- December 4, 2025
Thursday, Sept. 4, was already a stressful day for Katherine Cheek. It marked the one-year anniversary of a shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, where two teachers and two students were killed. Apalachee High is Cheek’s alma mater. Winder, Georgia is her hometown.
Adding to her stress that day was learning that a lockdown was issued at 12:50 p.m. at Flagler Palm Coast High School, where her son is a student. The school was under lockdown for an hour after the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office received a 9-1-1 call.
“It was just really terrifying,” Cheek said at a Flagler County School Board workshop on Sept. 23. Cheek spoke during the public comment periods at both the workshop and the board’s business meeting that night, urging that the board to approve the installation of metal detectors in the schools.
While the lockdown appeared to be a false alarm, an FPC student later revealed that he had brought a gun to school on Sept. 4. He was charged with pointing the pistol at a fellow student in a nearby McDonald’s restroom after school.
According to the sheriff department's report, a student was on our campus with a weapon all day walking the halls with our kids, and nobody knew. And how could they, because currently we do not have weapons detectors at the entries of our campuses.
— KATHERINE CHEEK, parent of high school student
“According to the sheriff department's report, a student was on our campus with a weapon all day walking the halls with our kids, and nobody knew,” Cheek said during her remarks at the School Board’s evening meeting. “And how could they, because currently we do not have weapons detectors at the entries of our campuses.”
That could change. On the same day that Cheek made her passionate pleas in Flagler County, Volusia County Schools was implementing weapons detectors at Mainland High School. It is the fourth high school Volusia has equipped with the detectors utilizing artificial intelligence to recognize contents within students' backpacks. The district is planning to install detectors in all 10 Volusia high schools.
Flagler Schools held an executive session with the School Board on Tuesday, Sept. 30. While the meeting was not open to the public, David Bossardet, the district’s safety specialist, said last week that metal detectors would be part of the discussion.
The district worked with the FCSO developing a risk assessment for each campus using the Florida Safe School Assessment Tool, Bossardet said. The district will submit a priority list with a timeline for implementing the FCSO’s recommendations.
Installing metal detectors was one of the recommendations, Bossardet said.
Colt Gray, then a 14-year-old student at Apalachee High School, was charged with four counts of murder. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said Gray brought an AR-15-style rifle to school hidden in his backpack. The Barrow County, Georgia, school district did not install a weapons detection system at Apalachee and the district’s other two high schools until Jan. 13 of this year, more than four months after the shooting.
In fact, the board approved the weapons detectors one day after another Apalachee student was caught with a gun at the school.
The Flagler School Board is scheduled to have a workshop — open to the public — later this month to discuss installing metal detectors. The workshop was initiated by Janie Ruddy’s board member request.
“It was always something that I wanted to explore instead of, or in lieu of, a potential guardian program,” Ruddy said. “That's also been a board member request by another board member, and my personal feelings, and much of the research shows that adding additional weapons does not improve outcomes to particular situations. So, I would rather try to explore technology, and there's been a lot of advances.”
Ruddy said the advantage of a weapons detection system is not just to find a weapon before it is brought into a school, but also to act as a deterrent.
“In the most recent incident of that student at FPC, thank goodness, nothing happened,” Ruddy said. “And in the investigation, the information shared was that the intent was not to cause harm on the campus. But I think about if we had a weapons detection system of some sort, that child, who made a very poor choice that day, could have (thought), ‘OK, I know I have to go through some sort of metal detection. I need to make sure I do not have this item on me when I go to school.’ And his future hopefully would have been much different than what he's going to have to most likely go through at this point in order to hopefully make a turnaround of his circumstances.”
There is a lot to consider when deciding to install metal detectors, Bossardet said. There is the cost. Every Volusia County high school is receiving at least two at a cost of $110,000 each. Flagler has two high schools.
“There’s a significant cost, but we’re more looking at it from a logistics point of view,” he said. “FPC has almost 3,000 kids. How do you get them all through the metal detectors prior to the first bell. And what do you do if the metal detector goes off. What’s the standard operating procedure? Where do we take that student, and who takes them?”
What I do like about it, is it’s truly taking a proactive approach rather than a reactive approach.
— DAVID BOSSARDET, Flagler Schools safety specialist
“What I do like about it,” Bossardet said, “is it’s truly taking a proactive approach rather than a reactive approach. We’ve done school hardening — locking doors, locking gates, adding fences, securing main entrances.”
Also through state statute, Bossardet added, all teachers have a lanyard with a Centegix mobile panic button that when pressed notifies law enforcement and administration simultaneously.
“Now we’re ready for a proactive approach,” Bossardet said.
In her public commentsto the School Board, Cheek said Winder, Georgia, is very similar to Palm Coast. It’s a small town growing faster than it can keep up with, she said.
If a mass shooting can happen at a school in Winder, it can happen here, she said.
Weapons detectors are not a fix-all, Cheek said. But they are a start.
“It’s not going to be easy,” she told the Observer. “Nothing worthwhile is. But I’ll take an inconvenience to make sure our children are safe.”
