By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter

            Levy County public schools opened for business Wednesday with a school resource deputy sheriff walking the hallways of every campus for the protection of students and staff, but schools were without a second layer of armed security known as the Guardians.

            The statewide Guardian program was established by the Florida Legislature in 2018 through the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act to make schools safer through the use of trained volunteers. The Coach Aaron Feis Guardian Program is named for the coach who was killed trying to stop a gunman who murdered 17 people at the school.

            Guardians can be school district or charter school employees, including teachers. They would volunteer to serve as a school guardian in addition to their other job duties. They have no arrest powers but are trained to aid in stopping an active assailant on school campuses.

            Superintendent of Schools Chris Cowart approached Levy County Sheriff Bobby McCallum this summer about restarting the Guardians program which fizzled in 2019 when McCallum said approximately 20 to 23 teachers, coaches and administrators withdrew from the program after initially filing an application to participate.

            “After all of those applicants, we worked our way through all of those and none of them wanted to be Guardians,” McCallum said. “They thought they would get paid for it. They thought they would have had to spend their summer training. The Guardians training is pretty extensive and it just takes a lot of hours.”

            The sheriff’s office is in charge of vetting applicants and training them to be Guardians, but the program actually belongs to the Levy County School Board and the superintendent of schools.

            Guardian Program Questions

            School Board Chairwoman Ashley Clemenzi didn’t have any comment when asked about the Guardians program Wednesday.

            Cowart was reluctant to talk about how he is planning to get the program back on track, but he said there is no Guardians program at this point.

            “We did have a Guardians program. We’re working through that process cooperatively with the sheriff. We will be having the Guardians program, but there’s a process to get it squared away,” Cowart said.

            Cowart said the school district is in contact with people who have a law enforcement background and may be willing to participate in the Guardian program.

            “So, you don’t have anybody right now?” the superintendent was asked.

            “I can’t really answer that question,” Cowart said.

            The reporter said people would like to know if the school district has trained volunteers willing to fight for the kids.

            “I will say we have many people who have law enforcement backgrounds, who have law enforcement experience, are on campuses, and who would be willing to step up and help,” Cowart said. “That’s in addition to our school resource officers.”

            “Why is that type of thing a secret?” he was asked.

            “What secret?” Cowart asked.

            Reporter: “How many Guardians you have, how many people you have interested.”

            “Anything safety and security like that I don’t want to divulge how and when. I just think there’s an opportunity for people to do an evil and have access to information like that. Just like we wouldn’t want to give up what our financial plans are; I’d rather air on the side of caution in not giving information – I’m not trying to not be transparent – but I don’t want to do anything that would cause unintended consequences.”

            Teachers Can’t be True Guardians?

            McCallum was asked if he thought classroom teachers should be used as armed Guardians to protect their students. McCallum said classroom teachers, who can’t leave their classrooms to neutralize a gunman wouldn’t make good Guardians.

            “They are tied down in a classroom. Their first responsibility is to get those kids behind safe corners and take care of the classroom,” McCallum said. “They’re not in a typical situation where they can leave their classroom and go to the threat.”

            The reporter said he didn’t think teachers would leave their classroom to stop a gunman, but what if a gunman walked into their classroom, as is so often the case? Should teachers be armed to defend students in their classrooms?

            “That’s a good question for the superintendent. I don’t think that’s the case. If he wants to approve them as Guardians, we’ll train them, but I don’t think that’s a good situation,” McCallum said. “Teachers can be Guardians, but whether it’s a written rule or unwritten when they’re tied to their classroom, they can’t be a true Guardian.

            McCallum said if teachers were armed with a gun in a classroom, they would have to keep the weapons away from the students.

            “It’s not practical and it’s not something we have looked at doing. If that’s what the superintendent, if they want to do that, we would certainly train them,” McCallum said.

            Reporter: “Would the superintendent of schools have the discretion to use classroom teachers as Guardians?

             “Yes, Guardians come under them (the school board and superintendent). We can overturn. They are going to look to us for backgrounding as to their ability to be Guardians and do the training. The only thing I can do is not agree to train them as being not suited to be a Guardian,” McCallum said. “I can overrule that. It really goes through the superintendent and Florida Department of Education. Our responsibility is to vet them and train them.”

            Teacher’s Primary Responsibility

            Reporter: “I know a lot of members of the public I talked to, know that gunmen often get inside a classroom. The teachers are unarmed and they start killing the kids.”

            “There’s pros and cons to all sides of it. If they do get in a classroom, that’s the case,” he said.

            Reporter: “Once a gunman gets into a classroom, the shooting starts.”

            McCallum said it all sounds good when talking about the safety of the kids, but he said the teacher would have to be trained and weapons secured from the kids.

            “A teacher’s primary responsibility is to get students behind the hard corners and get them where they are trained to go,” McCallum said. “The topic is back on the plate again and we continue to look at it and we can expand it and do what we can. Like I said, we tried it at the very beginning and they dropped out one by one. But we keep working on it.”

            Reporter: “Did any teachers apply to be a Guardian the first time the program was implemented?”

            “That’s the ones that did apply – teachers, coaches, administrative personnel. When they found out they wouldn’t be paid for that training and they found out about all that responsibility that went with it, they started dropping out one by one. They didn’t have the time to commit to it, training all summer, those kinds of things. I think we’ll take a look at it and try to expand it,” McCallum said. “The easiest thing is to get the teachers and everyone that’s on the school campus as much as you can be trained because they’re there. They’re paid a salary, at least as a teacher, if not a Guardian and that’s easier.”

            McCallum said he doesn’t think any school in the state has been tested regarding how Guardians would react to an active shooter on campus. He is thankful for that.

            “A real-life situation – it hasn’t been tested and I hope and pray it never will, and I think the superintendent and I are going to look at every aspect of it,” McCallum said.

            Going to the Threat                  

            McCallum said sheriff’s office deputies – known as school resource officers – are assigned to every campus in Levy County.    

            “We just completed all our active threat training in the schools with an actual threat. We combined those with Williston Police Department, Chiefland Police Department and Cedar Key Police Department – all of them were part of the training in their schools and their cities,” McCallum said.

            McCallum said his school resource deputies are positioned to defend schools on every campus, including the new middle high school in Chiefland. He said the school resource deputies worked in the schools all summer and then participated in active threat training. The final training night took place at Williston Middle High School Thursday night. Police in all three cities were made familiar with the school facilities in their cities as part of their training.

            “We’re hopeful and praying for a safe school year and we’re going to do our best to keep it that way,” he said.

            McCallum was asked why he thinks his school resource officers will behave differently than school district police and city police in Uvalde, Texas, site of a school massacre on May 24. Cameras showed three police officers wearing bulletproof vests approaching the classroom where the shooter was killing students. When the gunman opened fire on the police officers, they ran for cover. Reports indicate it took an hour before a federal police officer shot the assailant dead in the classroom.

            McCallum said all of his school resource officers have been trained to go straight to the threat.

            “They understand they are to go immediately to the threat and try to take the threat out,” he said. “They have to do that with caution. They don’t want to be taken out, obviously. Once they are taken out, there are problems. They are trained. They are pledged. None of them have asked to get out.”

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Enterprise Reporting by Terry Witt August 10, 2022; Posted August 10, 2022