Cumberland County Schools to install weapons detection systems at all schools

Cumberland County Schools will deploy safety devices at each of the district’s 86 schools starting next school year.

The school board agreed to spend $3 million to install two Opengate weapons detection systems at each school.

“Well, it’s a scary time, but I feel as though our county is competent enough to make sure that we have everything in place, so that our scholars and our families will feel safe each and every day in our learning environments,” said Seventy-First Classical Middle School principal Queesha Tillman.

During the 2023-24 school year, Cumberland County deputies responded to 105 reports of weapons on school grounds.

“With weapons detection, it's different,” said the district’s associate superintendent of auxiliary services Kevin Coleman. “It scans the type of metal that's on your body, so your phone, your keys, your belt buckle won't hit it.

“But if you do have a weapon on your body, a harder piece of metal or something that's shaped like that, then it'll pick it up and alarm on that.”

Several school systems in North Carolina are turning to high-tech alternatives to detect weapons before they get into classrooms. To this point, Wake County, the state's most extensive school system, is not among them. Using the same cost as Charlotte's spending, Wake County could equip all high schools and multiple middle schools for about $15 million over four years. That is less than 1% of last year's $2 billion school budget.

In 2023, Johnston County Public Schools added the Opengate systems to all schools.

Cumberland County Schools will use a visitor management system and improve camera systems by incorporating the use of artifical intelligence. Crews will install the new systems while students are out of school during the summer.

Plus, each school in Cumberland County already has keypad systems on the door, intercom systems and cameras.

Coleman said the neat thing about the Opengate system is that it's non-invasive and portable.

“We can literally pick them up, take them [and] set them out, and take people through that,” Coleman said. “Currently, they go through metal detectors to go into big football games and large games we have. That's cumbersome."

School leaders know no system is 100% foolproof, but they said an Opengate system gives them an extra layer of security.