Tomorrow the governor and top officials will gather to discuss how Tennessee schools keep students safe. Officials announced the conference days after 20 first-graders were shot dead in Connecticut last month.
Hosting the event are the school districts of Williamson County and Franklin. They were first in the state to add more security after the shooting, voting to take more than two million dollars out of reserves and hire 32 armed deputies.
Other districts are thinking about following suit. Rutherford, Wilson, Sumner, Robertson and Montgomery Counties are in various stages of discussing it. Cost is a major concern. With 73 elementary schools in Metro Nashville, an official says it’d be a huge strain to hire so many sworn officers.
Some state lawmakers have also talked about letting teachers pack guns so they could fight back against a school shooter. The governor’s not a fan of that idea. He’ll leave most of Tuesday’s discussion to his education commissioner.
A release from the state says the meeting will include “national experts on safety, law enforcement and mental health.” Most of it will be closed to the media, because discussions of school security are legally kept secret.