Florida is the first state in the country to fund and test a school safety program that puts drones inside school buildings as a first line of defense against an active shooter.Specialized drones are now installed and being fina lized at high schools in Leon, Volusia and Broward counties as thousands of students return to campus.Investigative Reporter Katie LaGrone spent months covering the development of this pilot program and was invited to witness dozens of the high-flying devices being connected and mounted at Deltona High School near Orlando, where about 1,800 students are returning to school with these extra eyes on campus.Taylor Worthington of Campus Guardian Angel, the Austin, Texas-based private company behind the technology, described the strategy at Deltona High."On this campus, we have 40 drones distributed throughout a few buildings here," said Worthington.Worthington said the deployment was designed with precision, not full coverage, in mind."The goal of our initial pilot deployment, was to not protect the entire school, but to be able to pick a few strategic locations," said Worthington.That means 13 boxes each equipped with three drones strategically placed in high-volume locations including the student auditorium, cafeteria, gym, and several classrooms.The goal is to stop a school shooting before it becomes deadly.Campus Guardian Angel leaders said the concept grew out of watching drone technology used in combat. LaGrone visited the companys Austin, Texas command center back in November of 2025."I had the idea originally just looking at how successful these little drones were against people with guns in Ukraine and then looking at Parkland and Uvalde and shootings like that, said Justin Marston, Campus Guardian Angel founder.Heres how the program will work: When an alert is triggered, the encrypted drones designed for low delay deploy within seconds and are piloted from their command center in Austin, more than 1,000 miles away from Florida, by championship drone racing pilots.The pilots will use the drones to track a potential shooter and can deploy what company leaders describe as "non-lethal distractors": flashing lights, sirens, pellet bangs and, if needed, pepper spray."If we can get a shooter to do anything besides shoot people, we're winning, right?" said Bill King, a co-founder of the company and is helping to lead drone operations.At Deltona High, which is already equipped with gates, guardians and a full-time school resource officer, Deputy Trevor Autrey said the drones add a critical layer to his response capability."They will be able to give me eyes and ears of where the active threat is, and help me get there quicker, and also be a distraction device if I had to engage them," said Autrey.Just over a half million dollars in state funding is paying for the pilot program, with additional funding recently added to bring three more school districts into the mix. Those districts have not yet been announced by Floridas Department of Education.In a state that knows the pain of school shootings, Parkland families are watching the program with cautious interest."It's not that it's implausible, but it's different. So it's hard to just jump on the bandwagon until you see it in action, said Debbie Hixon, whose husband, Chris, was the athletic director at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and among 17 victims killed during the shooting on Feb. 14, 2018.Godby High School in Leon County, Deltona High in Volusia County, and Boyd Anderson High in Broward County are all expected to have the drones fully installed by this fall. ...read more read less