Schools across the country are preparing to welcome students in grades K-12 for a productive 2025-2026 academic year. Along with this comes a range of emotions for school staff, students, and caregivers. These emotions can span everything from excitement to anxiety, and they vary for each individual. At the core, everyone entering a school building or sending a loved one there should feel safe.

Unfortunately, for complex reasons, safety in U.S. schools has become a serious concern. Schools in the United States experience far more incidents of gun violence than schools in most other countries. Tragedies such as the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, and the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas, are events no one wants to see repeated. It has become common practice in schools to conduct monthly emergency drills for scenarios involving active shooters.

While these drills are necessary and conversations about school safety remain vital, one company believes it has developed a potential solution to help keep schools safe. Campus Guardian Angel, an Austin, Texas-based startup, was founded in December 2023 by tech entrepreneur Justin Marston and retired Navy SEAL Bill King. Marston launched the venture to develop a drone-in-a-box system for school safety after witnessing how drones were effectively used in Ukraine to protect civilians. King, with three decades of SEAL experience, brought his operational expertise to the company, guiding the development of tactical response protocols and training systems.

Campus Guardian Angel’s system places drones in secure boxes throughout school campuses, ready to launch within seconds of a silent alarm being triggered. Operated remotely by trained personnel, the drones can reach any part of the building almost immediately, streaming live video to law enforcement and deploying nonlethal tools like pepper spray or noise devices to distract an attacker.

Explaining the concept, Justin Marston compared it to a school’s fire safety measures, saying, “The sprinkler system is able to put water on the fire in seconds because it’s already there. You still want the fire trucks to come, you still want the guys with hose pipes to show up, but since sprinkler systems were installed, there hasn’t really been a mass fire in a school that killed a bunch of children.”

Campus Guardian Angel first proved the concept in Texas schools, where the drones were tested against professional security teams simulating active shooter scenarios. The company is now expanding its reach to other states. In Florida, several school districts have partnered with the company for a new pilot program funded through the state budget. The goal is to place drones on campuses, providing an additional layer of rapid-response protection while working alongside law enforcement and existing safety measures.

The $557,000 in funding approved by Governor Ron DeSantis has already brought the bespoke Campus Guardian Angel drone system into two Florida high schools for the trial. “If somebody persists in wanting to murder children,” Justin said, “then our answer is we’ll just continue to hit them with drones until law enforcement is on scene.” He went on to explain how the drones work. “We feed live video to police, show exactly what’s happening, where the suspect is, and even smash through windows with a glass punch to create distractions. This tactic, like during the SAS’s famous hostage rescue,” Justin said, referring to Operation Nimrod at the Iranian Embassy in London, “can give officers a huge advantage.”

Justin continued that with the success of the trial at the two high schools, Campus Guardian Angel plans to install permanent drone systems in the buildings by October 2025. From there, more schools in Florida will be joining the program. Officials hope the system will complement existing safety measures, including armed deputies, surveillance cameras, and emergency drills, while giving law enforcement valuable real-time intelligence and additional seconds to intervene during critical situations. The Florida pilot will help determine best practices for deployment and inform potential broader adoption of the technology nationwide.

As students, teachers, and families prepare for another school year, programs like Campus Guardian Angel’s aim to ensure that safety remains at the forefront. By combining advanced drone technology with trained personnel and traditional emergency protocols, the goal is for every child, educator, and visitor to walk into a school building feeling confident that they are in a secure environment

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