When school starts in Lee County today, new security measures will be in place in several of them. Sixteen schools will have weapons detection systems in place that students will have to pass through.
Eventually, according to the school district, all elementary, middle and high schools in the district will have them. Lee Schools Superintendent Christopher Bernier explains their role:
“What it will do is allow for a student to pass through, to be scanned, and if there's something outside of the ordinary, there will be an alert, and there'll be an additional search of that backpack,” said Dr. Bernier. “We're hoping this also provides a peace of mind to our parents that we're doing everything we can to ensure safety, but also help our students make some better decisions about what they would choose to bring to school.”
Six schools will have an armed guardian on site when school starts, as part of the Coach Aaron Feis Guardian program that was established after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in 2018. The Lee schools that will have a guardian have not been publicly identified.
Superintendent Bernier notes that the guardians will be easy to spot.
“Our guardians, very specifically at the sheriff's direction, will be uniformed, and you will know who they are. They're very difficult to miss, they have a very unique color uniform, to make them easily identifiable,” said Bernier.
He adds that they will work with the School Resource Officers, or SROs:
“They’re a force multiplier, so in the case of an incident in a school building, they would go with the SRO at the time, and they would provide the additional force we may need to stop something before it even gets started,” said Bernier.
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