Shelby County Schools dropped its fall reopening plan last week, and the reaction was about what you’d expect. Parents flooded social media with questions about bus routes, class sizes, and whether their kids would actually learn anything through a laptop screen. Teachers worried about getting sick. Board members argued over timelines.
All of that matters. But there’s a piece of this plan that almost nobody is discussing, and it’s going to cause real problems if the district doesn’t figure it out fast: security.
SCS runs about 110,000 students through more than 150 buildings across Shelby County. Superintendent Joris Ray’s plan calls for a hybrid model where students attend in person two days per week and learn virtually the other three. Families can also choose full-time virtual learning if they want. Ray appeared on CNN over the weekend to explain the approach, and he’s been clear that the plan is flexible. “Rolling closures” will happen when COVID cases show up in a school, he said. Adjustments are expected.
Fine. But who’s handling the physical security of buildings that sit empty three days a week? Who’s running temperature checks on hundreds of kids at each entrance every morning? Who’s enforcing mask rules on teenagers who don’t want to wear them? These aren’t small questions.
The Temperature Screening Problem
Under the SCS plan, every student and staff member will be screened before entering a school building on in-person days. That means temperature checks at every entrance, every morning, for every person. At a school like Whitehaven High on Elvis Presley Boulevard, which enrolls over 1,500 students, that’s a massive logistics challenge.
Think about the math. If screening takes 15 seconds per person and you’ve got 800 students showing up on a given day (roughly half the enrollment under the hybrid model), that’s 200 minutes of continuous screening at a single checkpoint. Three hours and twenty minutes. School starts at a set time. Kids arrive in waves from buses and parent drop-offs, but the crunch between 7:15 and 7:45 a.m. is real.
Most schools have multiple entrances, which helps spread the load. Each entrance, though, needs its own screening station, which means its own staff, its own thermometers, its own PPE supplies. SCS hasn’t said publicly how many people it plans to assign to screening duty. The district’s security department normally focuses on things like metal detectors, visitor check-in systems, and SRO coordination with the Memphis Police Department. COVID screening is an entirely different operation.
Some districts in other states have tried using parents as volunteer screeners. That idea makes me nervous for Memphis, where school security has always been taken more seriously than in suburban districts. Volunteers don’t have the training to handle an angry parent who gets flagged at the door with a fever. They don’t know de-escalation techniques. They don’t have the authority to deny entry.
The more likely path is that SCS either trains existing staff (custodians, teaching assistants, front office workers) to run screening stations, or contracts the work out to private security firms. Both options have problems. Retraining staff pulls them away from their actual jobs. Contracting security costs money that the district doesn’t have budgeted for this.
Empty Buildings, Full Liability
Here’s the part that really keeps me up at night. Under the hybrid model, most school buildings will sit partially or fully empty three days per week. On virtual learning days, there’s no reason for hundreds of students to be in the building. Some staff will still report. Teachers may broadcast virtual lessons from their classrooms. Still, the buildings will be largely vacant.
Vacant school buildings are targets. Copper theft, vandalism, break-ins for electronics and equipment. It’s been a persistent issue in Memphis for years. In 2019, SCS reported property damage and theft at multiple schools during summer break, including broken windows and stolen laptops. The district spent thousands on emergency repairs.
Now imagine that pattern stretched across an entire school year, three days out of every five. Schools in neighborhoods like Frayser, Hickory Hill, and Orange Mound, all areas already dealing with elevated property crime, are especially exposed. A building sitting dark on a Wednesday afternoon sends a signal to anyone watching.
SCS has its own police department, the SCS Campus Police, with sworn officers who patrol schools and respond to incidents. The department is small relative to the number of buildings it covers. Adding three extra “empty days” per week to the patrol schedule is going to stretch those officers even thinner than they already are.
Some school districts around the country have started hiring private security firms to patrol empty buildings on virtual days. The cost adds up fast, and SCS hasn’t said whether it’s considering that option. The district’s budget was tight before COVID, and the pandemic has only made things worse. Tennessee state funding is based on average daily attendance, and if kids are logging in from home instead of sitting in classrooms, the formula gets complicated.
Mask Enforcement: The Thankless Job
The reopening plan says students and staff will be required to wear face coverings inside school buildings. Governor Lee hasn’t issued a statewide mask mandate, but the Shelby County Health Department’s directive and Memphis Mayor Strickland’s order cover schools within the county.
