Metro Nashville Schools approves new plans for student safety

The Metro Nashville School Board approved new changes to the district safety policy Tuesday night in response to school safety legislation signed into law by Governor Bill Lee last May.The biggest change is the formal establishment of district “existence of threat” assessment teams to develop intervention-based approaches to prevent violence and manage reporting of potential threats.“This is a new policy for MNPS, even though we do have threat assessment teams,” said Director of Board of Education Relations and Management David Sevier. “It just codifies having threat assessment teams at a district level. We also have other threat assessment teams that assemble, when necessary, at school levels.”The director of schools will appoint each member of the team. Those members will also document behaviors and incidents that pose a risk to school safety or resulted in intervention.This information will be provided to the director of schools along with a compilation report of the activities of the threat assessment team that will be shared with the board.Board members also approved changes for after-school activities.The new policy will require a school employee or an approved person to be stationed to ensure that only those allowed inside can enter the building and if there is a need to unlock the doors during school activities. The policy will also apply to other organizations using Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) facilities.“If it’s a group that’s using one of our buildings, it’s not necessarily associated with MNPS, they will need to designate that person in the facility approval request process. Who’s gonna be there at the door to make sure that people aren’t coming in that shouldn’t be in the building that are not part of your AAU basketball team or part of your knitting club or part of your community organization,” said Sevier.MNPS board members also approved changes to drills the district conducts with the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) to also include an emergency safety bus drill.No New SROsThe changes follow last month’s announcement by MNPD that it will be unable to create security resource officer (SRO) positions for elementary schools because of a lack of staff. MNPD is instead prioritizing SROs for middle and high schools.That announcement rankled some Republican leaders, including Governor Bill Lee, who approved state funds to provide an SRO at every school in the state.MNPD says it is working to ensure elementary schools will still have security in the form of volunteer officers and extra patrol presences.