After recent incidents on school buses, a Florida school board opted to temporarily put armed deputies on buses. (MyFoxTampaBay.com)
After the release of a video that allegedly showed two students pummeling another student, a Florida school district, for the first time, is ordering armed deputies on board buses to alternative high schools for at-risk students.
MyFoxTampaBay.com reported Thursday that the Polk County deputies will be on board buses headed to Don Woods and Bill Duncan Opportunity Centers near Tampa.
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"We are going to have order on that bus one way or another," Dick Mullenax, a member of the Polk County school board, said. "We provide transportation to those schools, but if they can't behave, we will see where we go from there."
The move is called temporary and a sheriff spokesman said the measure will "guarantee the safety of those kids." The school district will implement other steps like keeping problematic children off the bus.
Parents told the station they don't mind the change in tone a uniformed police officer creates.
"Nowadays the kids are beating up the grownups. It's real bad, so yeah," said LeShon Pervall, also a parent.
Deputies stress this is a temporary measure until the end of the school year. The hope is to have a new safety plan in place for fall.
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