MIAMI — The drones zip through school hallways, buzzing loudly like a swarm of bees. They can shoot puffs of pepper spray, flash dizzying lights and hurl themselves at 60 miles per hour at their target: a school shooter.

These non-lethal drones are designed to reach a gunman in 15 seconds. Soon, they’ll be available in a Broward County high school — though it’s not clear when.

Over the last two years, Florida has invested over $1 million into a pilot program that installs the Campus Guardian Angel drones in schools. Broward County Public Schools, where the worst school shooting in the state’s history took place, is one of three school districts participating in the first round of the pilot program. Boyd H. Anderson High in Lauderdale Lakes is poised to be the first Broward school to have the drones, but the pilot program is “still in the planning stages and implementation has not begun,” said BCPS spokesperson Keyla Concepción.

Though the state announced last November that Broward was part of the drone pilot program, the school district “has not evaluated, endorsed, nor authorized any specific drone capabilities, including the deployment of pepper spray,” Concepción said.

In a recent interview, Superintendent Howard Hepburn said there are no details yet on when the drone system at Boyd H. Anderson will be up and running. The boxes that house the drones (but not the drones themselves) were installed in at the school this summer, according to Mithril Defense, the Austin-based company that created Campus Guardian Angel.

“We just want to make sure that we continue to enhance the safety and security of our schools,” Hepburn said. “If there is an emergency on the campus, we want to be able to respond quickly, ensuring that law enforcement has a bird’s eye view of what’s going on in the facility, so they can strategize their response to neutralize any threat to a school that’s going to put our students and staff in jeopardy.”

Talks of enhancing school safety with the latest technology are especially relevant in Broward County, where the memory of the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting remains vivid and deeply personal. The time it takes for law enforcement to respond to school shootings — in some cases because of officers’ refusal to enter the building — has also been a sore subject for communities that have experienced gun violence. In 2018, 11 minutes went by before law enforcement responded to the shooting at Stoneman Douglas because Broward Sheriff’s Office deputies waited outside. In 2022, officers waited for over an hour before they entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, where a shooter killed 19 students and two teachers.

Nationwide, students, teachers and staff live with the fear of gun violence in schools. Nearly 400,000 students have experienced gun violence at school since the 1999 Columbine High School shooting, according to a Washington Post tracker.

“Law enforcement does a great job most of the time. They do a fantastic job around the country,” said Khristof Oborski, the Campus Guardian Angel director of tactical operations. “But the problem is that our law enforcement just can’t be everywhere all the time in the school. We can.”

Recent headlines about drones in public schools have received mixed reactions from school safety advocates. Some applaud the state’s embrace of new technology. Some say they’d like to see lawmakers embrace gun control, too.

“Any school could be the next site of a mass shooting, but at the same time, my immediate question was, ‘What evidence do we have that this will actually make students safer?’ That’s where I think the conversation should begin,” said Jaclyn Corin, a Stoneman Douglas shooting survivor and the executive director of March For Our Lives. “Of course, we all share the same goal of keeping children safe, but good intentions alone aren’t always enough."

How the program works

Florida lawmakers approved two batches of funding for Campus Guardian Angel: $557,000 in last year’s state budget and $564,500 in this year’s.

For the first round of funding, three school districts — Broward, Leon and Volusia — were slated to receive drones to be installed in one school. Besides the three schools in Florida, there are at least six other schools in Georgia and Colorado that will be equipped with Mithril Defense’s anti-school shooter drones, according to the Washington Post.

“Florida remains the national leader in school safety because we continue to invest in solutions that protect students and support a rapid, coordinated response,” then-Commissioner of Education Anastasios Kamoutsas said in a statement last year. “The Guardian Angel Program is an important step in expanding the safety tools available to our districts.”

The Campus Guardian Angel drones are housed in storage boxes, which each hold three drones. The storage boxes are installed throughout the school, usually mounted onto walls. The Florida legislature divvied up 40 boxes, or 120 drones, among the three participating school districts, said Taylor Worthington, the Campus Guardian Angel head of enterprise business development.

