There were two incidents in the last week in the Tampa Bay area, where students were arrested for bringing guns to schools.
LARGO, Fla. — Pinellas County Schools may become the latest district in the Tampa Bay area to ramp up its security.
At a school board workshop Monday morning, the district discussed potentially launching a weapons detection system pilot program later this school year. The proposal includes a three-step rollout plan where the first two months in November and December would be spent looking for a system, the second phase in January and February would be training staff and the third period from March to May would be testing the system at two high schools and at district events.
“The pilot itself would be a comprehensive, deliberate and detailed evaluation of the technologies to ensure that it does integrate well, it is effective, efficient,” said Sean Jowell, the district’s Director of Safety and Security. “But also it’s not disruptive to our school environment, that we absolutely maintain as best we can a safe, respectful learning environment at each one of our campuses across the district.”
After the pilot, the board would hear a recommendation on whether to move forward with implementing this in future school years.
The proposal comes just 24 hours after a student was arrested at Zephyrhills High School in Pasco County for having a gun on school grounds and just one week after another student was arrested for bringing one to Spoto High School in Hillsborough County.
The two incidents are part of a larger trend, with 10 Investigates learning that nearly 1,500 weapons were found at Florida schools during the 2023-24 school year — 141 of which were firearms. That included 14 instances of firearms being found in Hillsborough County Schools.
The potential pilot would also make Pinellas County just the latest district to join a long list locally to implement some sort of weapons detections screening system. Sarasota and Manatee schools have weapons detection systems full-time, while Hillsborough and Polk Counties told 10 Tampa Bay News that they have random screenings.
Pinellas County schools observed the full-time systems in Sarasota and Manatee Counties before bringing the proposal to the board.
This pilot still has to be greenlit but doesn’t need to be voted on because it will cost less than $50,000. The district plans to decide in the next month whether it will move forward with the pilot program, and if it does, a vote would be held in the spring before implementing any system permanently.