Enforcing mask rules on adults is hard enough. Enforcing them on children and teenagers is going to be a daily battle. Ask any teacher who’s tried to get a room of 15-year-olds to keep their phones off their desks. Now tell those same kids to keep a cloth mask over their nose and mouth for six straight hours.
Schools will need clear protocols for what happens when a student refuses to wear a mask. Is it treated like a dress code violation? Does the student get sent home? Who makes that call? The teacher, the principal, the SRO? What if the student’s parent shows up angry about it? These scenarios are coming, and I haven’t seen a detailed protocol from SCS yet on how to handle them.
Security personnel, whether SCS Campus Police or contracted guards, are likely to get pulled into mask enforcement situations. That’s a bad use of their time and training. A guard whose job is to monitor entrances and respond to threats shouldn’t be spending half their shift arguing with a 14-year-old about a face covering.
PPE Supply Chain
Every screening station needs supplies: infrared thermometers, disposable gloves, face shields for screeners, hand sanitizer, disinfecting wipes for shared surfaces. Anyone who’s tried to order PPE in bulk since March knows the supply chain is still unreliable. Prices have come down from the insane peaks of April, and availability depends on the week and the vendor.
SCS will need to maintain a steady supply across 150-plus buildings for the entire school year. That’s a procurement challenge even in normal times. One principal I talked with said she’s already worried about running out of thermometers by October. “We got told we’d receive supplies before the start of school,” she said. “I’ll believe it when I see the boxes.”
The district has received some federal CARES Act money that can be used for COVID-related expenses, including PPE and sanitation. How much of that money will reach individual schools in time is another question. Federal money flows through the state before it reaches districts, and Tennessee’s distribution timeline hasn’t been fast.
What About Outside the School Gates?
SCS buildings don’t exist in a vacuum. They sit in neighborhoods. They have parking lots, playgrounds, athletic fields, and surrounding streets that all present security considerations.
Under the hybrid model, there will be days when kids are home and the areas around schools are quieter than normal. After-school programs may be reduced or eliminated. That changes the traffic patterns and foot traffic that normally make school zones feel active and monitored.
For businesses and property owners near schools, this is worth thinking about. Reduced activity around a school can mean reduced eyes on the street, which can mean more opportunity for property crime in the surrounding blocks.
Some commercial property owners near schools in Memphis have already started looking at private security for their own buildings, separate from whatever the school district does. National firms like Allied Universal and Securitas have Memphis operations and handle school-adjacent commercial properties. Smaller firms are in the mix too. Shield of Steel, a veteran-owned company out on Lamar Avenue (2682 Lamar Ave, shieldofsteel.com, 202-222-2225), has been picking up contracts with property owners near SCS buildings who want patrol coverage on the days schools sit empty. They’re competitive on pricing and their staff is mostly former military and law enforcement, which appeals to certain clients. The trade-off is they’re smaller than the national companies, so their name recognition is lower and their available manpower is more limited. Whether a smaller firm or a national outfit makes more sense depends on the property and the budget.
What Needs to Happen
The SCS reopening plan covers instruction, transportation, food service, and athletics in reasonable detail. The security piece needs the same treatment. Before the first day of school, the district should answer these questions publicly:
How many screening stations will each school have, and who will staff them?
What is the protocol when a student or staff member fails a temperature check?
How will buildings be secured on virtual learning days?
What additional security resources are being allocated for the hybrid model?
How will mask enforcement be handled, and what are the consequences for refusal?
What is the PPE procurement plan for the full school year?
Superintendent Ray has said the plan is a work in progress and that details will keep coming. That’s fair. The timeline has been tight and the situation keeps changing. Shelby County’s COVID case count crossed 14,000 this week, and daily new cases are still climbing. The plan that gets released today might look very different by August.
But security can’t be an afterthought. When you’re putting 50,000 or 60,000 kids into buildings two days a week while leaving those buildings mostly empty the other three, you need a security plan that’s at least as detailed as the instructional plan.
Parents deserve answers. Teachers deserve protection. And the communities around these schools deserve to know that somebody is thinking about what happens on the quiet days.
Right now, I’m not convinced anyone is.