TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – The first day of school in Broward County, South Florida, got off to a chaotic start as students stood in line long after the first bell rang due to the disorganized rollout of new metal detectors.
At high schools in the nation’s sixth-largest district, dozens of students stood in lines that snaked through campuses as staff tried to get thousands of teenagers through the new metal detectors that were rolled out to 38 schools on Monday. It’s the first year that all of the district’s high schools have had the scanners.
The aim of the measure was to improve safety at schools in the district where a gunman killed 17 people and injured 17 others at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018.
Instead, the back-to-school shortage has further angered many parents who have long criticized the district for hasty policy decisions and poor management of new initiatives.
Alicia Ronda said when her daughter arrived at Pompano Beach High School at 6:30 a.m. on Monday, the line of students had already wrapped around the entire school. Her second-grader waited 30 minutes to get into her first class, which was supposed to start at 7:05 a.m. By 7:15 a.m., Ronda said, only four students had arrived in her daughter’s class.
“My daughter wakes up at 5 a.m. to leave the house at 6 a.m. and be at school at 6:30 a.m.,” Ronda told the Associated Press. “My daughter doesn’t wake up any earlier than 5 a.m. to go to school.”
“I hope the kids who came early for breakfast didn’t expect to eat anything today,” said Brandi Scire, another Pompano Beach High mother.
Each of the district’s secondary schools received at least two metal detectors to monitor their students, while larger schools received four, such as Cypress Bay High School in the suburb of Weston, which has more than 4,700 students.
But even at smaller schools, children had to wait, which caused more nervousness among students and parents than just the usual first-day nervousness.
“My daughter was supposed to be one of the students today helping the freshmen find their classes,” Scire said. “The freshmen don’t know where they’re going, and the kids weren’t there to help them.”
“It was just a total failure,” she added.
And it was hot as students lined up outside their South Florida schools, with a heat advisory in effect for much of Monday, according to the National Weather Service.
Shortly after 8 a.m., Broward Superintendent Howard Hepburn ordered schools to stop using metal detectors so the remaining students could get to class.
In a statement on the social media platform X, Hepburn apologized for the long waiting times.
“We sincerely thank our students for their patience,” Hepburn said. “We are committed to improving this experience and will make the necessary adjustments.”
However, staff acknowledged that they need to do a better job of communicating to students what they should do to get through security checks more quickly.
A district spokesman warned that there could be delays this week as staff make adjustments, but said the superintendent will ensure there are no repeats of the queues seen on Monday.
___ Kate Payne is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues.
