Nashville school board rightly expanded Evolv gun detection in all high schools

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15-02-2025

It was supposed to take a lot longer to reach widespread adoption of weapons detections systems in Metro Nashville Public Schools.
During the Jan. 28 board meeting, just six days after the fatal shooting at Antioch High School, the board announced a pilot program for Evolv, the same security system used at Nissan Stadium.
The Evolv screeners had already been installed at Antioch High, and Dr. Adrienne Battle, MNPS's director of schools, spoke to the relative smoothness of entry for students. Still, the district was going to monitor the system for 30 days before expanding its use.
Then Leland Evans, an MNPS parent, stood to voice his concern. Evans had signed a post-shooting petition that pressed for metal detectors to be installed in all Metro schools, stood to voice his concern. And while remarking that he didn't have a child attending Antioch High, where the Evolv pilot program was launched, Evans also addressed what he saw as a general shirking of responsibility by MNPS leadership.
Without a single acknowledgement of shared culpability, or missed opportunities to improve school-level safeguards, board members alternatively praised Battle for her response to the tragedy and shifted blame to state representatives for not passing the legislation that would keep all Tennesseans safe.
"I couldn't help but listen to you all talk for over an hour,' Evans said, 'and have heard nothing to make me feel safe as a parent. We want solutions, and we're telling you what solution we want."
It's unclear whether Battle and the board decided to pivot based on Evans's remarks, the concerns of the thousands of other people who also signed the petition, the frequency of gun possession incidents at MNPS schools, or the confluence of all factors.
But pivot they did.
At the Feb. 11 school board meeting, the board unanimously approved a measure to install the Evolv detection system in all district high schools.
There has been a tendency to conflate the tragedy at Antioch High School with the rash of other school shootings that have been, unfortunately, sweeping the country.
In many ways they are the same — resulting, ultimately, from a cultural affinity for/reliance on guns, and a failure/inability to keep said guns out of the hands of the most dangerous.
But also, Antioch is different. Antioch wasn't the result of backpack-full-of-ammunition-wearing, assault-rifle-toting visitor who shot their way through the front door, blasting through all manner of security checkpoints as they immediately launched into their heavily artilleried attack.
Solomon Henderson was a student at Antioch. He walked through the front door alongside his classmates. He passed through halls after sitting through his first, second, and third period classes. Presumably, he interacted with teachers as well as administrators along the way.
It wasn't until lunch that Henderson's intentions for the day became clear. It wasn't until lunch that he pulled the undetected handgun from the bag he'd carried all morning long and began firing, injuring one student before killing Josselin Corea Escalante and himself.
As I wrote after the incident, the fatal results of Henderson's actions may be unique in MNPS history, but the matter of him possessing a firearm on a school campus is not.
Opinion: I went to Antioch High and love this community. Stop the post-shooting hate.
Holding the state to task for its failure to pass common-sense gun laws may quiet the deafening echo of one gun possession charge after another (and another, and another). But they don't silence them completely.
And at some point, Battle and company had to follow through on their responsibilities to students, and to those students' parents.
Experts will say that the Evolv system, or standard metal detectors, can't guarantee safety or fully prevent the garden-variety style school shooting with which we've become so familiar.
Those experts are right. And that's where those laws come in — where red flag legislation and the forbidden sale of military-style assault rifles can prevent a mass shooter from carrying one into The Covenant School on March 27, 2023.
But gun laws won't keep kids from stealing legally owned firearms, whether from a stranger or their own parents. Even an emphasis on shifting the culture in the Black community — a point made by Robert Taylor, the newly elected board member representing District 1, with which I agree — can't ensure that some lone student won't still feel the need to strap up for English class.
And in that case, the only remedy for students who hope to go to school in the morning and make it home safely later that afternoon is to keep those guns out of the building, the same way concert venues and football stadiums and courthouses and airports do.
We tend to view public schools as a 'free' option, in that they don't charge a yearly tuition akin to private schools. But there is certainly a fee associated with public education, and it is paid through the taxes assessed on the local and state citizenry.
Finally, MNPS leadership listened to its paying constituents, and they did what needed to be done.
Andrea Williams is an opinion columnist for The Tennessean and curator of the Black Tennessee Voices initiative. She has an extensive background covering country music, sports, race and society. Email her at [e-mail] or follow her on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @AndreaWillWrite and BlueSky at @andreawillwrite.bsky.social.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Antioch High gun detection system had to be expanded | Opinion