The Uvalde Foundation For Kids is looking for Tennessee volunteers interested in patrolling Covenant School students returning to class this upcoming school year.
Brentwood Hills Church of Christ will provide classrooms for students of The Covenant School for the foreseeable future following last school year’s shooting.
The Uvalde Foundation For Kids, formed in response to the May 2022 Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, says that its STOPNOW team volunteer patrols are planned during the opening weeks of this upcoming school year as well as weekly throughout the academic season.
The organization, which is “dedicated to ending school violence,” says its STOPNOW team volunteer patrols will undergo training before the start of the academic year. The training for volunteers will include situational awareness tactics and “basic intervention techniques with direct contact with law enforcement and school administrators.”
“Foundation patrol teams; such as planned at Brentwood Hills Church of Christ, for the Covenant students; will patrol facility grounds; and perimeters; serving as an additional level of positive student and community engagement, while also as deterrents to potential dangers to students,” the organization explains.
The organization announced its patrol teams days after it appointed Metro Council Member-At-Large and Chair of Public Health & Safety Jeff Syracuse to its National Advisory Board, touting his efforts to “address Nashville gun violence in schools.”
The Uvalde shooting remains the second-deadliest school shooting since 2012 when 26 children and adults were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. The police response to the Uvalde school shooting was instantly scrutinized, as the 18-year-old gunman was inside the school for about 58 minutes before being forced to surrender, as parents and others outside the building urged the officer in charge to take action.
At the time, the state’s top law enforcement officer called the police response an “abject failure.”
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network.
I went to a Tennessee Titans game as a guest last season. There were armed guards, Metro Police, outside and inside, private armed security open carrying sidearms. I suppose they should warn people from allowing their children to attend lest they be terrorized and put at risk by guns which is supposedly the reason some want schools undefended advertised with “no guns” signs?! And of course, politicians who want children and young people in schools UNDEFENDED are themselves PROTECTED BY ARMED SECURITY!
Those who want to take from others what they have and keep from themselves are not good people!
Will they be armed? If not, how is a bunch of people walking around going to be a deterrent? An armed SRO would be “an additional level of positive student and community engagement, while also as deterrents to potential dangers to students”.