ANTIOCH, Tenn. (WKRN) — Following Wednesday’s deadly shooting at Antioch High School, parents, officials and others have questions over safety measures in place across Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS).
Across social media platforms, parents have demanded the full implementation of metal detectors across MNPS. The school system confirmed that stationary metal detectors were not set up inside Antioch High School.
Additionally, it is not, nor has it been, protocol for MNPS students to walk through metal detectors at any school on a daily basis. However, MNPS said they use metal detectors for large gatherings like football games.
Athrea Shlemon has a daughter in an MNPS high school. She told News 2 she’s a proponent for metal detectors in every school and she’s not sure what the hold-up has been.
“Our children are the future and they’re more important than anybody,” Shlemon said. “…I know metal detectors are expensive, but we have thousands and thousands of children that attend these schools. There’s plenty of ways you can do it [pay for them]. They’re putting them everywhere else. They have them in courthouses. They have them in stadiums.”
Shlemon said she kept her daughter out of school Thursday and she wasn’t the only parent who did so in the aftermath of the Antioch High School tragedy.
“That’s another thing — we’re teaching our children to… be afraid of things like this…What is it really coming to?” Shlemon added.
MNPS superintendent, Dr. Adrienne Battle, spoke on metal detectors and safety measures in their schools.
“There are lots of unintended consequences. Mainly, when you think about the types of learning environments we want for our students,” Battle said. “The first person we want our students to interact with are their principals and their teachers and their fellow students.”
Battle said their district will continue to evaluate safety measures and look for ways to strengthen what they have in place across all their campuses.
“There’s lots of data around the tracking behind the metal detector systems,” Battle added. “We also know that there is no system that is 100% going to capture everything that a person may have on them.
Metro Councilmembers who represent Antioch, like David Benton, told News 2 it’s too soon to speculate on possible safety changes as officials continue their investigation of the shooting.
“We’ve got to take a deeper look,” David Benton said. “I don’t know what those answers will be yet, because we don’t know where the hole in the fence was.”
MNPS Chief of Communications and Technology, Sean Braisted, said the shooter was in a location where cameras associated with a weapons detection system in the school could not clearly detect his firearm and trigger the alarm. The alarm was eventually triggered by the Metro Nashville Police Department.
