What Do Texas Schools Think About Armed Drones for Security?

Texas school districts investigating UAV security, but not armed drones

By DRONELIFE Features Editor Jim Magill

Several Texas school districts are considering adopting a program being promoted by an Austin-based security company, that would employ drones to respond to potential threats such as an active shooter on campus.

However, neither of the two school districts contacted by DroneLife seem interested in adopting the most controversial aspect of services offered by Campus Guardian Angel, that of deploying drones equipped with non-lethal weapons including pepper spray and flash-bang grenades.

Boerne Independent School District, located about 30 miles northwest of San Antonio, is one of the districts actively investigating the implementation of a drone-based security program.

“We’ve done three training events with Campus Guardian Angel with our counterparts in fire, EMS and law enforcement. We have plugged them into some of our larger-scale exercises as a proof of concept and as a partnership,” Rick Goodrich, chief of safety and security for the district of about 9,000 students, said in an interview.

Goodrich said the district is envisioning a program in which the drones would augment the district’s existing security forces, which patrol the district’s schools on a regular basis.

“We’re always looking for any way that we can best protect our staff and students. What we’re looking at with this program would be another layer, another piece of the puzzle that we would use to protect folks,” he said.”

“Nothing’s going to replace our law enforcement officers that are there day-to-day,” Goodrich said. “Just like all of the other tools that we employ, whether it’s our cameras, our visitor management, our access control, any of those things, this would just be another layer of that.”

In a recent interview with DroneLife, Justin Marston, Campus Guardian Angel’s CEO, said the company was offering to Texas schools a service that would deploy drones armed with “less lethal effects,” including pepper spray or flash-bang grenades, that could be used to incapacitate a would-be school shooter.

But Goodrich said the way Boerne ISD was considering using the company’s drones would be more to provide situational awareness to the district’s officers so that they could respond more safely and efficiently to the threat.

“I can’t speak to what the company is offering. I can tell you that everything that we’ve done so far training-wise has just been providing situational limits, the real-time imaging and the real-time reporting from their operations center to us of what the situation is,” he said.

Under the type of program Boerne ISD is considering, drones would be positioned in each of the district’s 14 campuses, ready to be deployed remotely from Campus Guardian Angel’s headquarters in Austin. The drones would fly through the school to where the threat was located giving the district’s officers a drones-eye view of the situation.

“Because they’re stationed at the incident site there’s no ramp-up time. They immediately deploy and can provide real-time intelligence on what is happening at the crisis site, while first responders are en route. And that’s a game changer.”

Goodrich said the school district is still in the evaluation stage of looking into whether to adopt the Campus Guardian Angel security system. He said the district was working with the company to develop a memorandum of understanding about the proposed system, which would have to be endorsed by various committees, before being presented to the district’s board of trustees for a vote.

“The attorneys are doing what attorneys do and we’re standing by,” he said.

Another Texas school district looking into adopting the drone-based security system is Highland Park ISD located in suburban Dallas. As is the case with Boerne ISD, officials at the Highland Park District see the Campus Guardian Angel program as augmenting the work of officers in schools, rather than replacing them with drones.

“The way we’re looking at this is, technology is not going to go away. It’s not something we can ignore. And technology can help us in a lot of different ways,” said Highland Park ISD Police Chief Mark Rowden. “Our major concern is that we utilize everything that we possibly can … in order to protect, and to provide safety and security in our schools.”

Rowden said he views drones as being a potentially useful tool to keep his officers safe when confronting active threat situations. “If our officers aren’t safe in doing what they’re doing, then they’re of no help to the people we’re sworn to protect,” he said.

Under current state law, every school in Texas is required to have an armed security guard or police officer on campus. A bill introduced in the state House of Representatives would allow some districts to substitute a drone-based security system for the requirement to hire an armed officer.

However, Rowden said he does not see drones replacing human security officers in schools any time soon. “The parents and the students need to see those officers there to feel that security on a daily basis,” he said. “You’re not going to have drones flying through a school daily or greeting kids at the door.”

Should his district adopt a drone security system, Rowden said the UAVs would be operated as tools to assist the officers stationed at the schools or other law enforcement personnel responding to an emergency.

“Those would only be used on an as-needed basis,” he said. “They would be able to provide intelligence to the officers entering a building in an active threat situation.”

The drones would be used to assist law enforcement personnel in clearing a building and giving the officers information. “It’s a whole lot easier and a whole lot safer to send a drone around a corner and let that drone get shot rather than having an officer round that corner,” he said. “It’s a lot better to send a drone into a room before you enter it to give you information on what’s in that room.”

Like in Boerne ISD, the question of whether the Highland Park district would ultimately adopt a drone security system is up to the district’s board of trustees. However, Rowden said several board members who serve on the district’s emergency operations planning team attended a demonstration of the technology put on at a Highland Park school by Campus Guardian Angel, and they seemed to be impressed by what they saw.

“I can’t speak for them because we haven’t gotten to that point in our discussions as far as getting their opinion, but they certainly see the value in the capabilities of the drones,” he said.

Read more:

• Pepper Spray Drones in Schools: Can Technology Stop Tragedy?
• Texas Lawmaker Proposes Drones for School Security: A Less-Lethal Solution
• Texas Drone Law Heads to Supreme Court: Key Free Speech Case in the Balance

Jim Magill is a Houston-based writer with almost a quarter-century of experience covering technical and economic developments in the oil and gas industry. After retiring in December 2019 as a senior editor with S&P Global Platts, Jim began writing about emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, robots and drones, and the ways in which they’re contributing to our society. In addition to DroneLife, Jim is a contributor to Forbes.com and his work has appeared in the Houston Chronicle, U.S. News & World Report, and Unmanned Systems, a publication of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.