Members of the Tennessee State Senate unanimously passed the first of Governor Bill Lee’s proposals to improve school security Wednesday morning.
That legislation contains four main sections including:
- Requiring schools to go through and submit plans for their security and building layouts to local law enforcement.
- Implementing an incident command drill, a school drill, and a bus drill.
- Upgrades for new construction and major renovations that include inside locks on classroom doors.
- Requiring every exterior school door to be locked and financial penalties following a second violation.
Bristol Senator Jon Lundberg told Senators the legislation is not a response to last month’s Covenant School shooting that killed three children and three adults.
“This is not a reactionary piece of legislation. This has been something that has been proposed by the governor months ago, something we have talked about for a number of months and this is a culmination of that process,” said Senator Lundberg. “This is not the end of this discussion. That discussion will last and continue.”
Despite the unanimous vote, Nashville Senator Heidi Campbell expressed concerns about the psychological impact of what she described as militarizing the school environment.
“Yesterday I spent the day with some children who were writing letters to the governor about their safety. Mostly elementary school children. And the letters were absolutely amazing, some of them made me cry, some of them made me laugh. These kids are incredibly smart and thoughtful,” said Senator Campbell. “Those are the kids that are going to be living in an increasingly militarized environment and I understand and I will vote for this because I know that we need to do this right now because we have not addressed the root problem. We are not looking at exorcising the cancer, we’re actually just looking at treating the patient.”
Supporters, including Calhoun Senator Adam Lowe. argue that putting these measures on a statewide level doesn’t militarize schools. Lowe says it instead makes schools safer for both students and teachers.
“I’ve never felt that our schools are militarized in our districts. However, we’ve been doing many of these things for years. We didn’t wait on the state to fund it. We didn’t wait on the federal government to drive the initiative. Our local law enforcement, our local LEAs (local education agency) stepped up and did many of these very things and have forwarded attempts in recent years. And as someone who has sent the four most precious little things in my life and my wife into those institutions daily, not once have I ever thought ‘man, this feels like a militarized zone’. Not once have I ever felt unwelcomed in that space,” said Calhoun Senator Adam Lowe.
The legislation passed the Tennessee House earlier this month and now heads to Governor Lee’s desk.
The Governor’s other announced school safety proposals including extra funding for school resource officers and a red flag law are not part of this legislation and will be discussed later.
