Published on October 22, 2026 at 1:12 pm
Free local news and info, in your inbox at 6 a.m. M-F. Sign up for the Jacksonville Today newsletter.
The Duval County school district began rolling out weapons detection systems at its elementary schools this week.
The metal detectors will be installed across the district’s 90 elementary schools over the next three years. Principals will notify families before each system is installed. They cost about $20,000 per school.
Jacksonville Today thanks our sponsors. Become one.
“We do believe that students cannot learn if they don’t feel safe, and teachers cannot teach if they don’t feel like they’re in a safe environment,” Duval Schools Police Chief Jackson Short said Tuesday while demonstrating a system in place at John E. Ford Montessori, a PreK-8 English/Spanish magnet school near Downtown Jacksonville.
The detection systems are part of the district’s “multi-layered approach” to create safe schools, Short said. All middle schools received the systems last year and high schools the year before that.
“We do believe that our youngest students deserve the same level of protection, the same level of security that all of our students receive,” Short said.
Jacksonville Today thanks our sponsors. Become one.
The OPENGATE systems, manufactured by an Ohio company called CEIA USA, are designed to detect metal weapons while rapidly screening large crowds. They’re the portable kind — two free-standing columns that are not connected by an overhead arch — often used at sporting events, theme parks, and other places where lots of people enter in a short period of time while carrying bags.
Students will pass through the detectors one at a time while wearing their backpack. They don’t have to empty their pockets or set aside any items first, but they will have to remove certain things from their backpacks. Short said the district uses the acronym BLUE to remind students that binders, laptops, umbrellas and eyeglass cases are likely to trigger false alarms.
If the system is triggered, it beeps and the student steps to a secondary screening line, where a staff member identifies the source. School police will be stationed nearby in case a weapon is found.
Duval Schools spokesperson Sonya Duke-Bolden tells Jacksonville Today, “Staff will make every effort to address any concerns about a potential hidden weapon. These efforts may include using handheld metal detectors or a process of elimination, such as having the student walk back through the weapons detection system without certain items” like jackets or large belt buckles.
Short said, as students learn what kinds of everyday items set off the machines, they tend to stop bringing them to school — like certain metal water bottles.
Short said the district had a “success story” last year when the system detected a gun at a high school — but he hopes they act as deterrents and there’s nothing to find.
“Honestly, what we’re looking for is the weapon to never come on campus,” Short said.
He referred to last week’s fatal mass shooting at an elementary school in Oregon. (The teenage gunman in that incident did not use the school’s main entrance, so presumably this type of system would not have prevented it.)
“It’s just part of our society now, that we do have violence on school campuses,” Short said. “So anything that we do to get ahead of that and help keep everybody safe, I think is worth it.
