The decision by a rural, one-school Texas district to allow employees to carry concealed handguns has reopened a heated debate about the appropriateness of guns on school campuses--and it has some school safety experts scratching their heads.

In an effort to keep students safe, trustees of the Harrold Independent School District adopted a policy last October that allows some employees to carry a concealed handgun. The policy was first widely reported in August.

According to the policy, Harrold school employees must be licensed by the state to carry a gun, must undergo additional training in crisis management and hostile situations, and can only use ammunition that is designed to minimize ricochets.

The district, which consists of one K-12 school and about 100 students, is nearly 30 minutes from local police and is about 500 feet from a busy highway, making the school more vulnerable to violence, Thweatt said .

"We had to ask the question: What are we going to do if we have an active shooter in the building?" he said.

Thweatt said he and the trustees decided it was in students' best interest to provide an available line of defense if there is a shooter on school grounds--be it an outsider, a hostage situation, or even an armed student.

"We should be, as a society, ready to defend ourselves," he said.

Some school safety officials aren't convinced that letting teachers carry guns will keep students safe.

"There are many other steps schools can take to address school violence other than arming a teacher," said William Lassiter, director of communication for the North Carolina-based Center for the Prevention of School Violence. "[Harrold's] solution may or may not work."

He added that he was not against the idea of guns on school campuses, but that they should be in the hands of law enforcement officials. He said that if teachers carry guns, it could confuse the way students view them, mixing the two roles.

But Thweatt said his teachers have no problem balancing the two.

"There's this idea that professionals do professional jobs, but my teachers wear many hats and can be trained in just about anything," he said. "I have a wife and two younger kids in this school, [and] I trust the people here with the lives of my family."

Thweatt noted that school security has become a national issue, as it has become clear that shootings like the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado weren't isolated incidents.

"Over the last several years, the state has emphasized security," Thweatt said. Harrold installed a state-of-the-art magnetic entry system, lockdown buttons in administrative offices, and an extensive camera system, among other security measures, he said.

But the district felt the need to do more after the October 2006 Amish school shooting at the West Nickel Mines School in Pennsylvania.