JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Putnam County Superintendent Dr. Rick Surrency elaborated on the district's groundbreaking plan to deputize and arm school staff during an interview Friday on The Morning Show.
The interview comes two days after district officials and Sheriff Gator DeLoach unveiled a plan to beef up school security with an initiative called the Sheriff's Trained Armed Response program, or STAR.
These changes follows the Feb. 14 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, where 17 students and staff were killed and more than a dozen others were hurt.
Surrency spoke at length with News4Jax anchor Jennifer Waugh, providing some previously undisclosed details about the plan. We've included some of those details below:
Q: How will the training process work?
A: It’s going to be over 100 hours of training to meet the same standards that a deputy would have to meet. And they are going to be a special deputy so they’ll need to meet certain standards.
Q: Will it be a gun teacher’s carry on them? Or something locked up in a desk?
A: From my understanding, it would be a concealed carry – just like anyone else who has a concealed permit. We do now want students or anyone else to know who is actually possessing this weapon.
To learn more about these changes, watch the entire uncut interview above.