ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – Orange County Public Schools (OCPS) has officially ended its pilot program for enhanced security screening, known as OPENGATE.
The program was announced last year and designed to streamline the process of screening for weapons and other banned items on school campuses.
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Announced in December 2023, OCPS intended to roll out the program to a handful of test schools before a countywide ramp-up.
Despite a promising start, however, OPENGATE faced some significant hurdles right from the get-go.
In early 2024, OCPS Superintendent Maria Vazquez revealed that screening each morning took much longer than anticipated, causing delays and adding to the workload of school staff. Students in the pilot program experienced delays getting to classes on time due to bottlenecks.
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As a result, the district scaled back the testing from seven campuses to just four. That countywide rollout was supposed to cover all 23 high schools.
Now, just weeks into the new school year, OCPS has announced it has ended the OPENGATE pilot and will not go forward with full countywide implementation.
Michael Ollendorff, spokesperson for Orange County Public Schools, stated:
“The pilot program with OPENGATE was completed last school year. It was determined that the district would not implement the program due to the overall cost and the required number of staff to run the system on a daily basis,” he said.
The anticipated overall costs aren’t just limited to dollars for the screeners:
- Equipment Costs: The OPENGATE devices, which were intended to be used across multiple campuses, cost a total of $475,000 for the pilot program.
- Personnel Costs: The need for additional staff to manage and operate the equipment daily – Angie Gallo, OCPS School Board member representing District 1, estimated each school would need an additional eight to ten staffers to properly handle the OPENGATE workflow. That translates to OCPS hiring up to 230 additional workers.
- Time Costs: The impact on students, faculty, and staff, with longer lines and delays becoming a significant issue.
Gallo said the system worked well but added, “Students had to take their backpacks apart. They had to take any type of water bottle out, if it was steel, and their notebooks… So that took a lot of work on their part, and then it was a lot of personnel on our end to get kids moving through safely and quickly to get to their classes.”
As OCPS moves away from OPENGATE, the district will return to its traditional methods of security screening, including random searches and handheld metal detectors. Gallo said existing OPENGATE equipment will be folded into use for some security checks and at major school events.
“We’re still going to continue to use it for random searches and large events,” said Gallo. “But just to use it on a day to day, it really boiled down to the manpower needed.”
The decision to pull back from district-wide implementation underscores the complexities and costs associated with new technology in a public high school setting.
And although OCPS is no longer pursuing widespread use of OPENGATE, other districts in Florida, such as Osceola and Broward counties, are using it.
Results have been mixed: Osceola County reported earlier this month that their rollout had gone smoothly, while in Broward County, there were significant delays for students getting to classes on the first two days of school.
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