PARKLAND, Fla. -- Fortified by fences and patrolled by more armed personnel, schools will open their doors to students for the start of the new year with a heightened focus on security intended to ease fears about deadly campus shootings.
The massacre in Parkland, Fla., one of the most lethal in U.S. history, unnerved school administrators across the country, who devoted the summer to reinforcing buildings and hiring security.
In Florida, armed guards will be posted on almost every campus. In Indiana, some schools will be getting hand-held metal detectors. In western New York state, some schools plan to upgrade their surveillance cameras to include facial recognition.
Six months after the rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, public schools have embraced expensive and sometimes controversial safety measures.
"If we can find the resources, and if our taxpayers are willing to support us, then we will do everything in our power to try to create a sense of normalcy and ease," said Donald Fennoy, superintendent of the school district in Palm Beach County, Fla., which borders Parkland.
Palm Beach is nearly doubling its school police force -- and asking voters to support a property tax increase to help pay for it.
The wave of efforts marks the latest escalation of security enhancements prompted by horrifying and highly publicized school attacks. After the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, administrators began routinely practicing lockdown drills and hiring police officers. After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, districts installed more buzzer systems and limited points of entry on campuses.
"It's eerily similar, what I'm hearing today to what we experienced in our community," Guy Grace, director of security and emergency planning for the school district in Littleton, Colo., which neighbors Columbine, said last week to a Florida commission tasked with making statewide recommendations on school safety.
Schools opened with metal detectors this week in Marshall County, Ky., where two students were killed at a school shooting in January. New York City has considered expanding the use of metal detectors, though some students worry they disproportionately target schools with students of color.
No policy has caused more debate than allowing teachers to carry weapons, a proposal pushed for years by the National Rifle Association and supported by President Donald Trump in February. Proponents filed a flurry of bills in state legislatures to enact such programs this year, but only Florida adopted legislation to allow schools to arm and train "guardians" on campus -- school employees who are not full-time teachers.
At least 10 states allow districts to arm teachers and other staff members. One of the states is Texas, where a shooting at Santa Fe High School in May left 10 people dead. Gov. Greg Abbott responded by proposing more spending on police officers and armed guards on campus; the Santa Fe school district has accepted donations of metal detectors, protective vests and other police equipment.
A law Florida passed after the Parkland shooting requires armed security guards at every school and also expands mental health funding for schools. But getting those services into place will take more time, administrators from several school districts acknowledged.
Florida's guardian program, funded in part by $67 million from the state, was modeled on a program in Polk County created by Sheriff Grady Judd, a proponent of arming teachers and school staff. The sheriff said he knew long ago that guardians would be needed as a result of the state's continuing police officer shortage.
"I knew when I was working in the legislative process that even if they had the money, we didn't have the cops," he said.
In Broward County, where Parkland is, the nine-member board voted unanimously in April against armed guardians, in favor of police officers. But they reversed their decision in June, after members realized the district's partnerships with police would not yield enough officers to patrol every school.
When students arrive at Stoneman Douglas for the new school year Wednesday, security changes will be evident. New chain-link fences ring the inside of campus, including around the vacant freshman building where the shooting took place, which will never be used again. More surveillance cameras are mounted high up on the walls. Classroom doors have been outfitted with handles that lock automatically.
A Section on 08/12/2018