CUMMING, Ga. — The state named five schools to participate in a pilot program to test drones designed to thwart a school shooting, but at least one school in metro Atlanta has opted out.
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Forsyth Central High School in Cumming was selected to have the drones placed on campus this coming school year.
Michele Dugan, a spokesperson for Forsyth County Schools, said district officials discussed it, “but no final decision was made to move forward with it.”
In an email, she said the district continues to “review a number of school safety options and programs, but no commitment or implementation decision has been finalized at this time.”
Campus Guardian Angel, based in Austin, Texas, is the startup company that manufactures the remotely operated drones, which are about the size of a 16-inch laptop computer. They’re equipped with sirens, strobe lights and pepper spray to distract a potential shooter. They can also ram into an intruder at speeds of 60 to 70 miles per hour.
“The critical piece that we’re working on is reducing the five to eight minutes it takes for police to arrive on scene in force, trying to reduce that down to 15 seconds,” said Justin Marston, the founder and chief executive officer of the company.
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School staff can activate the drones with the push of an emergency button, which alerts professional drone pilots in a control room in Texas. A school would have anywhere from 20 to 60 drones in mounted boxes across campus and would provide a livestream of the response to law enforcement. But the drones have not yet responded to a real-life school shooting
“I think it’s absolutely absurd, honestly,” said LaDeija Kimbrough, a volunteer for the gun control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety. She said Georgia should instead enact tougher laws to keep guns in safe storage and away from dangerous people.
“We have not taken those steps in Georgia, but we’re just skipping over practical ways to decrease the threat for something that has not been tested or shows any evidence of working,” she said. “Acting like this is a movie and some type of action movie, and we’re betting the lives of children.”
However, Martson said even though the drones have not been deployed in an actual school shooting, they have been tested.
“When you see this, it is very obviously effective. We’ve demonstrated it in many places. It works very well.”
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The state legislature approved $550,000 to fund the pilot program for a small number of schools.
Quinton Lamerique graduated from Forsyth Central in 2021 and thinks the drones could be a potent line of defense before law enforcement arrives.
“I feel like we’ve got to try new things, and if we don’t, we’ll continue to have those tragedies,” he said. “But we have to make sure this is properly tested at the same time.”
Gabriel Martinez, a parent of young children, said the drones could at least stall a shooter.
“If they see a drone and they hear the sirens, that will scare them off and reconsider what they plan to do,” he said.
Gainesville High School, River Ridge High School in Woodstock, Coffee County High School in Douglas and Statesboro High School are the other schools selected, but they are still evaluating whether to participate.
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