- April 18, 2024
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Forty-six of Florida’s 67 school districts participate in the Coach Aaron Feis Guardian Program.
Volusia County employs 100 guardians to supplement its 22 school resource officers and school resource deputies in protecting campuses.
The Department of Education mandates that every school has a safe school officer. Guardians can fill that requirement.
The Flagler County School District has only nine schools, and they are all covered by school resource deputies supplied by the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office. Now, the district is looking into adding guardians to put an extra safety officer on the campuses.
At a School Board workshop on Aug. 16, District Safety Specialist Tom Wooleyhan explained the program to board members while Sheriff Rick Staly answered questions.
“I think the size of our schools demands we should have more than one person on campus,” School Board member Janet McDonald said.
The guardian program was established by the state legislature after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018. It was named after Coach Aaron Feis, who sacrificed his life protecting students at the school.
Guardians are tasked with preventing or abating active assailant incidences. Guardians are armed, but they have no arresting authority.
Each guardian must complete a minimum of 144 hours of training, 132 of which is devoted to firearm instruction and legal issues. Twelve hours are devoted to diversity training.
State statute requires the training program to be administered by the local Sheriff’s Office.
Michelle Newman, the Volusia School District's chief of security operations, said guardians go through more firearm training than law enforcement.
“The training they get is truly fantastic,” she said.
The Volusia guardians are military veterans and former law enforcement officers who still want to serve their communities, Newman said.
“They’ve really integrated into the fabric of the schools. We get so many compliments on our guardians.”
— MICHELLE NEWMAN, Volusia Schools chief of security operations
“They’ve really integrated into the fabric of the schools,” she said. “We get so many compliments on our guardians. Teachers, principals tell us, ‘please don’t take my guardian away.’ They work seamlessly with schools that have SROs and SRDs.”
Districts are reimbursed $500 per guardian through DOE grants for Sheriff Office costs for screening, training, firearms and ammunition, but Staly said the cost would more likely be $1,000 to $1,200 per guardian.
“That means you would have to come up with another $700 for us to do the training,” Staly told the board.
The district is responsible for paying the guardians’ salaries. Staly said the district would need to hire 12 guardians to cover vacation, sick days, etc., if it wants to add one to each of the nine campuses. He said he would not be in favor of using guardians to replace deputies on campus and wouldn't want to be a part of the program under those circumstances.
Board member Colleen Conklin asked if de-escalation training would be included. Staly said he would like to add that to the 144 training hours. He said de-escalation would probably require another 20 hours of training for it to be effective.
Board Chair Trevor Tucker said the board will need to have another workshop on the program. If it decides to participate in the program, Wooleyhan said it will have to decide whether the guardians would carry their weapons openly or keep them concealed. If the weapons are concealed, would the public know who the guardians are? Some districts choose to have their guardians wear uniforms. Others wear plain clothes.
Guardians can be school employees who take on the added responsibility, or as in Volusia County, personnel hired specifically to be school guardians.
