In the wake of a number of deadly school shootings that have gripped the nation, some cringe at the idea of arming school employees. Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd isn’t one of these people.
The sheriff already had already been promoting his Sentinel program, which arms civilians at the college level and believed a similar program would work in elementary, middle and high schools.
So, after the school shooting in Parkland, the School Safety Guardians program was born. The program puts civilians through rigorous training, in both the classroom and on the field to teach them how to respond in an active shooter situation. The guardians will be on campus to ensure the students are safe. They won’t be there as hall monitors and they won’t have to deal with any law violations.
The first day of firearm training was Monday and Jacqueline Byrd, the superintendent of public school in Polk County, already seemed pleased with applicants and the progress they are making.
“Twenty-two-plus school shootings, I think what you see behind us and in our classrooms, people want to make sure our children are safe,” said Byrd. “Our students, our communities, our schools are going to be safer. Joining up and creating a partnership with the sheriff and having these potential employees out here and training through the sheriff’s program is something that our parents will know when they send their children to us. They’re going to be a lot safer.”
Jocelyn Rodriguez is one of more than a hundred of the program’s students to make it through the first round of background checks and is now taking part in the training. Her parents were both in law enforcement, so she believes this is the logical path for her. She is impressed with the level of training, so far. “It’s definitely an experience,” said Rodriguez. “It’s great training—absolutely the best trainers out here telling us, working with us and improving us every day.”
Sheriff Judd says their training is just as extensive as the training his deputies go through before they put on a uniform. “This is a very detailed, very significant training system set forth by the exact same trainers at the sheriff’s office that train our deputies and our swat team,” said Judd, who explained the officers are trained specifically, how to diffuse a deadly situation in a classroom setting.
The sheriff raised a simple question for parents who criticize the program: “When the active shooter has gotten through all of the different layers and is walking down the hallway towards your child’s classroom to murder your child and his or her colleagues, do you want somebody well trained, with a gun to stop them?”
The training lasts several weeks and the first class of safety guardians will graduate in July. School district officials will then hire the graduates they feel are the best fit. Some schools will have safety guardians while others will have school resource officers. Some will have both.
