Prince William County considering weapons-detection systems for middle, high schools

The Prince William County school division is considering outfitting all 30 of its high schools and middle schools with high-tech weapons-detection systems to scan students for guns and other weapons on an everyday basis.

“Evolv Express” detectors, which use both metal detectors and artificial intelligence, could be arriving at some Prince William County schools as early as next school year if the school board approves a plan that was first discussed publicly Wednesday, Jan. 25 during a joint meeting between the Prince William County School Board and Board of Supervisors.

Such joint board meetings, which generally occur only once a year, are usually called to review budgets and talk about significant school division needs, which in past years have included teacher salaries, bolstering school counseling staff or dealing with overcrowded classes and the need to reduce portable classroom trailers. 

But this year, in the wake of recent high-profile mass shootings, school security dominated the discussion. Much of the two-hour meeting centered around the school division’s recent efforts to bolster security, including the addition this year of 104 new security officer positions.

For the first time ever, the school division set aside funds to hire at least one dedicated, uniformed security officer at each of the county’s 100 schools, including all 63 elementary schools.

Each of the county’s high schools has long had security assistants as well as armed school resource officers. Three county middle schools also have their own SROs, while the other 14 middle schools share an SRO with a neighboring school. All school SROs are sworn members of the Prince William County Police Department.

Prince William County Police Chief Peter Newsham, who attended the meeting, said the department hopes to add more SROs at middle schools when the department’s staffing numbers improve.

But despite those security improvements, guns are still finding their way into schools. Over the past two years, 14 guns were found at different schools around the county, Newsham said during a school board meeting late last year.

Security officials have so far found two guns at county schools this year, Newsham said Wednesday.

“That’s two guns too many, and it’s scary to know that we had two guns in our schools,” Newsham said. “I think what’s even more scary is we don’t know how many guns are actually in our schools.”

Having a weapons-detection system, Newsham added, “will prevent and deter” people from bringing guns and weapons into schools.

Equipping each county middle and high school with the high-tech weapons-detecting systems is estimated to cost between $10 and $15 million, School Board Chairman Dr. Babur Lateef said in an interview after the meeting.

The school board has not yet voted on whether to move forward with the plan. But the idea is likely to be part of the school board’s upcoming spring budget talks, and Lateef indicated the school board might ask the county for extra money for the new systems, saying: “I think we can find the money on both sides.”

The first step, school division officials said, is to introduce the Evolv Express systems to schools and the community. The company is lending a model to the county for six weeks for demonstration purposes, starting next week. 

School principals will be introduced to the scanners first, and then the school division will hold three “roundtable” events around the county – likely at three different high schools – to allow community members to see how the system works and to offer feedback. 

The dates of those events have not been set but will be announced soon, said Diana Gulotta, a school division spokeswoman.

The system the school division is considering is the same one the City of Manassas School Board decided to place in its sole high school: Osbourn High. The school board voted in December to spend more than $435,000 to place the Evolv Express scanners at the building’s main entrance and one side entrance. City of Manassas administrators have said the move is proactive and not in response to any specific incidents.

Prince William County Schools Chief of Operations Vernon Bock said the Evolv system is preferable to metal detectors because it allows large numbers of students and staff to pass through them quickly and does not require students to empty their pockets or backpacks unless the system detects something that could be a weapon. 

“It’s an artificial intelligence system, so when you go through, you don’t even realize you’re going through, because you have to take nothing off your person,” Bock said. “It doesn’t hit on keys or phones or your normal things you would carry, like AirPods. It’s artificial intelligence that is solely focused on weapons detection.”

Bock also said the school division would likely add the systems slowly – starting with a few at a time – and likely not at the very beginning of the school year, which can be a more chaotic time for schools and students.

A team of school administrators and School Board member Loree Williams (Woodbridge) visited a high school in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg district in North Carolina last fall to see the equipment in action. Charlotte-Mecklenburg, with its more than 140,000 students, is the largest school division in the country to use the Evolv Express system, Bock said.

The school division reported that staff and students felt safer with the equipment in place and that it “drastically cut down on the weapons in their schools,” Bock said. 

The system also cut down on vaping pens and drug paraphernalia in schools, he added.

In an interview last week, Williams said she was impressed by the equipment and how it worked in the schools. Williams said she was initially skeptical of the idea of bringing weapons-detectors into schools and was especially concerned about the stigma it might bring to Prince William County’s diverse student population. But Williams said that after talking to both the students and staff at the Charlotte, N.C. high school, she feels better about the idea.

The system requires specially trained staff to monitor students and the machine’s response to the students as they walk through the scanners. The Charlotte high schools also had to slightly stagger the students’ entry into the building to not overwhelm the equipment, Williams said.

The requirement of staff to monitor the scanners is one drawback to the system, Lateef said Wednesday. But he also said he has heard increasing concerns from staff and the community about school safety and is open to the idea.

“We still want to hear from the public on this,” he added.

Board of Supervisors Chair Ann Wheeler, D-At Large, said she felt the community’s opinion of weapons detection systems has changed. During the meeting, she said she was pleased to hear of all the county and school division is doing to address school security.

“If children don’t feel safe, they can’t learn,” Wheeler said. “For me, school safety and making sure our community feels safe going to school is really, really important.”

Reach Jill Palermo at jpalermo@fauquier.com