No Hamilton County Schools parent wants to imagine their child could suffer the fate that 17 students did on Feb. 14 during a fatal shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla., but how many will step up and ask for their taxes to be raised, or other services lessened, to pay for additional safety measures?
The school district is currently tightening security at individual schools in practical and technological ways for which they can pay, but Hamilton County Sheriff Jim Hammond says the next big step - "the best course," he called it - is to provide armed school resource officers (SROs) in each building.
Currently, 29 schools have SROs. To hire, train and pay for SROs in each of the other approximately 50 schools will cost $4 million - annually.
The bulk of the money for the officers already in place comes out of the budget of the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office. The city of Chattanooga pays for two SROs, though many of the schools are within the city. A few schools lie within the limits of other municipalities in the county.
Hammond would like to see that safety burden shared but acknowledged that particular apple may need to be consumed "a bite at a time."
"The bucks stops with me," he told Times Free Press editors and reporters Monday in a roundtable discussion with other national safety and security experts between two conversations they had with community leaders and the public about school safety. "It's my responsibility to provide [school] safety," along with others.
The good news, said one of the experts in town for the conversation, is that there appears to be significant local buy-in and understanding about the need to act.
"I've never seen a community-wide approach like this morning [at the conversation with community leaders]," said Michael Yorio, president of SSI Guardian, a security consulting firm.
Hammond said the SROs aren't the be-all, end-all answer to school safety, though. He also emphasized the need for more mental health counselors, an issue he has been pushing in relation to the overcrowding of the Hamilton County Jail.
"The mental health issue is getting worse rather than better," he said.
Conversations also need to occur around the training of school administrators, teachers and administrative personnel on the best safety practices in schools, Hammond said, and for the long run around the design of schools to maximize safety.
"There are no guarantees," Yorio said. But it is achievable "to get schools to a certain level of safety," and to put in place vetted, sourced best practices.
We often hear the expression that a child's life is worth any price. We may soon find out how many parents really believe that.