Families with children at Carver Middle School in Orlando say they have reached a breaking point, describing near daily physical altercations breaking out once students are dismissed for the day.
One mother, Janacha Ford, says she has personally captured video of three separate incidents in just the past week alone.
Channel 9 blurred the footage to shield the identities of the minors involved, but the pattern it shows has left parents rattled.
Ford says she worries the ongoing violence could eventually turn deadly, saying she fears someone could get seriously hurt or even killed if nothing changes. According to her, most of the confrontations take place within roughly a block of the campus, putting them just outside the reach of school-based safety officers.
A Jurisdiction Gap Leaves Families Frustrated
Part of the frustration stems from where the fights are physically occurring. Ford points out that although the campus falls within city jurisdiction, the moment students step across the boundary line, they enter county territory, meaning school resource officers assigned to the campus have no authority to intervene.
That jurisdictional split has been an issue at Carver before. Data reported to the state shows the school logged dozens of on-campus fights and battery incidents over each of the past two school years, and the problem stretches back further than many families realize.
A shooting near the school in 2021, tied to a dispute involving a nearby private school student, once forced a brief lockdown and prompted extra patrols in the surrounding blocks for weeks afterward. At the time, police said many of the conflicts were sparked by disagreements that started on social media rather than in person.
Community leaders have floated a range of responses over the years, from adding law enforcement patrols immediately after dismissal to funding non police “safety coach” positions meant to intervene before disputes turn physical.
Some officials have pushed back on the idea of simply adding more officers, arguing that mentorship and consistent adult presence may do more to prevent fights than policing alone.
For now, the school district maintains that because the altercations happen off campus and after hours, they fall outside its direct jurisdiction, leaving enforcement responsibility split between multiple local agencies.
Parents like Ford say that gap is exactly the problem, and they are calling for city officials, county deputies and school leaders to coordinate a real presence in the area before the next fight turns serious.
