(The Center Square) – Weapons detectors could be installed at Georgia’s public schools under a bill greenlighted Thursday by the Education Committee in the House of Representatives.
House Bill 1023 would allow the detectors at the main entry points of school systems. The committee agreed that the detectors are a good idea, but questioned the cost.
School systems could use school safety grant funds to pay for the detectors and choose what type of system they wanted to use, according to the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Chuck Efstration, R-Mulberry. Gov. Brian Kemp approved additional money for school safety grants, bringing each school’s total to nearly $69,000 for the 2025-26 school year.
“Depending on the type of weapons detection system utilized, that could have a staff component, but there are weapons protection systems that include, where it’s really, it’s software and there’s the ability to through cameras or other monitoring devices to minimize those cost concerns,” Efstration told the committee. “There’s really a range of potential costs out there as well.”
Some Georgia school districts have already added metal detectors. Rep. Karlton Howard, D-Augusta, said the detectors are at eight of 11 August high schools. Each of them requires two people to man them, he said.
“The question to me was there anyway, or are there other grants that can help with the operational piece, not the capital layout, but just the manpower to keep this going on a regular basis,” Howard said.
Lawmakers intensified their conversations about school safety after two teachers and two students were killed in a September 2024 shooting at Apalachee High School in Barrow County. Nine others were wounded.
The bill now goes to the full House for approval.
The committee also recommended approval of a bill that would ban cellphones for high school students. The General Assembly passed a bill in 2025 that banned them in grades K-8, which takes effect on July 1 of this year. The new bill affecting high schools by Rep. Scott Hilton, R-Peachtree Corners, would take effect on July 1, 2027, if approved by the Legislature. Funding could come from each school’s safety grant, according to Hilton.
Thirty-seven states and the District of Columbia have enacted some type of school cell phone policy, according to a January study led by the Institute for Families and Technology.