Metro Nashville Public Schools Director Adrienne Battle addressed a tense press corps just 24 hours after a student killed himself and one other student in the cafeteria at Antioch High School.
“ Historically our schools have been safe spaces,” Battle told reporters. “ I have worked and learned in the very schools that we’re referring to. Over the last several months and years, we’ve seen a heightened sense around the safety and security in our schools, both with external and internal threats. We are continuing to research and study the most evolving technologies that will help us enhance the safety security measures within our school. There’s not anything that’s off the table for us.”
Battle shared the podium with Mayor Freddie O’Connell, whose two children attend Nashville public schools. Both Battle and O’Connell were visibly shaken.
Gunman shot two students before turning the gun on himself; reunification efforts underway
The questions from local and national media focused on school security measures — specifically Omnilert, the visual gun detection system adopted by MNPS in 2023 for $1 million. The system is one of many new lucrative products sold to schools desperate to defend against the looming threat of a shooting. Others point to the state’s lax gun laws, a teen mental health crisis and social media’s role in online radicalization as problem areas when it comes to preventing more mass killing.
On Monday, MNPS announced that Antioch High School would pilot a new product: the Evolv weapon detection system. Evolv is the same security screening system people walk through at Nissan Stadium. It functions like a next-generation metal detector. Students walk through shoulder-height posts that scan belongings; if flagged, they get a more invasive secondary screening.
“This pilot program demonstrates our unwavering commitment to safety and security,” says Battle in an accompanying statement. “Antioch High will serve as a critical testing ground for this advanced technology, allowing us to assess its effectiveness as we explore funding opportunities to expand its use across more schools.”
Later that day, students attended a rally and protest at the Tennessee State Capitol.
“The Antioch shooter, there was a whole thing with it being connected to a possible shooting at Hillsboro,” Sparrow Stone, a student at Hillsboro High School, tells the Scene. “I had to sit in my classes fearing someone would come and shoot up my school.”
Stone wants to see more restrictions on guns, including mental health screenings.
“I’m scared, and I want things to change, and I want kids to stop dying,” says Stone.
Educators, school districts and school safety organizations have resisted visible and imposing security measures like metal detectors, which they say create a hostile school environment. When schools physically resemble spaces such as border checkpoints or prisons, students can internalize such measures as evidence that going to school puts them in danger. Critics also bash technology like Omnilert, metal detection or the shatterproof windows installed in MNPS facilities, as reactive and imperfect forms of defense.
Two students killed, two wounded during Wednesday’s Antioch High School shooting
Annual school shootings more than doubled between the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary and the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School outside Miami in 2018. Then they nearly tripled in 2023, when a gun was fired or pointed at a person on school property — or a bullet struck school property — a record 349 times, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database. America earns the tragic distinction of leading the world in mass shootings.
A fund launched by the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee — the Nashville School Violence Support and Healing Fund — is raising money for Antioch High School families and students. This week, Antioch High School reopened to students on Tuesday and built in “grief counseling, mental health supports, restorative practices and community-building activities” through the end of the week.
Law enforcement believes that Solomon Henderson, the 17-year-old gunman at Antioch High School, had interacted with the 15-year-old perpetrator of a Dec. 17 school shooting in Madison, Wis. Henderson’s online activity and personal writings credit far-right media figures, including Candace Owens, for his antisemitic and white supremacist views. Owens is Black, as was Henderson. Law enforcement has given little information about Henderson’s firearm amid the ongoing investigation into the shooting. Nashville police arrested six students, including two as young as 12 and one who threatened “Antioch part two” when his backpack was screened, for school violence threats in the days following the shooting.
In addition to new security measures, Battle has repeatedly emphasized the safety of strong relationships between teachers and students.
“ This is a nightmare for us,” she said as she stood alongside the mayor. “This reinforces how important it is for us to know our students, build relationships and foster trust. Our students need us.”
Julianne Akers contributed reporting to this article.
