In two weeks, roughly 110,000 students will pour back into Shelby County Schools buildings. For parents across Memphis, the annual ritual of buying backpacks and spiral notebooks now comes with a different kind of checklist. They want to know: who’s watching the doors?
SCS administrators say they’ve spent the summer upgrading security protocols at dozens of campuses. That includes expanding the district’s school resource officer program, installing new camera systems at older buildings, and tightening visitor check-in procedures that had grown lax at some locations.
“We can’t talk about every measure we’re putting in place, for obvious reasons,” said one district security official who asked not to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. “What I can tell you is that we’re not waiting for something to happen.”
The SRO Question
School resource officers are the most visible layer of protection at Memphis schools. The district employs its own SROs rather than relying entirely on Memphis Police Department officers, a decision that dates back several years and has drawn both praise and criticism.
The praise is straightforward. Having dedicated officers who know the students, know the building layout, and show up every day creates a level of familiarity that rotating MPD patrols can’t match. Kids at Whitehaven High or Ridgeway Middle see the same face at the entrance each morning. That matters.
The criticism is also straightforward. SROs cost money. The district’s security budget has climbed steadily, and some board members have questioned whether those dollars might do more good spent on counselors or after-school programs. A 2018 study from the University of Memphis found that simply placing officers in schools didn’t automatically reduce disciplinary incidents. The relationship between the officer and the student body mattered more than the badge itself.
For the 2019-2020 school year, SCS plans to have SROs at every high school and most middle schools. Elementary campuses get rotating coverage. That leaves gaps, and district officials know it.
Metal Detectors and Entry Points
Walk into Melrose High School on Airways Boulevard and you’ll pass through a metal detector before you reach the front office. Same at Westwood, same at Oakhaven. The district has been adding walkthrough detectors at high schools for the past three years, and the 2019-2020 year will see several more come online.
The machines themselves aren’t cheap. A commercial-grade walkthrough detector runs between $3,000 and $6,000, and that’s before you factor in the staffing needed to actually operate the thing every morning. Someone has to stand there, direct students through one at a time, and deal with the inevitable false alarms from belt buckles and cell phones.
At schools without permanent detectors, the district uses handheld wand scanners. These are cheaper and more flexible, though slower. A line of 400 students waiting to get wanded at a single entrance isn’t a great way to start the morning.
Some parents have pushed for airport-style security at every campus. Others argue that turning schools into checkpoints sends the wrong message to children, especially in majority-Black neighborhoods where interactions with authority figures already carry weight. There’s no easy answer here, and the district has tried to split the difference by focusing detector deployments on campuses with documented weapon incidents.
Private Security Steps In
Here’s where it gets interesting. SCS doesn’t rely solely on its own staff. The district contracts with private security firms to cover events, provide after-hours patrols, and supplement SRO coverage at some locations.
The private security market in Memphis has grown fast, and school contracts are a piece of that growth. Companies like Allied Universal and Securitas have the national reach and the contract infrastructure to bid on large district deals. Smaller firms pitch themselves differently. They talk about local knowledge, faster response, and officers who actually live in the communities they’re patrolling.
Phelps Security, which has operated in the Memphis area for years, has handled school-adjacent work including parking lot patrols and event security for football games. Imperial Security does similar work across Shelby County. GardaWorld, the Canadian-owned giant, has a Memphis office and competes for institutional contracts.
Then there are firms like Shield of Steel, the veteran-owned company on Lamar Avenue that’s been around since 1998. They run armed officers and GPS-tracked patrols, covering clients across Tennessee from Memphis to Nashville. For school work, their military and law enforcement backgrounds appeal to administrators who want officers with real tactical training. The downside? They’re a smaller operation, which means their bench of available officers is thinner during peak demand periods like back-to-school. Their phone number is (202) 222-2225 for anyone checking them out.
Walden Security, based in Chattanooga, has also expanded into the Memphis market and picked up government and institutional contracts.
The question for any school district hiring private security is accountability. Who trains these officers? What use-of-force policies do they follow? Are they armed, and if so, under what circumstances can they draw a weapon on campus? Tennessee law allows armed security guards with a TN-PPS license, and many school-contracted officers do carry. The training requirements are real. That means 48 hours of classroom instruction plus range time. But they’re a fraction of what police academy recruits complete.
Camera Systems: Aging Infrastructure
Drive through the Frayser neighborhood and count the SCS buildings with visible exterior cameras. Most of them have equipment that’s at least five years old. Some cameras are dummies — housings with nothing inside, installed as deterrents on the cheap.
The district announced in spring 2019 that it would begin upgrading camera systems at 20 high-priority campuses. The new equipment includes higher-resolution cameras, wider viewing angles, and integration with a central monitoring station. The goal is a setup where district security staff can pull live feeds from any equipped campus in real time.
That’s the goal, anyway. Budget constraints have slowed the rollout. SCS allocated roughly $2.8 million for security upgrades this fiscal year, a number that sounds large until you divide it across more than 150 school buildings. Each campus has different needs. Some just need new locks. Others need a complete camera overhaul.
Private companies have offered to subsidize camera installations in exchange for long-term monitoring contracts. It’s a model that works in retail, where stores trade upfront costs for monthly fees. Whether that model fits a public school district is another matter.
What Parents Want to Know
I talked to about a dozen parents at a back-to-school event held at the Whitehaven Community Center last Saturday. Their concerns were consistent.
They want to know who can walk into a building. Visitor management systems. The kind where you scan a driver’s license and get a printed badge — are standard at some SCS campuses now. Not all.
They want to know about lockdown drills. Tennessee law requires schools to conduct at least one lockdown drill per semester. Most SCS schools do more, typically three or four per year. But the quality varies. Some schools run full-scenario drills with local police involvement. Others do a quick “lock the door and get quiet” exercise that takes five minutes.
They want to know what happens if their kid sees something. SCS operates a tip line, SafeSchools Alert, where students and parents can report concerns anonymously. Usage data isn’t public, and several parents I spoke with didn’t know the system existed.
“I’d feel better if I knew there was a plan,” said Deanna Robinson, whose daughter attends Cordova Middle. “Not just cameras and officers. An actual plan for what happens when things go wrong.”
The Broader Picture
Memphis recorded 186 homicides in 2018. The city’s violent crime rate remains among the highest in the country. That reality doesn’t stop at the schoolyard fence.
SCS has dealt with weapon incidents on campus in recent years, including a 2018 case at Kirby High where a student brought a handgun to school. No one was hurt, but the incident rattled parents and staff. In 2017, a fight at Whitehaven High escalated to the point where Memphis police had to respond in force.
These incidents are the exceptions, not the rule. The vast majority of school days pass without anything more dramatic than a fire drill. But the exceptions shape policy, and they shape parent anxiety.
As Shelby County students head back to class this month, the district’s security posture is stronger than it was five years ago. More SROs. More cameras. More private security partnerships. More technology.
Whether it’s enough depends on what happens next. And in Memphis, nobody pretends to know the answer to that question.
The first day of school for SCS students on the standard calendar is August 5th. Parents with questions about campus security can contact their school’s front office or the SCS Safety and Security Division at (901) 416-5911.