Schools and juvenile services roll out screening, canines and truancy initiative after spike in youth-involved incidents

Captain Smith, commander of the youth services section and director of safety and security for Volusia County Schools, and Carla Quan, director of juvenile services, told City of DeBary officials about school-safety measures and a new juvenile initiative.

Captain Smith said the school system has recorded 33 arrests for threats to schools and 51 weapons recovered so far this school year. “We have...33 arrests for threats to schools and 51 weapons recovered so far this school year,” he said, and described pilot deployments of evolved metal detectors at Atlantic High School and Pine Ridge High School with plans to roll similar screening to all secondary schools over two years.

Smith described expanded canine usage for random classroom screenings and announced an artificial-intelligence weapons-detection system going live; he said cameras and the Syntegix alert system feed the county crime center and can automatically display the five closest cameras and internal school maps to responding deputies.

Carla Quan said juvenile car breaks have increased and described a new initiative with the school board focused on truancy prevention and parent education. “We're going to educate the parents about the law of truancy, the importance of going to school,” Quan said, and said the program will emphasize alternatives to traditional college tracks while steering students back into school and structured programs.

Quan also described efforts to obtain notification from Department of Children and Families when juveniles on supervision are relocated into the county so local authorities can respond more quickly when patterns of offenses emerge. School and juvenile-services leaders said they will continue summer programming and coordination with law enforcement; no new local ordinances or funding commitments were approved at the meeting.