Volusia schools move forward with ‘random’ student searches

Official vote would happen April 9

DELAND, Fla. – Random searches for students could be coming to Volusia County Schools. On Tuesday, the board decided to move forward with the possible policy change and clarified how the searches would be handled.

The district’s safety team told the board the term “random” would not refer to students being randomly selected, but schools.

The district told News 6 that 45 weapons have been confiscated on school campuses so far this year. The safety team said it wants to slow that down.

“Random screening can act as a deterrent discouraging students from bringing weapons on campus,” said the district’s Chief Operations Officer Patty Corr.

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Corr told the board they would use a computer generator to randomly pick a school. Once a school is selected, they would bring the metal detectors to that school and set them up in front of a classroom. The classrooms would also be chosen randomly.

“The disruption to the instructional time is minimal. We would do it at the very beginning or the very end of the period,” said Corr.

Elizabeth Albert, the president of Volusia United Educators, the teachers union, said she is wondering if this would be enough.

“I think if we’re going to do this, we need to do it right and we need to do it right from the start which would be to make an investment in these devices and put them at all entry and exit points,” said Albert.

There were some details that the district’s safety leaders said they could not disclose for safety reasons about how these random searches would work.

This will go to an official vote April 9 at the board meeting.

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