Florida Firearms Regulation: FSS 790.33

Staff Parking Is Not A Privilege was founded by Instructor Lucas David Seidman, a disabled Veteran, after his false arrest and unlawful termination at the hands of the Hillsborough County School District.  Upon defending himself in court, he discovered that the only way for law enforcement to prosecute under FSS 790.115(2)(a)(3) is by treating staff parking as part of “student and campus parking privileges.”  But contract educational staff, due to a number of reasons, do not have parking “privileges.”  Their parking is not quite a ”right” like the “right to free speech“ but it is not regulated as a unilaterally revocable “privilege” in the same manner as students or visitors to a school campus.  This enforcement as a “privilege“ is in violation of the Civil Rights of nearly every educational staff member in Florida and has damaging consequences to our educational systems.  And thus began the battle for recognition through Florida’s courts of the Equal Rights of all Contract Educational Staff, including Bus Drivers, Custodians, and other Educational Support Staff.

On the surface, the case can be made that summary abridgment of 2nd Amendment Rights for contract educational staff has reduced the number of firearms in and around our public schools, and mostly in and around parking lots.

But, the reality is that it hasn’t made our schools any safer.  None of the horrific violence we have seen occur in public schools in the last 20 years was caused by law-abiding contract educational staff lawfully possessing firearms.  

Aside from obvious questions about the health, safety and welfare of our students, as defined by the Florida Department of Education, and how that relates to newsworthy violent acts, we focus on the deleterious effect to our educational institutions that this issue is having on a daily basis.

If teachers (and other staff) are treated as an underpaid, oppressed underclass who do not have the same rights as all workers in Florida, it has and will continue to influence their performance in the classroom.  How will Civics teachers wholeheartedly tell their students that America is a land of personal freedom and democracy?  How will English teachers hold up American literature as being of worth?  How will educators look out on the faces of those who look to them for guidance and have the correct internal motivation it takes to make education happen every day?  There are many similar questions that can asked with one common thread:  How will our public servants do the best job they can if they are continuously mistreated by administration?  Our students will bear the burden of this.  They already are.  We have students who don’t know the Pledge of Allegiance in their teens but this issue goes well beyond Patriotism or a lack of Patriotism in our classrooms.  This is a fundamental, systemic issue that drives the quality of education down for all students in Florida.  We have students who have written off high school and can’t wait to get the education they were supposed to receive in their teens, now in their late teens and early twenties, in our nation’s trade schools.  Some never get that education that was available.  One reason may be that their teachers could not find the words to tell them why school matters.  As the pillars of our community, our teachers must have every ounce of the respect afforded to them by both our society and Florida State Law or our classrooms will continue to suffer.

Technically, yes.  And not in the way that might sound most satisfying but is still very important.

Parking lots are legally a part of the workplace.  Contract Educational Staff are at a greater risk than they need to be, in accordance with the Law, because their basic rights under FSS 790.251 are being continuously violated.  This is itself in violation of Federal Law through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration Act.  To stop the unlawful enforcement of unlawful school board policies would be to see an increase in safety while educators are on campus, in and around their conveyances, particularly during the early morning or night when it can be dangerous in our school parking lots.

However, those Staff who choose to exercise their Fundamental Rights during the daily commute will most likely be much safer.  Whether it’s going to the ATM, filling up with gas, or picking up groceries, they will be as safe as they feel they need to be.  This is perhaps the goal of secured freedoms and the Western emphasis on individual choice.  Today, their choice has been limited.  Our goal for tomorrow is to make sure educational staff in 67 counties are no longer having their rights “stolen” while they’re busy paying attention to our youth, and thus our future.

In summary, however, our specific goal is not the increased safety of schools that feels good or sounds good as a result of the fears of violent mass shootings.  With rare exception, considerations of educational staff constructive possession of firearms in their conveyances in accordance with Federal and State Law has nearly nothing to do with school safety from the viewpoint of protecting our daily precious cargo from everyone’s worst nightmare…the active shooter.  But it has everything to do with workers who can look the children in the eye and say with a sense of pride, "You have rights in this country...things that no one can take away from you...one of them being the right to defend yourself."

Staffparkingisnotaprivilege.org highlights that Federal and State Law make a very clear pathway for teachers to manually possess or store firearms near their person for the purpose of self defense but this site and its associated Civil Rights reclamation movement does not perceive that all school environments are a very good place for proliferation of firearms.  Many School Districts are implementing such programs, in line with the law, but somehow not with the same intent as those laws already permitting all citizens to exercise their Second Amendment rights.

In certain places, at this time, without waivers of the FSS 790.25(4) provision in 790.115(2)(a)(3), some students and visitors can constructively possess firearms on District property.

But, to answer this question another way, because there is no lawful, contractual basis for them to possess firearms that coincides with other legal empowerments, students and visitors simply form a different classification of the educational institution population.

To answer it in even another way, educational staff conveyances are a necessity for the functioning of our institutions.  Teachers need to drive their cars and get to work on time for the day to happen.  Student and Visitor parking, while important in so very many ways, is not essential to the daily functioning of the school environment in the same way. 

Schools are faced with many challenges.  It is only speculation that more guns on campus sounds like more liability and exposure to risk.  It will take a different voice to remind Boards that fear of the violence you see on the news is not a reason, nor an excuse, to unlawfully abridge the fundamental rights of age of majority employees.

Things are looking up.  NEOLA-contracted School Districts are slowly starting to recognize that The People will not have their Civil Rights trampled on forever but they could use more help in the form of public opinion and actionable litigation that directs them to use the powers of our public institutions for the good of maintaining civil rights and not the evil of infringing on them.

If you look through our online petitions page, take a moment and sign up.  This will say that you value your Rights as an American Citizen and are willing to speak up so that others may keep those same rights.

You can address this issue, after careful research, at your local school board meeting.

You can contact us with ideas and receive information on your local school board’s policies with recommendations for at least making a basic but good argument in favor of seeing these policies brought into compliance with the law and, more importantly, the intent of our laws.