Metal detectors planned for some Broward County schools after successful Palm Beach rollout

Broward County’s high school students may have to walk through a new layer of security this fall.

The Florida school district plans to install walk-through metal detectors at 10 yet-to-be-named high schools for the start of the 2024-25 school year, Superintendent Peter Licata said.

But students needn’t worry about a stressful TSA-like experience where students have to remove every piece of metal on them and face pat-downs, district officials say. These devices are designed to use artificial intelligence to distinguish between routine items, such as cellphones and keys, and forbidden items, such as guns and knives. Students don’t have to take off their backpacks.

“It’s a quick walk-through. We compare it to walking out of a library with a book that’s not the checked out,” Broward Superintendent Peter Licata told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

The district is reviewing bids, and the School Board is expected to vote on a contract at a meeting in April, district administrator Judith Marte said.

The idea of metal detectors has been debated in the district for years, especially after the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, where a former student walked unfettered onto campus and killed 17 students and staff.

The district has made a number of security changes since then, such as increasing the number of armed officers, limiting visitor access to the front office and requiring all students to wear ID badges.

While the district has experimented with the use of metal-detection wands to randomly search bags, officials had previously been resistant to the idea of requiring all students to walk through metal detectors, saying it could be expensive and lead to long lines and a false sense of security.

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.”

But Licata, who started in August, said he’s optimistic the plan will work after seeing a successful pilot in Palm Beach County schools, where he spent most of his career.

Palm Beach County installed metal detectors in four high schools last summer and added another four on Feb. 5. That district plans to install them in all high schools by the end of the school year.

“If you look at the data from some of the pilot programs, it’s clear,” Licata said. “None of those (Palm Beach County) schools that have those detectors have had an incident this year.”

Palm Beach County Schools Police Chief Sarah Mooney confirmed no weapons have been discovered so far at any of the schools that use the devices.

The program in Palm Beach County has also not been overly intrusive, students say. They can keep their cellphones and keys with them without getting stopped.

There are a few items students have to take out because they will set off the alarms including laptops, electronic tablets, large three-ring binders, umbrellas and certain metal water bottles. Those are given to a staff person at the school who quickly hands it back after the student passes through the metal detector.

Boynton Beach High got metal detectors as part of the second wave of schools on Feb. 5. The devices are located at three locations: the front entrance, at the bus loop and at parent drop-off.

On Thursday, students’ entry onto campus looked like a smooth assembly line, with each student getting through in about a second. Only about a half-dozen of about 200 students entering from the bus loop set the alarm off. An administrator searched those bags and found no problematic items.

“We all thought that it was going to be a big deal, that there would be long lines, but it goes by pretty quick,” said Stephania Emmanuel, 17, a junior at Boynton Beach High.

Kristy Michel, who is also a 17-year-old junior at the school, said she’s changed her mind about metal detectors since they’ve been installed.

“When I first heard about them, I said, ‘that’s too much. We don’t need it. There hasn’t been a shooting at our school,'” Michel said. “”Then I realized it could happen to our school too, so I decided it might be a good thing.”

With about 1,500 students, Boynton Beach High is less than half the size of some of Broward County’s largest high schools. Cypress Bay High in Weston has about 4,700 students, while Stoneman Douglas has 3,300.

Aisha Hashmi, a senior at Stoneman Douglas, said she’s skeptical metal detectors would work efficiently at Stoneman Douglas, with a large number of affluent students who bring tablets and laptops every day.

“Just the sheer volume. My school has over 3,000 students,” she said. “That’s an insane amount of people every single morning having to go through that. I don’t think we have the staff.”

However, Palm Beach County successfully piloted metal detectors last year at John I. Leonard High, its largest high school with about 3,600 students.

Although traditional metal detectors have been used in some schools for decades, districts started buying the new artificial intelligence-based systems in the last few years, said Nikita Ermolaev, a research engineer with IPVM, a Pennsylvania-based company that tests security technology.

There have been some problems at other districts, Ermolaev said with school stabbings at schools in Utica, N.Y., and Columbus, Ohio, that had metal detectors.

Despite questions about how effective they are, the devices continue to grow in popularity, security experts say.

“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,” said Kenneth Trump, president of the Cleveland-based National School Safety and Security Services.

“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.

At a Broward School Board meeting Jan. 30, before Licata had announced the metal detector plan, Broward School Board member Brenda Fam questioned why the district was making a technology purchase when she saw metal detectors as a greater need.

“My constituents have contacted me and want to know why there hasn’t been (money) allocated or put to use for metal detectors,” Fam told Licata. “There’s a disconnect between the board and parents of this community because they want safety first.”

After Licata told her the district was indeed buying metal detectors, Fam thanked him and added, “I think a lot of parents are going to sleep better tonight.”

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