Florida’s sheriffs asked for legislative clarification of a “clunky” 2024 school-safety law. Lawmakers responded, sending classroom door-locking revisions through both chambers.
Last summer, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judge espressed concern that law enforcement officers might unintentionally violate state laws designed to lock out threatening people.
“You know, we passed this legislation last year, and it’s unfortunate that the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Commission had to request that it be passed in the first place,” Judd told the Phoenix in a phone interview.
“But, despite our best efforts, there were some schools and some administrators who weren’t keeping the doors locked,” he continued. His county didn’t have that problems but that other counties did, he said.
Judd said the law, before amended, was “clunky and difficult to understand and easy to violate it even without the intent to violate it.”
Legislative clarification may be needed on school safety law, commission says
Lawmakers passed SB 1470 during the last week of the scheduled legislative session. The bill builds on the school guardian program, developed after the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas shootings that killed 17 people, and looks to clarify door locking requirements in hopes of preventing the next school shooting.
The bill builds on HB 1473, a 2024 law mandating classrooms be locked, as well as campus access doors, gates, and other access points, when students are present.
Among the concerns sheriffs raised were the extent to which doors were required to be locked and whether to lock career and technical education classrooms during lessons that require ventilation, like welding.
“I think it’s much better now than it was before,” Judd said this week. In July, voicing concerns from his employees, he had said, “We’re having a really hard time” and “we need something from the state to come down to these folks.”
Specifically, the new bill would allow classrooms to use temporary locks, require school safety protocol to apply for 30 minutes before and after school, and allow door locking exemptions for career and technical education classrooms where ventilation is required.
“No two doors or classrooms are equal, depending on the type of instruction that’s going on there,” Judd said.
The bill requires the perimeter of campuses to be locked or guarded, protecting students behind a locked gate or door.
“The law was a little clunky last year and it needed to be cleaned up so we more clearly could make it reasonable to lock all the doors, and that’s what this legislation did this year,” Judd said. “You would think it would not be necessary to have to put in law to lock a school door to protect a child, however, that’s exactly what we had to do.”
Sen. Danny Burgess, the measure’s Senate sponsor, said the bill helps clarify that schools would not need to provide security for non-school meetings happening at night, such as a Boy Scouts meeting. The 2024 law requires security “when students are on campus,” whereas the new language sets the timeframe for security measures to 30 minutes before and after school.
“SB 1470 builds on last year’s school safety policy that we passed by strengthening school safety training and campus security measures while supporting practical implementation for schools and law enforcement. Essentially, the goal is to balance enhanced safety against the need for efficient operations in schools,” Burgess said when presenting the bill in committee in March.
The House bill was sponsored by Reps. Brad Yeager and Christine Hunschofsky, who was mayor of Parkland at the time of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shootings.
Hunschofsky said in March that she and Yeager made sure to consult with school leaders in crafting the legislation “so that whatever we’re doing up here also makes sense in a school environment, because it’s about safety but it’s also about making sure the kids and the teachers have the environment that they need to thrive.”
The bill passed unanimously in all of its stops.
Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, chair of the safety commission, worked with legislators to address the needed changes, Judd and Burgess said.
Subject to the still incomplete Appropriations Act, the bill would implement a centralized panic alert system connecting the state’s schools.
It would allow childcare facilities, at their own cost, to partake in the school guardian program to train staff or guards in school safety.
“It’s like building a new park — you pour sidewalks and then sometimes you see people want to walk in areas where there’s not a sidewalk so you go back and you pour more sidewalks where people really want to walk,” Judd said.
“We’ve got this law in place to make sure children are kept safe, and if we need to tweak it or modify it in the future, just as the Legislature was more than willing to do it this time, then we’ll do that at the appropriate time.”
The bill has not yet been sent to the governor.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.
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