How much — and which — technology makes a school safe? It’s a question that Rick Francis, Chief of the Department of School Safety at the Seminole County (Florida) Sheriff’s Office, grapples with almost every day.
He particularly remembers a painful conversation a few years ago. The father of one of the students killed in the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland asked Francis to fly out West to visit what he heard was the safest school in the world. It had safety features such as smoke automatically filling the hallways once a threat activation was issued.
“And I had to tell him, it’s a waste of time, and it’s a waste of money,” said Francis, a former military combat medic and a law enforcement veteran of 19 years who’s become a nationally known expert on school safety.
“Because, sadly, all the technology in the world won’t stop someone who’s hell-bent on creating maximum casualties,” he said.
School safety has become a booming industry
Technology is one, albeit critical, component in a holistic school safety approach that is built around culture, climate and collaboration between school officials and public safety entities, Francis added. Across the country, it’s a shift away from purely reactive measures toward a stronger focus on proactive threat management, including behavioral threat assessment management and emergency operations planning.
School safety has become a multi-billion-dollar industry in the U.S. According to market research reports, the global school and campus security market, valued at $2.4 billion this year, is expected to reach over $6 billion by 2035.
Modern school safety technologies include state-of-the-art weapons detection systems, video surveillance, biometric access control and visitor screening, automated lockdown systems, wearable panic buttons and lanyards, and digital floor plan mapping. Many emerging technologies are AI-enabled and can be integrated across platforms.
As of late 2025, over 20 states, including Florida, have passed or introduced legislation requiring critical incident mapping for K-12 schools to aid law enforcement during emergencies.
But even the most sophisticated technologies are not a perfect safeguard against human error, research shows. For example, understaffed school safety teams, including school resource officers, can miss detector alarms and accidentally skip secondary screenings. Or teachers, lured by detection technology into a false sense of security, may let their attention and situational awareness slip — by overlooking a student who’s disregarding the school’s “no backpack” policy.
Chief Francis participating in a school Trunk-or-Treat event.
Photo/Seminole County Sheriff’s Office
Chief Francis handing out meals to children during their “Shop with a Sheriff” event.
Photo/Seminole County Sheriff’s Office
Chief Francis visiting local school students.
Photo/Seminole County Sheriff’s Office
Chief Francis handing out meals to children during their “Shop with a Sheriff” event.
Photo/Seminole County Sheriff’s Office
Law enforcement must pressure-test school safety systems
Some technologies that are touted as lifesaving can even be counterproductive, Francis noted. Referring to his conversation with the father of one of the Parkland shooting victims, he said smoke-blasting security systems can hamper swift and precise response by first responders.
Technology, especially in a school setting, must be rigidly vetted and tested under the worst possible conditions, Francis added. When evaluating the return-on-investment for school safety technology, he always asks vendors about their technology’s weak spot. And if they claim there are none, he turns away.
“Because nothing is guaranteed in this business,” he said.
Also, there’s no cookie-cutter approach to school safety technology, the chief added, and all solutions must agree with a school district’s unique ecosystem.
“What works in rural parts of Washington state may not work for us in Seminole County,” Francis said. Seminole County, in central Florida just north of Orlando, is primarily urban and suburban and has a population of 500,000.
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Francis’ department oversees safety and security operations for 70 public and charter schools serving about 68,000 students and 10,000 staff members, as well as several private schools and a local state college. The department is staffed with 120 school resource officers, deputies and supervisors, and supported by 135 crossing guards and supervisory personnel.
While the type of school safety technology deployed is important, Francis said it’s even more critical how it is used, who sets it up and who controls it.
Whatever the school culture, budget and student population makeup, Francis said law enforcement must be an integral part of every school safety ecosystem — and involved in every step of the way, from setting up the technology and assessing a threat to responding to an emergency.
Real-time access and speed to resolution can save lives
For Francis, school safety technology — and the way it’s integrated — must serve three core principles: speed to resolution, breaking down operational silos and ensuring law enforcement can access the technology independently.
