Clear backpacks won’t be coming to Broward schools next year. What’s next for safety?
The Broward County School Board won’t require clear backpacks next school year after debating the change this week and voting against it.
The board had voted in favor of the policy in May, but reversed the decision on Tuesday. The hope for clear backpacks was to deter students from bringing weapons to school and make it easier to report someone for carrying suspicious items.
Miami-Dade doesn’t require clear backpacks.
Here’s what may come next in Broward:
Metal detectors in schools?
Board members say school security remains a priority and are discussing other measures to keep students safe.
Metal detectors are part of that conversation, though they aren’t on the agenda for the 2023-24 school year, said board member Daniel Foganholi of District 1, which includes Dania Beach, Hollywood, Pembroke Pines and Miramar.
“I think we’ve expressed it as the will of the board for staff to come with something and present how metal detectors can be implemented,” Foganholi said in an interview.
Security staff in Broward schools use hand-held metal detectors for random student searches.
The debate over clear backpacks
During a town hall in Plantation High School on Monday, a day before the School Board meeting, more than 150 students, parents and educators expressed their thoughts on the policy, most opposing it. Some parents worried that carrying a clear backpack would put students at risk of being bullied for personal items inside.
Some argued that the solution is addressing gun laws, and the School Board addressed that during Tuesday’s meeting.
“You should be looking at your state representatives if you have an issue with any laws,” Foganholi said in an interview, “because I don’t do that. My job is to make sure our kids are safe and to make sure our kids are learning. That’s what we do on the School Board.”
For School Board Vice Chair Debra Hixon, who voted against the clear backpack policy, her biggest concern was that it had too many exceptions. Teachers and visitors wouldn’t have been subject to the rule and athletic bags would have still been allowed on campus.
“What’s the sense of making a policy if you have all those exceptions?” Hixon said in an interview. “To me it just didn’t make sense.”
Hixon also said that the safety procedures schools already have in place should be followed. Her husband, an educator, was killed in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre in 2018.
“As someone who lost someone in a school shooting, I will say, 100% it wasn’t about clear backpacks,” Hixon said during the meeting. “It was about staff following the rules. We have procedures in place. They were not followed that day and that’s why there are 17 people not walking the earth today.”
Stoneman Douglas had a clear backpack policy after the shooting for the remainder of that school year.
Foganholi is in favor of a clear backpack policy.
“I think the part that everybody got wrong was they thought it was the solution to everything, which is not the case,” Foganholi said. Clear backpacks are “a layer of safety that would have to work hand in hand with metal detectors.”
What’s next for school safety?
Hixon said the School Board is working on a comprehensive safety plan. Metal detectors are also part of the discussion, but she questions their effectiveness.
“Safety comes in layers,” Hixon said. “So we’re working, chipping away, adding layers as we go along.”
This story was originally published June 15, 2023 at 3:32 PM.
