All Fairfax County high schools will have a permanent weapons detection system in place starting in the fall.
Virginia’s largest school division launched a pilot program last spring, choosing to put the technology on different high school campuses on various days.
But calls for extra security intensified after a what police described as a stabbing at West Potomac High School in April. At the time of that incident, district leaders said weapon scanners weren’t deployed at the school.
Starting in the fall, the scanners will be on every high school campus. School Board member Mateo Dunne said they’ll be used in middle schools, too.
“We’ve already seen that they’re effective, because they have already caught students bringing weapons, including guns, into our school buildings,” Dunne said.
Superintendent Michelle Reid, he said, approved a plan to spend $6 million to put the technology on more campuses.
The scanners, called OpenGate, are from the company CEIA. Students will walk through one at a time after taking their laptops out.
An alarm sounds if the scanner detects something that appears to be a weapon, though items like binders, umbrellas and metal lunch boxes could set it off too, according to the division’s website. The county is able to control the sensitivity level.
The scanners can pick up knives, guns and items that could be used to build an explosive, the school district said.
In the final weeks of the school year, Dunne said “there have been at least one or two guns that were caught in students’ backpacks being brought into a school, and there were knives and other weapons that were also detected as well.”
Toward the end of the last school year, “they were deployed at numerous sites. But come the fall, every middle school and every high school will be using those metal detectors on a daily basis,” Dunne said.
More information about the scanners is available online.
Elsewhere in Virginia, Prince William County schools have been using Evolv weapon scanners in middle and high schools. Loudoun County schools is planning to pilot the use of metal detectors at sporting events this fall.
Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here.
© 2025 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.
