As parents get ready to send their children back to school, safety is top of mind.
A growing number of students across the state are welcomed to school each day by staff, school resource officers and weapons detectors. Wake County, the state’s largest school district, is not among the districts that use weapons detectors.
In the past, Wake school officials have pointed to a 2021 safety assessment that did not recommend installing weapons scanners. Instead, the system continued to focus on its current safety protocols, including visitor management systems and other safety tools.
Heading into the new school year, WRAL Investigates asked Wake County schools if a new safety assessment is planned to reconsider weapons detectors. In response, Wake schools says they have not had another safety assessment, but plan to conduct one.
WRAL Investigates also asked if they’d consider a bond referendum to help pay for the weapons detectors. The district said it hasn’t discussed using the bond referendum, and a discussion about bond usage would need to include Wake County commissioners.
Finally, WRAL Investigates wondered what discussions the Wake County Public School System had to get opinions from school districts that do use them.
“”WCPSS frequently connects and collaborates with other districts in our state and across the nation as a part of ongoing efforts to strengthen our comprehensive, muti-strategy approach to ensuring school safety, however, it would not be appropriate to comment on other school district’s security practices,” a district spokesperson wrote. “We continue to review and implement the priority recommendations from the assessment completed by the School Safety Advocacy Council in 2019.
“While this assessment did not recommend the use of weapon detections systems, we continue to examine the use of these systems as school safety conditions evolve.
“It will be critical to ensure that our district has the proper infrastructure and plans for staffing and training in place before any consideration of districtwide implementation.”
Despite criticism that the weapons detectors don’t catch everything they claim, the latest school safety numbers show they have a big impact, regardless.
“I think kiddos know that we’re looking,” Dr. Chanda Battle, the Director of Student Support Services for Edgecombe County Public Schools told WRAL Investigates. The district uses a weapons detection system in all 19 schools.
“As a parent of a student in Edgecombe County schools, I feel safer,” Battle said.
Last year, Edgecombe allowed WRAL Investigates to put the system to the test at Tarboro High School. We brought in various items, including some that could be a dangerous weapon. The Evolv system flagged 90% of them.
Battle says that’s good enough for them.
“We know it doesn’t find everything,” Battle aid. “Nothing is 100%.”
Battle says the effectiveness isn’t just measured by what’s found at the front door. Since installing the devices, schools have also increased outdoor sweeps and found items that students apparently ditched before walking through the front door, including pocket knives.
“Having that deterrent there, you know that the chances of you getting stopped, randomly, maybe even just from your binder in your backpack,” Battle said. “It may not be for a weapon. It kind of heightens that for kids, so the consequences are steeper.”
WRAL Investigates found that the deterrent appears to be playing out across the state in school systems that use weapons detectors. The most recent data from the 2023-2024 school year shows cases of possession of a weapon on school grounds dropped 24% statewide compared to the 2021-2022 school year. That’s great.
But the numbers in districts with weapons detectors are even better. In Edgecombe, cases are down 75%, Johnston 70% and Charlotte, which installed the detectors after several guns were found at schools, shows a 50% decrease in students accused of possessing a weapon or firearm.
To Battle, those numbers show the investment is worth it.
“I understand it is cost-prohibitive,” Battle said. “Some people just think it’s a false sense of security for people to have that weapons detection system there, and I understand. I get it.”
In Wake County, which does not use weapons detectors, gun and weapon possession is down just 13% from two years ago. That’s well below the state’s 24% drop.
While Battle emphasizes the weapons detectors are just part of their school safety tool kit, it’s still a very important part.
“I can tell you once again as a parent, as a school employee, just the weight of that, I don’t want to make light of anything, but I know that it will detect a gun,” Battle said. “A gun is not something a child should have to defend themselves against.”
