{"id":84709,"date":"2025-12-16T02:35:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T02:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/84709\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T02:35:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T02:35:08","slug":"new-florida-bill-would-expand-guardian-program-to-colleges-and-universities-action-news-jax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/84709\/","title":{"rendered":"New Florida bill would expand Guardian Program to colleges and universities \u2013 Action News Jax"},"content":{"rendered":"

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Campus safety on college and university campuses is in the spotlight after this weekend\u2019s mass shooting at Brown University<\/a>. <\/p>\n

For Makiko Felice, seeing news of the mass shooting at Brown University brought difficult memories back to the surface.<\/p>\n

>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n

Back in April, she received a text from her daughter informing her there was an active shooter at her school<\/a>, Florida State University.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always thought, \u2018Not my kids.\u2019 And it happened close to my daughter,\u201d Felice said.<\/p>\n

There have been at least four notable shootings at colleges across the country this year, including the one at FSU.<\/p>\n

Ever since the shooting that killed 17 and injured 18 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland in 2018, Florida\u2019s K-12 public school districts have had the option of arming school teachers and staff.<\/p>\n

The Guardian Program<\/a>, as it\u2019s known, involves school districts entering into agreements with their local sheriffs\u2019 offices, which offer training to school employees who choose to participate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a bill I hope I never would have had to file,\u201d State Senator Don Gaetz (R-Pensacola) said.<\/p>\n

Gaetz\u2019s legislation, which was filed one day before the Brown University shooting, would allow Florida\u2019s colleges and universities to participate in the Guardian Program.<\/p>\n

He noted that while universities generally have their own police departments, officers can\u2019t be everywhere at once.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat this bill seeks to do is make sure that in a classroom, in a campus setting, in a gathering of students or faculty, if something terrible happens, that we\u2019ve taken every step that we can take,\u201d Gaetz said.<\/p>\n

But Felice, who has worked as a gun safety advocate for the last several years, doesn\u2019t believe that more guns on campus is the answer.<\/p>\n

Instead, she believes it only stands to make active shooter situations more confusing.<\/p>\n

[DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n

\u201cIs that a real shooter or is that a security guard? It just does not make any sense,\u201d Felice said.<\/p>\n

Gaetz noted that entering into the program is optional.<\/p>\n

He also argued that the success of school guardians operating in public schools over the past seven years speaks for itself.<\/p>\n

[SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>] <\/p>\n

\u201cTo awful-ize it is one thing, but to look at the evidence and find out that there have been no bad problems, no problems at all, and God-willing it would never have to be used,\u201d Gaetz said.<\/p>\n

Gaetz\u2019s bill also includes new training requirements for annual risk assessments and training for college and university staff on mental health and threat management to try and identify potential threats before they happen. <\/p>\n

He argued that piece is as critical as the guardian program expansion.<\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here<\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here<\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/p>\n

Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Campus safety on college and university campuses is in the spotlight after this weekend\u2019s mass…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[982,1131,7840,46619,46623,2362,46624,28,30,29,34998,3603,1032,10167,969,971,44780,970,634,46622,23344,46620,4214,40610,12160,46621,914,7842],"class_list":["post-84709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-action_news","tag-alexis_clevinger","tag-ben_becker","tag-brown_university","tag-don_gates","tag-fbi","tag-felice","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-florida_state_university","tag-fsu","tag-gates","tag-guardian","tag-jack","tag-jake","tag-jake_s_stan","tag-jake_stoan","tag-local","tag-mikiko_felice","tag-parkland","tag-rhode_island","tag-senate","tag-senator","tag-side","tag-sophia_hallman","tag-state","tag-tanika_hughes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84709","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=84709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}