Students at four high schools in Palm Beach County are starting the new year Thursday with something they hadn't done before: walking through a metal detector when arriving on campus.
NBC affiliate WPTV-TV reports the schools - Seminole Ridge Community High School in Loxahatchee, Palm Beach Lakes High School, Palm Beach Gardens High School and John I. Leonard High School in Greenacres - are participating in a pilot program to see if the School District of Palm Beach County wants to implement it on a larger scale.
The four schools began testing the devices this summer and Palm Beach County is the first district in South Florida to use walk-through metal detectors on school campus.
"If there were a magic wand, we would have done it 20 years ago," said Robert Hatcher, the principal of Seminole Ridge High School. "This is just another step and another evolution in making schools safer."
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School District Police Chief Sarah Mooney said nothing suspicious had been found during the summer.
"If the pilot goes well, I'm going to share those findings with the school board. And if they are comfortable, at that point, we would start implementing across all high schools," Superintendent Mike Burke said. "That would probably take most of the school year to work our way through the district."
Burke added if the program is implemented at all high schools, they would later work on placing them at all middle schools in the district.
