While Tennessee has been racing to put a school resource officer in every public school, Nashville quietly left a big pile of state money sitting on the sidelines.
State officials told a House committee this week that millions of dollars set aside for school resource officers, or SROs, went unused, with Davidson County alone leaving roughly $9.5 million on the table. Department figures show the state allocated about $13 million to cover SROs across 183 Davidson County schools, but only about $4 million was actually used. That meant 127 schools did not tap a single SRO grant dollar. The revelation quickly had lawmakers asking why the money was not moving as the statewide SRO program continues to roll out.
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