Today is the first day of school for students in Citrus County, and some will now be searched when they enter the building.

It’s a new policy at the Renaissance Center in Lecanto. School leaders said the new policy is meant to ensure a safe environment—by making sure students do not bring any prohibited items on school grounds.

Silver River Mentoring and Instruction, which oversees operations at the Renaissance Center, has implemented a similar policy at their school in Marion County and said it has drastically reduced the amount of prohibited items found.

Officials said this is all meant to help students feel safe and focus on their studies.

“We’re doing the thing that we feel like is in the best interest of all students, to come here, to prevent anything from happening--we’re talking about prevention. A lot of schools are too big to pull this off, the time would be way too much. We’re talking about 130 students. We can search them in a relatively quick matter of time, with our staff and our resources, and it won’t interrupt the flow of the day,” Mike Nebesnyk, SRMI Executive Director, said.

Officials stress that this is all just precautionary. They said there haven’t been any incidents that have led to this new policy.