Safety commission backs grant to help boost safety in Florida’s private schools

Lisa J. Huriash, South Florida Sun Sentinel
·4 min read
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Police departments statewide will soon be urged to apply for a slice of a $5 million grant to figure out how to make their private schools safer.

The Private School Security Assessment Grant Program was announced Tuesday at the first of a two-day Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Safety Commission meeting, where officials said the school security for private schools throughout Florida has not “kept pace” with improvements made at public schools.

The commission was formed in 2018 to investigate failures that led to the Parkland school shooting tragedy on Feb. 14, 2018. It has been meeting since April 2018 and has been the impetus behind new laws, policies and regulations.

The grant would reimburse sheriff’s offices and police agencies for:

— Conducting a physical site security assessment.
— Developing active assailant response protocols and training.
— Implementing active assailant response drills for students and school personnel.
— Providing guidance for private schools to implement a threat management program similar to the one required by public schools.

Pinellas County, which has 160 private schools, already evaluates the perimeter, exterior, and interior of the campus and its buildings for its private schools, and then provides the school with a comprehensive report that identifies their strengths, weaknesses, and “opportunities” for improvement, according to records.

The program began in 2023, and Pinellas Sheriff Lt. Kim Killian pointed to the March 27, 2023, mass shooting at The Covenant School, a Christian grade school in Nashville where a former student killed three children and three staff members before police fatally shot the shooter.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s a public or private school, officials warned. “They look for soft targets, they look for schools that are not prepared,” Killian said.

Florida law has required threat management teams in every public school since March 2018 but they are not required in private schools “and have, for the most part, not existed in private schools across the state,” according to documents provided to the safety commission. While there are 4,000 public schools in Florida, there are nearly 3,000 private schools, according to the safety commission.

The private school safety and security program includes physical site security assessments and active assailant policies and drills.

“We know that people react how they train, and in the case of an active assailant on campus, if schools don’t have a response plan and people don’t regularly train on it, they will not react or certainly not react effectively,” according to Pinellas program documentation provided to the safety commission.

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Applications will begin in September and be available through June 30, 2025.

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said he encourages his schools not to wait to spend the money on improvements “the day after the shooter arrives.”

Other changes are in store for school safety in Florida:

— New this year is a state law that all school classrooms in district public schools and public charter schools must mark the safest areas in each classroom where students must shelter in place during an emergency. Students must be notified of these safe areas within the first 10 days of the school year. That could be a dot on the wall or a sign. Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, the safety commission’s chairman, said he is still haunted thinking of those in Parkland who were killed in the school shooting, unsure of where to hide, two of them seeking refuge behind a television.

— The Safety & Threat Management Portal, an online portal, will be completed by August 2025 and allow statewide tracking of troubled students who transfer schools.

“One system, one platform,” Gualtieri said.

Currently a physical file is mailed to the new school, or transferred to a document to be emailed. Creating this electronic system which will have real-time information to help identify a child’s needs and the services they require, is a “significant game-changer in sharing information,” he said.

— Also by August 2025 will be the full rollout of the School Environment Safety Incident Report, known as SESIR, which publicly documents 26 types of crimes and incidents sorted by school, including fighting and weapons possession. There are still schools either underreporting or not reporting, and the new system will be streamlined with automated reports, Gualtieri said.

“It’s too subjective now,” he said of the reporting methods.

Lisa J. Huriash can be reached at lhuriash@sunsentinel.com. Follow on X, formerly Twitter, @LisaHuriash