OCPS to test weapons-detection system at 7 high schools. Wekiva High starts Monday.
Students at seven Orange County high schools will soon walk through a new weapons-detection system as they enter their campuses each morning, as the district tests a device school leaders hope will make schools safer.
The pilot project will start Monday at Wekiva High School in west Orange and then move to six other high schools in the coming months.
The new system, called Opengate, aims to quickly screen large numbers of people without requiring that they take off backpacks or hand over purses. Students will have to remove their OCPS-issued laptops from their bags, however, and hand them to a staff member before they walk between the device’s two poles.
The Ohio company that makes Opengate, CEIA USA, debuted them in 2021 for “the detection of mass casualty metal threats,” including assault weapons, in busy public places, according to its website.
“The bottom line is, it’s another layer of security,” said OCPS Police Chief Bryan Holmes in a video shot Dec. 6 as the district tested the system at Wekiva High. “Everything that we can do to prevent bad things from happening on our campuses, we want to do that.”
Holmes said the district will test the Opengate devices — two portable pillars with alarms at the top — until the end of the school year, looking at how quickly students can be screened during morning arrival. District leaders, he added, do not want to delay students from grabbing breakfast at the cafeteria or making it to their first-period class but also want to do “everything we can to make school as safe as possible.”
School safety has been a focus of public schools for years, but the fatal shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland in 2018 prompted new state laws related to security and an enhanced focus from local school leaders.
OCPS randomly selected the seven schools that will test the new system, said Superintendent Maria Vazquez, as she announced the pilot’s start at the Orange County School Board’s meeting Tuesday.
Besides Wekiva, the devices will be used at Boone, Evans, Horizon, Jones, Lake Nona and Timber Creek high schools, Vazquez said.
The district plans to spend $475,000 on Opengate, a purchase approved by the Orange County School Board in October.
The Lee County school district, headquartered in Fort Myers, purchased them earlier this year with the goal of using them in all of their schools, according to Fox4 Southwest Florida.
OCPS has sent parents with children at the seven high schools messages about the new system, and they are training staff to use it, Vazquez added. The devices are to be used through the end of the school year.
“This pilot will allow us to collect data, observe the process and make decisions about any future implementation,” she said.
