Three school districts, including one in Central Florida, will be a part of a new statewide effort to use drones to improve safety in K-12 schools.
Broward and Leon school districts, and Volusia County Schools in Central Florida, have been chosen to participate in the Campus Guardian Angel Pilot Program.
In some schools, the program will use drones designed by Texas company Campus Guardian Angel to distract and disarm an active shooter in the event of a mass shooting and to collect audio and video of potential threats.
CEO Justin Marston said the drones, which can be deployed in as little as 5 seconds after a panic button has been activated, use an escalation of force process. They deploy from boxes near the ceiling.
"We start off with the siren, and we tell the person to drop the gun, lay on the ground, surrender. If they don't surrender, our next step in that escalation is to use pepper spray and, you know, cover them in pepper spray, which is going to make it very hard for them to target children, to see anything," Marston said.
If the active shooter still doesn't stop, the operator can activate the drones to run into the shooter at 50 or 60 mph, which Marston said is the equivalent of being hit by a baseball bat.
Marston said the drones are controlled from their headquarters in Texas in the event of an active shooter.
Video of Campus Guardian Angel drones attacking a target:
"We bring up a 3D digital twin of the school in our op center in Austin, and then the drones that we've already put there on site, in boxes, can then take off, and we are flying them over a secure channel on the internet from a 1,000 miles away," Marston said.
Marston said the inspiration to use drones to protect kids in schools came from fighters in Ukraine who said they were able to deploy drones to keep soldiers safe during the Russia-Ukraine War.
"And we talked to people from Ukraine Special Forces, and they said, 'Yeah, in 600 missions, we only got shot down once. They know they're coming, they just can't do anything about it,' " Marston said.
"And so we kind of said, hey, if we could take that general concept, if we could take the idea of using small drones, and then we could pre-stage them in schools ahead of time and fly them from a central office as a managed service."
Florida is the first state to deploy the technology and has committed $557,000 to the program.
In a statement, Commissioner of Education Stasi Kamoutsas said the pilot program is an important step in expanding the tools available to schools to keep kids safe.
Carmen Balgobin, the superintendent of Volusia County Schools, said she's proud they're one of the three districts to partner with the Florida DOE in this effort.
"By participating in this program, we are reinforcing our commitment to proactive safety measures and smart, coordinated response," Balgobin said.
Earlier this year, a gunman opened fire on the Florida State University campus. Two people were killed and six people injured.
Florida's deadliest school shooting so far took place at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland on Valentine's Day in 2018. Seventeen people were killed and another 17 were injured.
The overall number of mass shootings has decreased in Florida this year. There have been 13 shootings involving four or more people, so far, according to Gun Violence Archive. Last year, there were 32 mass shootings.
Across the country, at least 12,967 people have died so far this year from gun violence, including 198 children and 899 teens.
Copyright 2025 Central Florida Public Media
