NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — A school safety program in Nashville is in jeopardy. The Rapid School Response Team was created after The Covenant School shooting .
The program designates Metro officers to respond specifically to threatening school situations. In 2023, the state handed out millions to fund SROs in every Tennessee school . It was a task that wasn’t attainable in Metro schools.
Chief John Drake cited staffing shortages. “We have 530 square miles in Davidson County and with the level of our staffing we can’t pull 70 officers away from the streets of Nashville keeping our community safe and putting them at schools at this time,” Drake said back in July 2023 .
However, over the last year, the police department filled 26 school resource officer vacancies and started an SRO pilot program in two elementary schools, which Chief Drake hopes to expand by next year.
SEE ALSO | More than 500 Tennessee schools without SROs despite state funding available In addition to filling SRO positions, Chief Drake created the School Rapid Response Team. “It’s been a model that other places are looking at around the country and, in fact, there has been several instances where they responded to schools where individuals had guns and we could have had shootings, and we had no shootings.”
The program consists of 18 staff members who monitor schools throughout the district and prepare for school emergencies. However, the price tag attached to the program is just over $2.5 million.
According to Metro police, salary savings from vacant jobs were used to fund the program this year and considering the department is aggressively hiring police vacancies and building a new police precinct, that funding may need to be used elsewhere.
“Am I understanding that there is no funding in the budget before us for the Rapid School Safety Team and that it would need to be folded back into regular operations?” Jason Spain, Metro Councilman asked.
“Yes sir, that is correct,” Drake said.
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According to Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s office, while the department didn’t receive funding to add to the Rapid Response Team, they didn’t have any funding taken away.
A spokesperson for Metro police told News 2, “They will work to keep this unit operating as long as they can.”
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