How some Tennessee districts are adding panic alarms for school safety

Chris Brittain undoes his lanyard to pull out a white card with a button on it. 

“Are you ready?” he asks the conference room full of administrators. 

Brittain, an assistant principal, pushes the button three times. An alarm goes off overhead on the intercom, signifying a drill on a summer day at Lenoir City High School in Loudon County. Brittain is testing a panic alarm system called Centegix Safety. It allows administrators, teachers and staff to simply press this button in a crisis — be it a lockdown, severe weather or medical emergency. The number of clicks indicates the type of situation and geolocates its location.

“Before Centegix, had something happened like that, someone would have had to get on the radio or the intercom and call for a lockdown,” said Chip Orr, the district’s chief operating officer. 

He said his district’s board had no trouble approving the funding for the safety initiative. Ultimately, his district was influenced to get the hardware by school shootings, particularly what happened at The Covenant School in Nashville, where three students and three staff were fatally shot before police killed the armed intruder in March 2023. 

“There’s no question about it,” Orr said, “that was part of the conversation.”

This kind of system is becoming more common — but comes with a cost. So far, the state has only paid for a few districts to pilot them, and others, like Lenoir City Schools, spent local funds. The pilot program came into the picture after the legislature approved funds in 2024, with lawmakers trying the program with two schools in each grand division of the state. 

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In the wake of the Covenant attack, the legislature approved more than $150 million for school safety across two legislative sessions. That money can pay for SROS, emergency planning, and grants to upgrade buildings.

Reliable communications

Assistant Director Casey Kelley with Cocke County Schools doesn’t have the panic alarm technology. As a rural district in a distressed county, he wishes the legislature would help more when it comes to funding. 

“If there’s an initiative or a law in the state of Tennessee that says you shall do something, it would be great if that ‘shall’ was accompanied with a fiscal note that covers the funding for that ‘shall,’ ” Kelley said. 

His district’s barriers to communication are tougher than average. Up in the mountains, two of his elementary schools can’t rely on cellphones. 

“You can hold your mouth a certain way and stand in the parking lot of the Big Creek Market, and you might get a bar of service every once in a while,” Kelley said.

They depend on landlines and the internet — which would work with panic buttons.

The legislature has said those devices are OK to use, but they haven’t provided funding for every district to have them. Kelley hopes the General Assembly will make that happen next year after lawmakers reconvene in January.