HALLANDALE BEACH, FLA. (WSVN) - Students in Broward County will not be allowed to bring book bags or backpacks to any school building in the district during the final three days of the school year, officials said.
The safety measure is in light of the Uvalde, Texas elementary school massacre that claimed the lives of 19 children and two teachers.
Days later, a 5th grader in Cape Coral was arrested for threatening to shoot up a school.
A school in Hallandale Beach was placed under a code yellow on Monday, which meant that all students and staff inside the building were to stay in the classrooms unless they were escorted out by security. Only security and police were allowed to walk the halls of the school during the lockdown.
Police were on the scene before students were dismissed early from Hallandale Beach High School.
A few bookbags were spotted around Everglades high in Miramar, Monday, but, as of tomorrow, Broward County schools will no longer allow bookbags or backpacks on school grounds through Thursday, the last day of school. Many who brought backpacks to school were dismissed early.
“I think it’s good because, like, it’s safety precautions, you know,” said one student.
Another female student enjoys the safety measures as a precaution just in case something does happen in the school.
“What we’re trying to do right now is clear the air ’cause I think people are under the false impression that we’re doing this as the result of something that is occurring,” said Broward County Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Vickie L. Cartwright.
While it has been customary for students at several Broward schools to leave their backpacks at home, the district has decided to temporarily ban them in all schools and grades levels out of “an overabundance of caution for security reasons.”
Cartwright said that a backpack ban at the end of the school year has been in place for years in many Broward County Schools, but now the ban has become district-wide. The move had been placed to keep students from pulling off pranks that many get them in trouble.
“There’s different reasons for not bringing a backpack, like, you know, the shootings and stuff, which is understandable, so we just take it into consideration, and we come to school without a backpack,” said another student.
“Historically speaking, sometimes students aren’t thinking or they think something is funny, and unfortunately, it ends up not being funny,” said Cartwright.
School board member Lori Alhadeff, who lost her daughter Alyssa Alhadeff in the Parkland school shooting, says no backpacks during the last week of school is one way of being proactive and would like to take it a step further.
“I would like, as one school board member, to look at to implement for the last two weeks of the school year,” said Alhadeff. “You know, I think it’s again just a proactive measure to prevent any weapon from getting into our schools.”
The school district tweeted about the backpack ban Monday, which will run from Tuesday through Thursday. Without the big bags, there is little room for anyone to be able to bring something on campus that shouldn’t be there.
“We want to make sure that our students are not doing something silly and not thinking about it all the way through,” said Cartwright. “This decision is specifically for the last three days of school. We’re hoping our children make wise choices.”
Officials said the measure applies to students in all grade levels, at every school in the district.
The email further reminded students, “If you have devices or books that need to be returned to your school, please do so by Monday.”
The announcement comes nearly two weeks after, authorities said, an 18-year-old gunman shot and killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. The shooter, later identified as Salvador Ramos, was later gunned down by law enforcement officers.
In a statement, a BCPS spokesperson said this is a “proactive” safety measure that it has enforced during the final days of classes at “many of their district schools for several years.”
As for Miami-Dade schools, there is no district-wide mandate, but it is customary for elementary and middle school students to leave their backpacks at home during the final week of school.
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