It’s back to school for students across Tennessee, and safety is top of mind after a shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. That has reopened the discussion about school safety, and resource officers.
The number of officers in Tennessee’s schools has grown steadily over the last few years, reaching up to 1,300 in the 2020-2021 school year according to the Tennessee Department of Education. And more and more of those officers are being placed in elementary schools — outpacing other grade levels.
Back in the 2017 school year, the number of school resource officers in elementary schools and high schools were neck and neck, at about 375. Middle schools lagged behind.
Over the last few years the number of officers has actually fallen in high schools. But, in elementary schools, the number nearly doubled to about 660 — making up more than half of all the officers working in Tennessee’s schools.
But, that’s not the case in Nashville, which has SROs in middle and high schools but not elementary.
School board member Fran Bush thinks that should change.
“Our elementary schools, they just cannot defend themselves,” Bush says. “They’re just young babies that cannot do that and teachers that are trying to cover them with their own bodies. So, we need to make that change. And, we need to understand that we have to be more proactive.”
She says if the Metro Nashville Police Department can’t meet those needs because of their staffing shortage, then schools should turn to private security.
While calls for SROs are common after school shootings, research shows that they do little to reduce violence, and their presence can be damaging to students of color or with disabilities.
Instead, others call for gun control. But, many Tennessee politicians have no intentions to tighten the state’s gun laws. And, when Governor Bill Lee signed an executive order on school safety earlier this year, guns were notably absent from his plan.
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