An officer will soon be in every Tennessee school now that governor's $50M initiative has passed

Natalie Allison
The Tennessean
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Gov. Bill Lee visit LEAD Cameron, a charter middle school in Nashville, on Monday, April 1, 2019. DeVos and Lee participated in a roundtable discussion about education.

Gov. Bill Lee's $30 million legislation to fund school resources officers is headed to his desk, making Tennessee one of the first states in the nation to ensure a law enforcement presence at each K-12 campus.

House Bill 947 and Senate Bill 803, which passed in both chambers on Thursday, will bring the total state money available in the school safety grant fund to $40 million, up from the $10 million in recurring money Gov. Bill Haslam had already devoted to the initiative.

School districts will contribute a 25 percent match of the state grant funding in order to receive it, which will amount to an estimated $10 million in the coming fiscal year, bringing the total spent on school safety in 2019-2020 to $50 million.

The increase will allow school resource officers to be placed in roughly 500 schools statewide that don't currently have an officer on campus, many of which are in rural areas.

Grants for security hardware upgrades will be available to school districts where SROs are already in place.

Freshman Rep. Brandon Ogles, R-Franklin, presented the bill in the House, calling it "a very, very gracious initiative" from Lee, and one that "is very well funded."

As it moved through legislative committees, the measure received some pushback from Republicans concerned about the high price tag and questioning whether there were more affordable solutions to enhancing school safety.

On Wednesday, Rep. Ryan Williams, R-Cookeville, in a subcommittee brought back an initiative to arm teachers in schools, which some supporters argue is a more affordable safety solution.

But when the SRO bill was up for a vote on Wednesday, only one member, Rep. Chris Todd, R-Madison County, cast a no vote.

The bill passed unanimously in the Senate, with two Memphis Democrats, Sens. Raumesh Akbari and Katrina Robinson, not casting a vote.

The legislation is the second bill from the governor's administration to pass in both chambers. The first was legislation repealing an amusement tax on small gyms.

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Reach Natalie Allison at nallison@tennessean.com. Follow her on Twitter at @natalie_allison.

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