Broward installing walk-through metal detectors in all high schools next year
The walk-through detectors will be tested at 10 high schools in the 2024-25 school year.
NBC6 | By Ari Odzer | April 23, 2024
Walk-through weapons detectors are coming to every public high school in Broward County next school year.
They already use hand-held metal detectors to conduct random searches, and we’ve known for months that the walk-through detectors would be tested at 10 high schools in the 2024-25 school year.
“It provides a level of assurance to ensure that weapons are not getting on that campus,” said Superintendent Dr. Howard Hepburn at Tuesday’s school board workshop meeting.
But why start with only 10 schools?
“The community will feel different if all high schools have this system, as opposed to having it sort out, why did yours and not yours and yours and all that, that’s not a healthy feeling, the healthy feeling is every kid has as much safety and security as we can provide to them,” said board member Dr. Allen Zeman.
Every school board member said something similar.
The issue is deeply personal for two board members. Debi Hixon lost her husband in the Parkland school shooting and Lori Alhadeff lost her daughter.
“If one gun gets in there and we have another school shooting, that will be devastating and detrimental and if this can potentially save a life, I want to do all of our high schools all at one time so every student in that high school is protected and this is an additional layer of protection that we can implement into our schools,” Alhadeff said.
There are concerns, though, about jumping straight into the deep end with a new system and process for getting thousands of kids into any given high school without creating a backup every morning.
“It takes a lot of planning, luckily we have some school districts that have already started this work, especially one right to the north of us, and they have large high schools, too, so we can use them as a bellwether to actually go learn from them,” Hepburn said.
The district’s chief of safety and security, Jaime Alberti, said the process of training security staff on the new system will begin with two pilot schools this summer at Flanagan and Taravella high schools.
The superintendent said it’ll cost $1.3 million to install the walk-through metal detectors at all 31 high schools instead of starting with only 10 schools, and the money, he said, can be scrounged up from the district’s capital budget.