Having full and live access to a schools’ camera system and other threat assessment and detection technologies is critical. In Seminole County, most school cameras are integrated into the real time crime center (RTCC) at the sheriff’s office. Francis said he listens to and understands concerns about students’ privacy and fears of Big Brother-type scenarios.
“But our setup is incident-driven,” he explained, assuring law enforcement doesn’t monitor school cameras 24/7. But if an emergency call comes in, his team can immediately pull up live camera feeds and other real-time data and relay the information to responding officers and deputies through their mobile phones and tablets. They can also embed digital floor plan maps of the school into the CAD system.
“Having real-time capabilities is key,” said Francis.
At the Parkland shooting in 2018, police were operating on delayed information. Security footage from the school had somehow been rewound, and officers were watching it on a 20-minute lag — leading them to believe the gunman was still in the building, when he was long gone.
The chief also pushes back on schools preferring to provide a secure link at the time of an incident, instead of giving law enforcement access to live feeds.
“You’d be losing valuable time in a situation where every second counts,” he said.
Interoperability, mass communication and unified command
Mass communication is another critical component of a swift response to an active threat, the chief emphasized. Information must go out to school staff, local, state and federal law enforcement agencies and emergency management partners quickly and through secure channels — from two-way encrypted radios to emails, text alerts and notification apps. Redundancy is key, he added, including backup systems such as a dedicated school safety Wi-Fi network in the event cellular service breaks down.
From a command perspective, interoperability and situational awareness through real-time information help guide a fast and precise response during a critical incident, increasing the safety of students, staff and first responders and avoiding excessive damage to the building.
It also enables law enforcement to focus on their core job — “and that is: Stop the killing, stop the dying,” Francis said.
Robust and real-time intelligence also supports first responders during the recovery phase, when fire and EMS start taking care of the victims, and police are escorting students out of the building.
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AI and human verification: Turning alerts into actionable intelligence
Most of the school safety technology used in Seminole County is AI-driven and human-verified. For example, when a weapons detection system alerts, an officer and military veteran with advanced weapon and combat experience confirms that a gun has been detected and tries to determine the weapon’s make and model.
Combining artificial and human intelligence also helps distinguish between a basic alert and actionable intelligence — and between a false alarm or swatting attempt and a real threat. One indicator of a real-world incident, Francis said, is that law enforcement typically receives multiple alerts at once, whether through lanyards, panic buttons, notification apps or 911 calls.
Verification then becomes a collaborative effort, which involves law enforcement with RTCC capabilities, dispatch and the school safety team on the ground.
In the video below, Chief Rick Francis joins a podcast to discuss the importance of school safety and security at Seminole County Public Schools, how technology plays a vital role and more.
Governance, culture and shared planning
Day-to-day, school safety is a careful dance of aligning proven protocols with fluid situations and responses. Buy-in from school leadership and collaboration with school staff are key, as well as regular, thorough and joint training. If officers and deputies are involved in the school safety setup from the very beginning, they become “a natural part of the school’s fabric, its culture and climate,” said Francis.
At the same time, the decision-making authority must be clearly defined, he added. “I’ll never have school personnel question law enforcement on a threat assessment or an arrest,” he said. “That’s not their lane.”
Also, law enforcement will establish and lead a unified command during a critical incident response.
But not all situations require police intervention. Officers and deputies will respond to a call for help, but if the situation turns out to be a discipline issue, it should be handled by the school, “and we are going to excuse ourselves,” Francis said.
It’s also important to implement processes and procedures that are replicable and inclusive, and ensure access and continuity, he added. For example, every member of the school staff must have the option to lock the school down, not just the principal.
After nearly two decades in school safety, Francis has reached a clear conclusion: Technology is an enabler, but governance determines the success.
“In the K-12 safety arena, the most secure schools are not the ones packed with the most high-tech devices,” he said. “They’re the ones with the clearest leadership structure and the strongest culture of shared planning.”
