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Superintendent of gun-toting school district hails from Abilene

By Carlton Stowers
Special to the Reporter-News
Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Superintendent of gun-toting school district hails from Abilene
They have arrived in this dusty and isolated North Texas community in a steady caravan, reporters from news services and networks, from The New York Times to newspaper and television crews based in France, Italy, New Zealand, Ireland and throughout the United Kingdom. Radio talk show hosts nationwide have called, extending invitations.

Little Harrold, Texas, where just over 100 students are enrolled, where this year's senior class numbers eight, has become big news.

Not because its Hornets opened the new football season last Thursday night with a 65-18 victory over the nearby St. Jo junior varsity. Not because of its innovative-for-rural education thinking that provides the children of local farmers and ranchers a jazz band program and in-school piano lessons. Not even because of its recent designation by state education authorities as a "recognized" campus.

All that suddenly paled in the aftermath of a recent announcement that the Harrold Independent School District would become, by unanimous agreement of its board, the first public school in the nation to allow teachers to bring a firearm to class along with their lesson plans.

At the epicenter of the ground-breaking decision is 48-year-old Harrold ISD Superintendent David Thweatt, son of a retired minister/missionary/teacher in Abilene and a 1978 graduate of Abilene High School and Hardin-Simmons University.