A group of Tamaqua parents filed a lawsuit in Schuylkill County Court on Thursday afternoon alleging Tamaqua Area School District board members exceeded their authority by approving a policy authorizing teachers to carry firearms in school.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit include Holly Koscak, parent of a high school student; Darrell L. Flack Jr. and Angela M. Flack, who have three children in the district; and Sara J. Theirer, who has three grandchildren in school. The group is being represented by Philadelphia-based attorneys Martin J. Black and Benjamin McAnaney of Dechert LLP.

“The board members of the Tamaqua Area School District have exceeded their authority and endangered their community by enacting School District Policy 705, a manifestly illegal policy that authorizes guns in the classrooms and lethal force in the halls,” the complaint states. “In so doing, the board has appropriated a power that the General Assembly has guarded jealously for itself — the right to regulate the use of firearms. If this court does not act to enforce the will of the General Assembly, the result will be to create a patchwork of firearms laws around the commonwealth, with each school district making its own determinations as to the means and use of lethal force in schools.”

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Tamaqua’s teacher union has also filed a lawsuit in opposition to the policy. In that case, district solicitor Jeffrey Bowe filed preliminary objections to the lawsuit, arguing that there is “no specific state either authorizing or preventing” in the school code the district from adopting the policy.

In its filing, the parents allege “there is no statute that specifically grants school districts of the second class the authority to arm teachers and other school employees, to regulate the use of lethal force on school property, to grant police powers to school employees, or to disburse funds to further these purposes.”

CeaseFirePA’s Shira Goodman, plaintiffs in the lawsuit, and members of Tamaqua Citizens for Safe Schools were scheduled to hold a press conference to announce the filing of the lawsuit at noon today in Tamaqua’s Depot Park.

“Parents are worried about the safety of their children,” Goodman, who is a liaison between parents and the lawyers representing them, said on Thursday.

In its lawsuit, the parents are asking for injunctive relief against the implementation of Policy 705 and the authorization of school personnel to carry firearms on school property, and for a judge to declare that Policy 705 and any other policies that authorize or otherwise permit teachers or other personnel employed by the District to carry firearms without having completed the training required by the Municipal Police Education and Training Law are “void and of no further force and effect.”

Tamaqua is the first school district in the state to adopt a policy that would allow teachers to carry firearms in school. Read the lawsuit with this article at tnonline.com.