High schools to get metal detectors

Broward district plans on staggered rollout in the fall

All Broward high schools would have walk-through metal detectors this fall, under a proposal the School Board agreed to fast-track Tuesday.

The district announced plans in February to pilot weapons-detection systems in about 10 schools during the 2024-25 school year, with the rest coming in the future. A district proposal asked the School Board to phase in the metal detectors over two years.

But during a workshop Tuesday, most board members said they didn’t like that plan. They voiced concerns about which high schools would and wouldn’t get metal detectors first.

Board member Brenda Fam was baffled why Cypress Bay High in Weston, the largest high school in the state with close to 5,000 students, wasn’t on the list for year one.

“I would think that will be a priority since we have so many students that would be impacted. Can you tell me why that fell so far down the line?” she asked.

District security staff said the schools were chosen based on a combination of weapons data and feedback from administrators in the area. But some board members questioned whether the district was sending a message that some high schools were more dangerous than others, or that some students were more deserving of protection than others.

“Every kid deserves to go into a safe school,” Board member Nora Rupert said.

Board Chairwoman Lori Alhadeff has been a proponent of metal detectors since her daughter, Alyssa, was killed during the 2018 school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland.

“I don’t really want to wait. I want to do all of our high schools now and I think that it’s so abundantly important that we add this proactive layer of safety protection to keep the weapons and guns out of our schools,” she said. “And to just pick and choose this school or that school is not acceptable.”

The new plan will start with a summer school pilot project at Charles Flanagan High in Pembroke Pines and J.P. Taravella High in Coral Springs, with the rest of the

district-run high schools getting them over a staggered basis in the fall of 2024.

The School Board plans to allocate an extra $1.3 million to purchase the additional ones needed.

Some board members worried a large-scale rollout in one semester may be more than the district can handle. Board member Jeff Holness recommended starting some schools in the fall and the others in the others next spring.

“I have a concern with trying to get everything done all at once in a very short period of time,” he said. “It can also create logistical problems that can lead to some level of chaos before we have really ironed out all the wrinkles from our pilot testing.”

But James LaRosa, a safety and security director for the district, said the new timeline should be manageable.

“I don’t want to make any promises, but I don’t see why we can’t get to every high school at some point throughout the fall of ’24,” he said.

The district has been using a metal-detection wanding system in the past where student bags are searched on a random basis. That will continue, said Jaime Alberti, chief of safety and security.

“This is going to be an extension of what we’re already doing,” he said. “This is in addition to the randomized screening that we currently do.”

The new walk-through system is designed to use artificial intelligence to catch guns and large knives but not cellphones and keys. Students won’t have to remove their backpacks or empty their pockets in most cases, officials said. The system was similarly added in the past year in Palm Beach County schools.

The idea of metal detectors has been debated in the district for years, especially after the Stoneman Douglas tragedy, where a former student walked unfettered onto campus and killed 17 students and staff.

A proposed plan to install metal detectors at Stoneman Douglas was scrapped in 2018 after a former security consultant advised against it, saying it’s difficult to conduct reliable metal detection without patting people down, which could create liability issues.

It’s an idea that’s still not embraced by a number of school security experts, who question their reliability and often described the use of school metal detectors as “security theater.”

“School boards and superintendents often turn to AI weapons-detection systems to solve political and public relations problems as much, if not more than, school safety problems,” Kenneth Trump, president of the Cleveland-based National School Safety and Security Services, said in a recent interview.

“School leaders are feeling pressure from parents and their school community to strengthen security so they are turning to ‘shiny objects’ that they can point to and tell parents they have made schools safer,” Trump said.

Board member Allen Zeman said Tuesday he thinks the district’s current approach to finding weapons isn’t working.

“This is a lot better than the system we have today, which is hoping somebody sees something and says something or one drops out of someone’s backpack,” Zeman said. “That’s our current weapons detection system and that’s insufficient.”