Governor Bill Lee signed into law legislation Wednesday designed to place more school resource officers in Tennessee public and private schools, funnel additional money for school security upgrades, and require every school to submit annual safety plans to the state.
The new law is among the few changes the Republican governor and the GOP-dominated Legislature agreed to make in response to the six people who were killed in a Nashville school shooting in March.
While the new laws received support from the state’s handful of Democratic lawmakers, some argued that the state should not be pushing to transform schools into mini-fortresses and criticized GOP leaders for refusing to take up gun control proposals.
