Henrico Schools’ weapons scanners cause delays, mixed reactions from community

It’s a little past 8:30 a.m. on a Tuesday, and the line of students outside Mills E. Godwin High School is beginning to grow exponentially, wrapping around the side of the building, with hundreds of students waiting to pass through the new weapons detection scanners placed at the main entrance.

Getting a student through the scanners takes only a few seconds, but the alarm goes off almost every minute, activated by items such as laptops, water bottles, phone chargers, three-ring binders, and even spiral notebooks. Several students set the alarm off multiple times and have to be pulled aside by administrators to have their bags searched one-by-one.

Godwin Principal Leigh Dunavant tries to hurry up the process, ushering students – some still a little confused – through the scanners or to the side tables for bag searching.

“Come on through! Come on through!” she says. “Let’s keep it moving.”

“Take your binders out from now on, put them on the table,” she says as the alarm keeps going off.

The scanners had been implemented at all Henrico high schools the day before, on the first day of school, and some students at Godwin were a little more than 10 minutes late as a result. But at another Henrico high school, Highland Springs, parents reported that students arrived 30 to 40 minutes late after the first bell because of the long lines caused by the scanners.

But Dunavant says this process is the most efficient security protocol tested by Henrico Schools this past year. It’s supposed to be quicker, easier, and take less adults to operate each set of scanners – with one set at Godwin’s main entrance and another at the bus route entry.

With the newness of the scanners, however, Godwin students and administrators are still adjusting to the change. Dunavant points out that the administrators operating the scanners, standing in for school security officer positions that have not yet been filled, have never done anything like this before. Neither have most of the students.

Though delays have occurred so far at the county’s high schools, the process will get easier and much quicker throughout the school year, according to HCPS Assistant Director of Communications Ken Blackstone.

“We’re still ironing out the wrinkles,” he says. “As expected with such an adjustment, the new safety protocols did slow down arrivals. The delays varied by school, but students arrived safely and efficiently made their way to their classrooms.”

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Henrico Schools officials announced Aug. 9 that weapons detectors would be placed at certain entrances in all high schools by the first day of school and that they’d be implemented later in all middle schools and then all elementary schools at some point during this year, although those dates have not been set.

The decision came amid “strong community support for such measures,” according to HCPS officials, but some students are apprehensive about the new protocol.

“It’s a waste of time,” says Cole, a Godwin student, as he waits in line. “Godwin is a safe school. It’s not doing much.”

“My opinion is negative,” says Carly, another Godwin student. “I’m sure it brings safety, it just sucks.”

“We’re going to get into the school later than the starting bell,” says Madison, stuck in the middle of a long line in front of Godwin. It’s 8:45 a.m. and the first bell rings at 9 a.m.

“I don’t feel that it’s productive at all,” Madison’s friend Issac chimes in.

Some Henrico parents also are frustrated with the delays caused by the scanners.

“It took 40 minutes for my student to get inside the school this AM through the metal…I'm sorry, ‘weapons scanners,’” says a Highland Springs parent, who asked to remain anonymous. “I am not really happy about the scanners.”

But Dunavant says that with past incidents of students bringing weapons into Godwin, and into schools across the county, weapons scanners are now a necessary safety measure.

“We do have kids bringing guns to school, so we gotta do what we gotta do,” she says. “Definitely have had some dangerous things happening in every high school across Henrico over the past few years.”

A Godwin student was arrested for bringing a handgun to school in February of last year. Several incidents of students bringing guns to school also occurred at Highland Springs in recent years, with an incident in December of 2021, another in November of 2022, and an incident involving two students later that November.

Blackstone also says that HCPS received positive feedback from the community on the plan to implement weapons scanners in schools. After field testing that occurred this year from February to March, which implemented weapons scanners or metal detectors in certain Henrico schools, 75% of parents surveyed and 60% of staff surveyed agreed or strongly agreed that metal detectors are an effective way to reduce weapon violence in schools.

In Godwin specifically, which implemented metal detector wands to be used on a certain number of randomly chosen students, 74% of parents and 67% of staff surveyed said they agreed or strongly agreed that metal detectors are effective.

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But feedback from those field tests families and staff brought up several concerns: students being significantly late to class, not every student being scanned when entering, and the process being labor intensive and time consuming. Another issue was the impact on mental health: only 29% of Henrico parents and 30% of Henrico staff surveyed said they felt that the metal detectors positively impacted the mental health of students and staff.

Student responses or feedback were not included in the survey results.

Godwin student Issac says that the security practices implemented at Godwin during field testing last school year made him uneasy. Administrators would select every tenth student or every seventh student that walked in (the number would change every day) to be scanned by a metal detector. Issac feels that it could have led to profiling.

“It makes it so susceptible to discrimination,” he says. “Because if someone comes in and it’s like, ‘oh, you can pass, you can pass, you can pass’ and then this person is also supposed to be able to pass but they deem them like not safe enough. And they can easily be like, ‘oh, I’m gonna scan you, you were the next person in line.’”

He worries that similar situations could happen with the new weapons scanners protocol.

Dunavant says she made sure to communicate with students and families about how the security protocol would work during field testing and about the anonymous system they could use to report discrimination.

“We didn’t have anybody go forward and say that they felt discriminated in that process,” she says. “But I talked to many kids that had questions like that, like ‘are you picking out kids? Are you targeting kids?’ And I would say ‘No! We’ve been talking to you about this,’ you know.”

Dunavant also says she held an online Q&A session about the new scanners last week open to all Godwin community members.

The weapons scanners now process all 1,800 students at Godwin every day, instead of the 200 or so students who were randomly selected each day during the metal detector testing. While Dunavent says only three adults are needed to operate each set of scanners, Godwin still has 17 staff members, almost all administrators, working the scanners.

Henrico Schools officials hope to have school security officers working the scanners: officials added 75 new SSO positions for this school year, which means that each high school will have an additional SSO. But 47 SSO vacancies remain, according to HCPS officials, which means that for now, administrators will be in charge of operating the scanners.

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Godwin custodian Thomas Threatt is also helping with the process. He greets students at the main entry and is in charge of locking the front doors once all the students are inside.

“It seems slower today than yesterday,” he says. “But the kids have been cooperating good. Everything’s been smooth.”

By 9 a.m., when Godwin’s first bell rings, the long lines still trail outside the school building. Dunavant and the other administrators begin to pick up the pace, trying to instill a sense of urgency into the students waiting behind the scanners.

And suddenly, the line gets shorter and shorter, until the last student walks through the scanner only ten minutes later.

“9:11! 9:11!” Dunavant cheers. “Woohoo!”

That’s one minute faster than yesterday, which is enough for Dunavant and Godwin staff to celebrate after a long and tedious process, until it starts all over again tomorrow.

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Liana Hardy is the Citizen’s Report for America Corps member and education reporter. Her position is dependent upon reader support; make a tax-deductible contribution to the Citizen through RFA here.