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Miami-Dade Schools want $30 million to protect against mass shootings

A Miami-Dade Schools Police K-9 unit responds to an incident at Frances S. Tucker Elementary School in 2016.
Miami Herald Archive
A Miami-Dade Schools Police K-9 unit responds to an incident at Frances S. Tucker Elementary School in 2016.

Miami-Dade County’s school system wants an extra $30 million this year from Florida to better prepare classrooms for a mass-shooting era — with bulletproof glass, advanced monitoring of social media and social workers trying to spot troubled students before they erupt in violence.

The requested state money would let Miami-Dade hire more police and mental-health workers, beef up school security with automatically locking doors and upgraded public announcement systems, and purchase software and hire staff to mine social media for potential threats.

The request came in a letter Tuesday to House Speaker Richard Corcoran and Senate President Joe Negron from Miami-Dade Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho and multiple elected officials, including Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez and State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle.

Miami-Dade currently receives $10 million from the state’s Safe Schools program.

Read more at our news partner, the Miami Herald.

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Douglas Hanks
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