Florence 1 School District adding armed security officers at all 13 elementary schools
Florence SC June 24, 2023 Florence County School District 1 will put armed security guards at its 13 elementary schools next school year at a cost of more than $435,000.
The money is included in the district’s $191.1 million 2023-24 budget, which the school board approved June 21.
“We cannot stress enough the importance of making sure our schools are safe for our students and staff,” Superintendent Richard O’Malley said.
O’Malley said providing armed security guards at elementary schools allows the district to provide the same level of security at every school.
The district is reviewing bids from private companies to provide the guards, said Trisha Caulder, board vice chairwoman.
Contract discussions probably will occur at the board’s July meeting, she said.
The S.C. Department of Education doesn’t have records regarding the number of state school districts that employ armed security guards in addition to school resources officers provided by law enforcement agencies.
Armed security guards are the latest step to keep Florence 1 students safe, O’Malley said.
The district hired private campus safety officers in the 2022-23 school year to help school resource officers patrol middle, junior high and high school buildings.
All schools in the district conduct classes behind locked doors.
Each classroom door is locked when students are present, and doors that lead into and out of classroom buildings are locked at all times.
Schools also have metal detectors at each main entrance. All doors leading into buildings remains locked.
The district also has installed more than 1,500 security cameras, and most teachers have emergency buzzers in their classrooms, Caulder said.
The district is eliminating mobile school classrooms that aren’t directly connected to a building because of safety concerns.
It has removed nearly 170 mobile classrooms. The final piece will be removing mobile units at McLaurin Elementary School. That task will be completed before the start of the 2023-24 school year, Caulder said.
School safety has long been a concern for the Board of Trustees as the number of school shootings across the nation continue to escalate, Caulder said. The Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that collects and stores gun violence incidents from across the country, has counted 617 gun-related incidents at schools in 2023.
Florence County law enforcement agencies cannot provide enough school resource officers for all the Florence 1 schools.
The Sheriff’s Office already supplies armed school resource officers in multiple district middle schools, high schools and at Brockington Elementary School in Timmonsville.
The Sheriff’s Office can’t supply enough officers to cover the whole district, O’Malley said.
The Florence Police Department supplied school resource officers to the district until the 2022-23 school, but it no longer has officers directly involved in the district.
In the past, school resource officers traveled between schools in the district, Caulder said. Those officers could not be used full time at a school while that procedure was in place.
Having armed security guards will fill in security gaps at the district’s more rural elementary schools, she said.
“We just don’t want to take any chances with our kids,” she said.
The partnership with the Florence County Sheriff’s Office to provide school resource officers will remain in place after a contract to hire security guards has been approved, she said.
School security will continue to be on the school board’s radar, Caulder said.