Broward Schools chose Boyd H. Anderson for the pilot program due to its large size and complex campus layout. That school received 14 boxes, which will house 42 drones.

State lawmakers approved another $564,500 for the drone pilot program this year. Worthington said that pool of money will expand the program to three additional districts. The company provided its recommendations for which districts for the Department of Education to choose. The Department of Education did not respond to Miami Herald questions about the pilot program.

“Actually this summer, when we’ve been participating in conferences around the Florida area, there’s not a single police chief that we’ve talked to that says they don’t want this,” Worthington said. “And a majority of the superintendents are also saying they want this. So I’m sure the DOE has a very difficult decision of who to pick for the next three.”

Rafael Villalobos, the newly-selected superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools, briefly mentioned the use of drones when he was asked about school safety during his public school board interview last week. “I want to make sure that I can bring in drones to our school district. I want to make sure that we use AI at some capacity to deter future concerns that may be on the horizon,” he said.

How the drones work

In each school, Campus Guardian Angel starts by creating a virtual 3D model of the entire school layout, which it uses for practice runs. The drone system has been tested in virtual and in-person simulations but not in an actual shooting.

All school faculty and staff will have an app on their phones to use if there is a potential school shooter. (Oborski said the drones are strictly a “last resort” for life-threatening situations, and are not to be used to respond to minor incidents or for surveillance.)

If a teacher sees a person on campus with a gun, for example, the teacher can tap a button on the app that immediately connects with the Campus Guardian Angel team in Austin to verify what the potential emergency is. That is supposed to take less than five seconds, Oborski said. Local law enforcement is immediately notified, and the drones are deployed.

Three drones, flown remotely by highly skilled drone racing pilots, head to exactly where the assailant is in 15 seconds, a fraction of the time it would take for a police officer running on foot to arrive, Oborski said. The team in Austin, made up of former law enforcement officers, former military professionals, trained paramedics and former 911 operators, is available to assist and communicate with first responders, victims and survivors at the school through the drones.

“With our system, you’re talking to a human being here in Austin,” Oborski said.

Ideally, the assailant is too distracted and disoriented by the drones to focus on attacking students and faculty. If a gunman shoots down a drone, which Oborski said is difficult to do, another drone will fly in to take its place.

“We take that as a win because all of those rounds that he had meant to harm children with are now being wasted on our equipment," he said.

A deterrent or a ‘Band-Aid solution’?

Worthington and Oborski see the program as both a formidable response during an active incident and a preventative measure that deters potential school shooters from attacking in the first place.

“The sheer thought of this, of how do you get to a point where mass shootings in America, and specifically mass shootings that are targeting children in America, are eradicated. The best way to do that is to create an environment where they don’t even try,” Worthington said. “They either go do something else that day or they choose to go get the help that they need.”

As intriguing as the new technology is, some question if this is how so much taxpayer money should be spent.

Tony Montalto, the president of public safety advocacy group Stand With Parkland and father of Gina, who was killed in the Stoneman Douglas shooting, said he applauds the state for the innovation and thinks the drones can be helpful for police. But he believes money would be better spent on preventative measures, like enhancing behavioral threat assessment programs and purchasing ballistic doors for schools.

“I think it’s important to explore new areas of protecting schools. However, I don’t believe that the drones are the answer,” Montalto said.

Corin, the March For Our Lives executive director, said technology can’t replace public policy. Ultimately, she said, the real long-term solution to preventing school shootings is addressing the root cause of gun violence, which requires a layered approach.

“While I think it’s worth evaluating new ideas always, it’s important not to confuse innovation with proven impact,” she said.

Along with new tactics to respond to active threats, Corin said she wants to see lawmakers and school districts prioritize prevention. That looks like stronger firearm storage requirements, more mental health counselors in schools and comprehensive background checks, she said.

“I don’t necessarily fault them for looking at new tools, but I do think it’s a Band-Aid solution. It’s important to recognize what this program is designed to do,” Corin said. “It’s designed to respond after a school shooting has already begun. That means it’s addressing the consequences of a shooting, not reducing the likelihood that one occurs in the first place.”

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