NASHVILLE - Hamilton County's public schools have received nearly $333,000 so far under a Tennessee school safety grant program created last year in the wake of a mass shooting at a Parkland, Florida, high school.
And local officials anticipate getting another $668,510 during the current fiscal year that runs through June 30 as a result of the Safe School grant program, proposed by then-Gov. Bill Haslam and approved by state lawmakers in 2018.
Officials in Tennessee's 147 local school districts can use the safety funds to pay for school resource officers, surveillance technology and access controls aimed at better securing schools.
Hamilton County Department of Education spokesman Tim Hensley said the funds so far have been used locally "primarily for safety equipment."
That includes a sophisticated Raptor Technologies "visitor management system" designed to run background checks and "flag" registered sex offenders and "unsafe visitors."
State House Finance Committee Vice Chairwoman Patsy Hazlewood, R-Signal Mountain, said she experienced that first during a visit to Thrasher Elementary School where her grandson attends school.
"I had to give them my driver's license and then they put me in their system and they did a little photo," Hazlewood said. "So next time I go back, I'll be able to sign in."
Hensley said the school system has also used the funding to "purchase video entrance cameras and notification systems so that the office can identify visitors before they enter the school and video security cameras for school campuses."
Plans include spending to "harden entrances" to schools, with architects now drawing plans to ensure school visitors are first routed to an area "where an adult will have contact," Hensley said. "Some of our older buildings allow visitors into student common areas or hallways so that they do not have contact with adults in the office before having access to areas of the school where children may be located."
Changing physical layouts to buildings contructed decades before modern security concerns will take both time and "significant funding," Hensley said.
Funding is also providing for an additional two school resource officers, which in theory brings the number of budgeted specially trained law enforcement officer slots to 40. But there are nine vacancies and nearly 45 Hamilton County Schools facilities have no resource officer, records show.
At issue is the difficulty Hamilton County Sheriff Jim Hammond is facing in finding the right candidates for the specialized law enforcement work.
"Basically, yes, we are dependent upon the market of suitable candidates who can meet the qualifications and are willing to do the job," said Matt Lea, the sheriff's office spokesman. "As I said before, being an SRO is a calling. An SRO has to want to be in that job and want to work with kids each day.
"We want to ensure we have the right candidate and the right person for the job," Lea added.
The Times Free Press reported earlier this week that some Hamilton County Board of Education members want to explore security options outside of traditional school resource officers for the county's schools, including using private security firms, but others aren't on board with the plan.
Asked about Hammond's position, Lea said, "as for the school board's thoughts about private security firms, that line of questioning should be directed to them."
Resource officers an issue in rural areas
During House Finance Committee hearings this week on executive branch departments and other agencies, Gov. Bill Lee's education commissioner, Penny Schwinn, said the department has awarded $7.2 million of $20 million prioritized for school resource officers, resulting in state support for an additional 206 SROs across the state's 147 local school districts.
She said Tennessee public schools had 1,172 school resource officers during the 2018/2019 school year.
"With the inclusion of the officers who've been applied through the SRO grant, we'll have 1,378 officers," Schwinn said. "That leaves approximately 450 schools without an SRO during the current school year."
Rep. Brandon Ogles, R-Franklin, a finance committee member, voiced concern that not everyone is pursuing the safety grants.
"I do think we need to have a serious talk with the Department of Safety and the Department of Education and the General Assembly if we're going to continue to let school safety be permissive or not," Ogles told Schwinn and colleagues. "We've mandated principals and staffing in these schools and testing requirements, yet school safety is permissive and I don't understand that at all."
He said he hopes school safety becomes "a top priority" that shouldn't "be debatable at the local level on whether or not this is necessary for our students."
But noting at least some of the funding comes out of a one-time pot of money and not annually recurring dollars, Rep. Ron Gant, R-Rossville, voiced concern about areas such as the one he represents.
"What about districts who don't have the money to continue after that first year?" he asked Schwinn.
The commissioner said the $13 million in unused resource officer funds can be carried over into next year. But Gant continued to harbor concerns about the inability of rural areas unable to financially support the specially trained officers.
Rep. Andy Holt, R-Dresden, a staunch Second Amendment advocate, voiced support for what he called a lower-cost alternative.
"There is in my opinion an answer to address school safety," he said. "And that is allowing teachers and coaches to voluntarily go armed in schools."
Contact Andy Sher at asher@timesfreepress.com or 615-255-0550. Follow him on Twitter @AndySher1.