What the Covenant Attack Changed for Tennessee Private Schools — and What Most Haven’t Done Yet

Three years after the March 27, 2023 shooting at Nashville’s Covenant School, Tennessee has invested more than $230 million in school safety. Most of that investment — $140 million specifically — went toward placing an armed school resource officer (SRO) in every public school in the state. Private, independent, and faith-based schools received a meaningful but separate allocation. And unlike their public counterparts, they operate without the SRO mandate, without the compliance requirements, and without the ongoing state oversight that now governs public Local Education Agencies (LEAs).

That’s not a policy failure to debate, it’s a practical reality that private school leaders are navigating — largely on their own, and on their own budgets.

Three years on, the question worth asking is: what actually changed at Tennessee’s private and independent schools, and where are the gaps that remain?

What the grant money actually bought

The state’s $14 million non-public school security grant for 2023-24 reached more than 300 schools statewide. Tennessee’s Department of Education approved 341 grant applications totaling approximately $13 million — 93% of available funds. The list of what schools purchased reads like a solid first layer of physical security: fencing and improved security gates, secured exterior doors, bullet-resistant window film, visitor background check systems, expanded surveillance cameras, and upgraded communications with local law enforcement.

These are real improvements. Shannon Gordon, the Tennessee Department of Education’s Chief Operating Officer, described the value clearly: the goal isn’t to make buildings impenetrable — no product does that — but to buy time. Extra minutes for law enforcement to arrive. Extra seconds for staff to act. That framing matters, because it keeps expectations honest.

Where the gaps appear on the campuses we walk

The act of shoring up a school campus is a starting point. It doesn’t run itself.

When we walk Tennessee private school campuses today, the most common gaps aren’t in the hardware. They’re in the programming around it: staff who can describe what was installed but not what they’d do if it failed, visitor management procedures that exist on paper but break down at the front desk, and security investments that haven’t been stress-tested since they were put in.

Private schools’ experience points to a second structural gap: staffing continuity. Adding armed officers during the grant period was a meaningful upgrade. Figuring out how to fund them long-term — once the one-time state money was gone — is a challenge many schools are still working through. The posture improved; the operating budget didn’t change permanently to support it.

There’s also the assessment gap. Public LEAs must now submit annual safety plans to the Tennessee School Safety Center. Private schools face no equivalent mandate. Some conduct voluntary assessments — but many haven’t had a qualified third party walk their campus, document what they found, and give leadership an honest accounting of what’s closed and what’s still open.

The 2025-26 budget included another $20 million in school safety grant funds, some of which is available to non-public schools. The application window opens in fall 2025. But grant money that funds a camera system doesn’t automatically fund the training plan that makes the camera useful.

What the SRO gap means for private schools specifically

Tennessee’s SRO investment placed trained, armed officers in public schools across all 95 counties. That framework doesn’t extend to private or faith-based schools. The Tennessee Homeland Security Agent Program — $30 million to deploy agents statewide — is accessible to non-public schools, but it requires a relationship with your county’s homeland security district and a specific request. Many private school leaders don’t know it exists or how to access it.

The result: two schools a few miles apart in the same city can face similar threat environments with dramatically different security postures — not because of different choices, but because of which funding streams and compliance requirements apply to them. Private schools bear the full weight of those decisions themselves.

What to do this week, this month, and this quarter

This week: Talk to your front office staff about what they’d do if an unrecognized person entered the building without stopping at the main desk. If you get hesitation or inconsistent answers, you’ve identified a real gap — not a hypothetical one.

This month: Pull out whatever safety plan your school has on file — whether it was written for the 2023-24 grant application or earlier — and read it. Ask whether your staff has been trained on it in the last 12 months. Ask whether it reflects how your building actually operates today.

This quarter: Have a qualified person walk your campus. Not to declare it safe or broken, but to give you a specific, honest picture of what’s been improved and what’s still open. That’s the conversation Serva Protective Security has with private school leaders across Tennessee — and it starts with a 30-minute call.

If you haven’t walked your campus with a trained eye in the last 12 months, book a 30-minute consultation with Serva PRS. You’ll leave with the top three things we’d flag and a practical next step.

This article is general information and is not a security plan. Every institution is different, and the right answer depends on your facility, people, and risk profile. Talk to a qualified Serva PRS professional about your situation.