MANCHESTER, Tenn. (WTVF) — The Covenant School shooting reverberated across Tennessee, leaving some rural districts questioning how to maintain school security funding and raising awareness they need more.
Joey Vaughn remembered exactly where he was the morning of The Covenant School shooting.
Despite the blue skies and sunny weather on his spring break, the superintendent of Manchester City Schools waited anxiously to find out whether his friend, a teacher at the school and his son, were alive. The mass shooting just 60 miles north of him ended with six people dead in addition to the shooter. Three students and three staff members were killed.
Watch in the player above how Covenant impacts rural school security.
"As a human being, the emotions that came with Covenant — or any school shooting — your mind immediately goes to families, to kids," Vaughn said while sitting inside College Street Elementary, one of three schools he oversees in his small district. "A dear friend of mine works at Covenant, and I was immediately worried about his well-being as well as his child. The emotions were very powerful, because as humans we love people. As educators, we love big, too."
Manchester City Schools is one of three rural districts within Coffee County. While home to Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival and George Dickel, much of the county is rolling hills, fields of corn and soybeans, and quiet dead-end roads nestled in the foothills of Monteagle Mountain.
But that quiet pace of life is exactly what Vaughn wants to avoid when it comes to complacency or the belief that nothing bad could happen to his district or his students, despite being in a town of 12,000 residents.
"One of the most important things we need to keep in mind is we need to communicate and be aware," Vaughn said. "We are not in a situation anymore where we can assume anything. So if you hear something or see something and it doesn't feel right, we live in a world we have to tell somebody, because we all want the same things for our kids. We want to keep them safe."
Vaughn worries and so do others in rural Tennessee: Will he be able to maintain funding to keep all safety measures in place?
'We will always take more funding'
The bright yellow and blue tiles lined the hallways where principal Tom Jacobs walks down any corridor and is met with students waving at him.
One student waited outside his third-grade classroom door, knowing he had to be buzzed back inside.
This is just one of many security measures inside the school aimed at keeping students safe. Right now, every administrator wears a badge, one that will soon have a feature where school officials can tap a panic button tethered to GPS to determine their location. Days after The Covenant School shooting, safety upgrades were made to the building that had been planned for months prior. That price tag was $60,000.
Manchester City Schools is funded by city taxes, the state and federal funds.
"Funding is important," said Mark Howell, assistant superintendent and director of safety. "MCS has picked up the slack where the state has left off. Safety money or one-time money is great. But the equipment wears out and needs to be upgraded. The costs of ballistic glass and cameras — the costs are growing. Those technologies are so expensive. We will always take more funding."
The district is having to retrofit buildings for safety, unlike new builds already outfitted with security features. All three of its school buildings were constructed in the decades past, with pieces of College Street being built nearly 100 years ago.
Gov. Bill Lee set aside money for both public and private schools this year to fund a student resource officer at every school in the state. In total, $230 million went into school funding from the 2023 legislative session to Tennessee's 1,907 public schools. Of that money, $140 million went to fund SROs. Manchester was ahead of the curve, already having three funded out of its budget. However, Vaughn and Howell said they were thankful the state would pay for their three SROs, including SRO Jason Fowler at College Street.
Included in that, $40 million went to public school safety security upgrades, but that is one-time money. If divided equally, that is around $21,000 per school.
At least $30 million went into hiring 100 Homeland Security agents, which the state has only hired a little more than 50, as was presented in a Tennessee House Finance meeting in November.
A continuation of school security upgrades
Its sister district Coffee County Schools faces similar challenges when it comes to finances.
Neither Manchester nor Coffee County has expansive tax bases, and not many new tax dollars are flowing into the county. The massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary sparked nationwide changes to schools, including in Tennessee. But making those changes and keeping that equipment means expenses continue to pile up plus making additional upgrades.
In Coffee County Schools, only two school buildings have been constructed since 2000. The district has made upgrades to its older buildings over time since Sandy Hook in 2012. Lawson said it was a challenge to create a more fortified structure with some of its schools originally built with open concepts and dozens of windows.
"The difficult thing is to fund a lot of these safety initiatives while also providing everything we always have in our schools, like arts and athletic programs," said Charles Lawson, superintendent of Coffee County Schools. "It's a matter of finding that balance. We also have to be judicious in what we do."
Lawson has a security task force at the district, school, and law enforcement levels. Those discussions about security projects are prioritized by that group. Lawson said he found the process complicated, but that it was a matter of getting people at the table who understand and have the expertise to implement improvements.
SROs are in all nine Coffee County Schools as promised by its Sheriff Chad Parton, who ran in recent years on upgrading school security through law enforcement. The district faced four different school threats at the beginning of the 2022-2023 year. Those ranged from threats on social media to a student making a threat in jest.
"Do we have enough dollars to do everything on our list in the next six months?" Lawson said. "The answer is no. I think it's more difficult for rural schools. But I haven't been with an urban district with more funds. I know it's a challenge for us from a funding perspective."
It's not clear what legislative initiatives in 2024 will address a continuation of school safety money, but rural superintendents like those in Manchester say they need it.
"There's never a tax base in a rural like that in an urban area," Lawson said. "I know it's difficult for us being in a rural district. We try to do the best things for kids. Unfortunately, one of the things that are best for kids now is safety. That's just the reality of the world today. We have to spend a lot more time thinking about the safety component than we used to."
