GWINNETT COUNTY, GA — In Gwinnett County, Georgia’s largest school district, students return on Monday and school leaders are finalizing several new safety measures following last year’s tragic mass shooting at Apalachee High School in neighboring Barrow County.
Gwinnett Schools Police Chief Tony Lockard says the district plans to hire additional school resource officers (SROs), aiming to place at least one officer in every school and two in each high school. In the meantime, the district is contracting private school safety officers to fill in where permanent SROs are not yet in place.
The district also plans to install weapons detection systems at every middle and high school in the coming months. Lockard says, “We’re going to introduce them throughout the 2025-26 school year, kind of a phased in approach.”
He emphasized that students won’t see the new security systems immediately. “Because there’s a lot of stuff already going on. You have brand new rising 6th graders, in high school you have brand new rising 9th graders.”
Lockard says these changes reflect a broader push for innovative safety strategies: “Our main priorities for safety this year are getting some more school resource officers hired, filling in those gaps where we don’t have school resource officers.”
District officials say the goal is to keep students safe as they return to the classroom.
WSB’s Austin Eller contributed to this story
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