANTOWN – The House of Delegates unanimously passed on Thursday a bill to allow schools to hire or contract for armed security officers.

HB 2164 blends its original House school safety officer bill with the Senate’s West Virginia Guardian program.

The House portion says public and charter schools, along with private and religious schools, may employ school safety officers. SSOs must be former law enforcement officers and may carry firearms. They may detain but not arrest a suspect.

The hiring school must cover the equipment costs and provide insurance coverage. The bill prescribes training for the SSOs.

The Senate’s West Virginia Guardian program merged into the bill allows public schools, including charters (private and religious schools do not appear in this section), to contract with a retired law enforcement officer to provide Guardian services.

The powers are essentially the same as for an SSO. Adding this to the House version gives schools a choice of bringing on an officer either as an employee or as an independent contractor.

One change from SB 450 is that HB 2164 cuts a provision providing qualified immunity from civil and criminal liability for the school and the Guardian. It substitutes an insurance requirement.

For both SSOs and Guardians, this is an option for a school, not mandatory.

The vote was 93-0, with no debate, and the bill heads to the Senate.

But just a few hours after the House passed HB 2164, Senate Finance took up and approved SB 450 and sent it to the full Senate. The committee did not wrap the House portion of HB 2164 into its bill.

Retired West Virginia State Polcie Capt. L.J. Deskins told the senators, “Any time that we can have more protection in our schools, I’m entirely in support of it.”

If the bill is properly funded and used, he said, it would allow someone like him to go into a school. And at a meeting last fall, the bill had broad support among law enforcement, including retired members.

While the Senate’s intention is unclear at this point, we note that last year, the competing House and Senate approaches went to conference committee on the last day of the session but went unresolved before the session adjourned and both bills died.