Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill Friday to expand the armed \u201cschool guardian\u201d program to Florida’s colleges and universities.<\/p>\n
The law builds on changes made in the public-school system after the 2018 mass shooting at Parkland\u2019s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.<\/p>\n
DeSantis maintained that the guardian program deters potential perpetrators and will make colleges and universities \u201csafer.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey don\u2019t know whether they\u2019re going to be able to face resistance, so that they try to gravitate toward gun-free areas, where they know basically people are going to be sitting ducks,\u201d DeSantis said during an event at the Idea Center in Miami. \u201cThe guardian, it puts the bad guys on the defense. They don\u2019t know who is going to be able to offer them resistance.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Florida Gulf Coast University official provided a response on the new law:<\/p>\n
“FGCU is aware of the newly passed law. We are coordinating with the State University System of Florida regarding next steps and guidance to ensure continued compliance with all state and federal requirements,” said Pam McCabe, director of University Communications & Media Relations, Office of the President.<\/p>\n
The new law (HB 757) requires institutions to train faculty to detect and respond to mental health issues, adopt an active assailant response plan, adopt post-incident family reunification plans and imposes felony charges for discharging a weapon within 1,000 feet of a campus.<\/p>\n
Also, records related to a student\u2019s behavior, including threat assessment reports and student psychological evaluations, must transfer when the individual moves from K-12 school to a state college or university.<\/p>\n
The bill was crafted after a shooting during the 2025 legislative session, where a student killed two people and wounded five others at Florida State University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill Friday to expand the armed \u201cschool guardian\u201d program to Florida’s colleges and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210],"class_list":["post-275421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}