House subcommittee debates proposals to improve school safety

Members of the House K-12 Subcommittee turned their focus to school safety Tuesday by voting on a series of bills designed to prevent future school shootings, including prior legislation from last year’s Special Session on Public Safety.One that received considerable attention is a bill to update safety measures listed in the Safe Schools Act of 2023, by requiring an improved standard of window film or security glass on each exterior door and any glass adjoining an exterior door. This change would include replacing the quarter-inch thick windows in schools with thicker and stronger glass that would be considered bullet-resistant.Armoured One CEO Tom Czyz testified in support of the bill saying companies are misleading the public about bullet resistant film. He believes updating the standards for school glass will further ensure safety.“The problem is bullet-resistant window film does not exist,” said Czyz. “Sadly, numerous deceptive companies are preying on schools and state officials, claiming they have bullet resistant window film. Some of these companies falsely claim to magically turn standard school glass into bulletproof glass by applying window film, a concept that is purely fictional and only seen in movies.”Cryz says he founded Armoured One following the Sandy Hook Attack. The company manufactures security glass and window film made to stop or slow down active shooter attacks and conducts physical security risk assessments in schools, colleges, and universities.Czyz and other industry professionals in the window industry are supporting this proposed change.The subcommittee advanced the legislation to the House Education Administration along with another bill that requires concentrated de-escalation training for teachers.Representative John Ragan, R-Oak Ridge, sponsored the bill after asking the Comptroller’s Office of Research and Education Accountability to research the main causes of school shootings.According to that report, four out of ten shootings come from escalation disputes, 76 percent are in high school, and more than 94 percent are males aged 14 to 19.“The shootings that we’re talking about, since over four and ten of them come from dispute escalations, can be short-stopped by training our teachers and administrators how to do de-escalation. If we intervene at that particular point, the shootings don’t happen,” said Ragan. “Suffice it to say that if we can, we train our teachers and administrators on the proper techniques for avoiding a school shooting before it reaches the point of being a school shooting.”Ragan says he also spoke with the director of the Law Enforcement Innovation Center (LEIC) for the University of Tennessee. The LEIC has an extended program and simulation on de-escalation and Ragan says its director would be willing to host a traveling program for teachers and administrators across the state.

Legislation returning from the Special Session on Public Safety

The subcommittee also advanced two bills initially proposed in last summer’s Special Session on Public Safety.One would require local school districts to involve local law enforcement in making safety plans.Representative Torrey C. Harris, D-Memphis, says he brought the bill back with the hope of better informing local law enforcement about the ins and outs of local school buildings. Harris believes this will be helpful during emergencies.The other returning bill is the SRO (school resource officer) Expansion Act.Representative Tim Rudd, R-Murfreesboro, sponsored it to allow qualified veterans and retired police officers to help fill a school SRO shortage. Candidates would be required to take basic SRO training and pass other qualifications including a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) background check.“As many of you know, when we passed the SRO Act to help fund SROs, we were finding that rural areas especially can’t find enough deputies to be in the schools,” said Rudd. “This is to help the rural areas find qualified people to guard our children in school.”Some committee members echoed a previous concern about this bill.Representative Sam McKenzie, D-Knoxville, worries the roles some SRO candidates had in the military may not adequately prepare them for unruly and combative kids.“When you retire from the military honorably, you could have done everything from special forces to being a cook. So, there’s nothing special being – in a lot of cases – being retired military. And these are some of our most valuable and precious things, our children, that we’re talking about. So just to open the pipeline to them is, I think, might a little premature,” said McKenzie.Rudd responded that veterans would go through the training and the bill would leave this up to the local school districts to decide how to approach this concern.

Bill to increase gun taxes fails

Subcommittee members voted down another bill designed to provide more money for school mental health by raising the tax on certain guns.Representative Bo Mitchell’s, D-Nashville, bill would tax gun sales at 15 percent and use that revenue to pay for mental health counselors in schools.Mitchell said the idea for the bill came from a Republican participant in one of his recent town halls who challenged him to tax gun sales.Before the vote Mitchell said he didn’t expect the bill to pass but he chose to bring it to the table to get his fellow lawmakers thinking about what hasn’t been done.“I'm hoping by coming in here I’ve got you thinking about what we haven’t done, what we need to do because time’s running out in this General Assembly and a lot of people have told a lot of parents in this state ‘we’re going to rise up and do something.’ Well so far, we’re still waiting for us to do something. And that’s me, you, and the rest of us in the General Assembly to quit bickering politically and let’s come together, both sides of the isle, and protect children so children don’t have to worry about going to school and parents don’t have to worry about their children getting off the bus in the afternoon,” said Mitchell.