Campus gun arrests, school shooting threats spark new push for metal detectors
Orange County Public Schools tested a walk-through weapons detection system last school year but decided against installing the devices at all its high schools because operating them was too expensive.
The recent arrests of students at three Central Florida high schools — Boone, Lake Brantley and Ocoee — for bringing guns or gun parts onto their campuses, along with the arrest of students in Apopka and Sanford for posting online threats, has some parents pushing for a reconsideration.
In Seminole County, an online petition urging metal detectors at Lake Brantley has gained 2,675 signatures as of Friday, prompted by the arrest of a student last week who brought an unloaded handgun onto campus.
“We’re talking about people’s lives here. No cost should ever outweigh saving lives, no one should ever have to say this could have been prevented if we had metal detectors,” said Diane Lorber, a parent of Boone alumni and former chair of Boone’s school advisory council, who wants to see the system installed. “Think how that would weigh on administrators that canceled the program due to budget. Let the people at the top take a budget cut if that’s what it takes.”
Lorber recognizes the weapons-detection system is not easy to implement and says the district could consider requiring clear backpacks and bags as a first, and cheaper, step.
Orange County School Board member Alicia Farrant, whose district includes Boone, wants the board to reconsider the countywide weapons-detection program and intends to discuss it at its next meeting Tuesday.
“After today’s incident and similar incidents we’ve seen across the nation in the last few weeks, I think the school board needs to reconsider our ability to have metal detectors in schools across the county,” she wrote in a text last week, after a Boone student was founded with a loaded gun in her backpack. “As a mother of 5 children, the safety of our students and staff is a top priority.”
Superintendent Maria Vazquez told WFTV the school board likely would vote to implement the program if the district had the necessary funding and personnel. She also noted the program hadn’t found any guns before it was shut down.
Brevard Public Schools announced last Friday, the same day as the Boone incident, that it would be using metal detectors at all its high schools.
The Broward County school district implemented a walk-through, weapons-detection system, similar to the one Orange rejected, at its high schools in August. The system’s debut led to long lines of frustrated students during the first week of classes, though the problems have since eased. The Osceola County school district is trying out the system Orange tested at one high school.
In addition to the incidents of guns found on campuses, school districts in Central Florida and across the state and nation have grappled with threats about school shootings since the shooting deaths of four people at a Georgia high school on Sept. 4.
An Apopka High School student was arrested Friday for posting an online threat against the school, and police last week investigated a social media threat against Maitland Middle School, one of many they’ve had to look into in recent weeks.
OCPS sent out a message to families Wednesday telling parents to instruct their children to not spread any rumors of shooting threats they see online and to instead report what they’ve read.
Boone was one of the schools where the walk-through weapons system was tested. Judi Hayes, another Boone parent and current chair of its school advisory council, said the trial run was “chaotic” and that she doesn’t want the program reinstated unless the district can make it more efficient and effective.
“We didn’t have enough staff,” she said. “And it was just a lot, and the kids were late to school every day,” she added. “I think ideally, we would have something that was a little less intrusive and was easier to cycle the kids through in a timely fashion.”
Hayes, the education lead for the Central Florida chapter of Moms Demand Action, a pro-gun control group, says she doesn’t have the answers to such a complex issue, but thinks all threats should be taken seriously in the hopes of avoiding a “Boy Who Cried Wolf” situation. She also advocates better mental health and social resources for students.
Tracy Losch, president of Boone’s PTSO, said the PTSO has requested that Farrant host a safety and security town hall meeting on campus with police and district security officials because parents are not only concerned but afraid.
“This way all concerns can be addressed and our families can hear about the safety procedures and protocols that are already in place,” she said.
The school district spent $475,000 on the weapons-detection devices last year and announced a pilot to test it at seven high schools during the 2023-24 school year, planning that they would be on all campuses in August.
But soon after the systems debuted at Wekiva and then Boone high schools problems cropped up, including lines that kept students from getting to first-period class on time. The district cut the pilot short, trying out the devices at only four high schools.
The biggest problem, Vazquez said at a late January school board meeting, was that screening all students every morning took more employees than expected. Officials later said each high school would need 10 more employees to run the system, and that was too costly.
The devices the district purchases are still being used, along with hand-held scanners, for random security screenings and during large events, the district said.
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