An Ooltewah-based office furniture company is in the process of manufacturing desks that also serve as ballistic, bullet-proof shields in response to the increased number of school shootings nationwide.
In 2019, Beverly Jerman, founder and CEO of AEGIS, LLC, and her husband, John, vice president of the company, were introduced to the bullet-proof desk patented by First Line Furniture.
The concept of the “First Responder Table” desk is that four of the tables in a room can go from a typical work desk to a bullet-proof shield in less than four seconds, according to AEGIS’s website. According to Beverly Jerman, while there is another bullet-proof desk on the market, there are not any that can also withstand an AR-15, sniper rifle or grenade.
“If there is an active shooter, the teacher … rolls it in front of the door and locks the wheels,” said John Jerman. “So there’s a barrier at the door, then the kids in the back of the room hold the handles in their tables, and their tables flip, and they move into the corner of the room. … And in that corner, you can get about 25 to 30 kids behind a four-foot-tall, 15-foot-long ballistic shield.”
John Jerman said the desks help first responders “buy time” when there is an active shooter in a school. His wife said the company is currently working with Oak Ridge Laboratories on adding technology that alerts 911, the student resource officer (SRO) and the principal when the desks are flipped up. Additionally, once first responders arrive, they also can utilize the desks as a part of their process of finding the shooter throughout the schools.
“The protocol is supposed to be whoever is first on the scene has to engage the shooter,” said John Jerman. “So if it’s an SRO, and he has his desk, and he knows there’s an active shooter, he could flip this table and start pursuing that active shooter.”
The Jermans have been working with State Rep. John Ragan, (R-Oak Ridge), chair of the Education Committee, to help educate the legislature about the ballistic shield and what it can do.
“It’s really an alternative for them to offer something up to the state, the community, and to the schools as a way of protecting the schools, since they really can’t do anything about the Second Amendment at this point,” John Jerman said.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a pause in production and development for AEGIS. But after the Covenant School shooting in Nashville, “everything really ramped up,” Beverly Jerman said.
The bullet-proof desks stirred some controversy among residents at Tennessee’s Special Session in August, with some critics accusing the company of trying to profit from the shooting. However, the Jermans expressed in an interview with the Accent that they are trying to help schools deal with the cost of keeping children safe.
“That’s the biggest thing with the schools,” said Beverly Jerman. “The government passed a bill and has a grant available to give [schools] 50% of what [they] need to harden [their] schools. So we’re suggesting that we help start a nonprofit to help schools with not only our product that we want to get out there but also with other measures to make schools better.”
“Prisons should be hardened; banks should be hardened; military facilities should be hardened. Schools shouldn’t be hard; they should be safe.”
But the Jermans don’t think schools should be hardened.
“Prisons should be hardened; banks should be hardened; military facilities should be hardened,” said John Jerman. “Schools shouldn’t be hard; they should be safe. So what you do is you have a fence, you have locked doors, you have an alarm system, you have an SRO, you have cameras, you have all these layers of protection that make the school safer. You have a ballistic shield that if something happens, kids can get behind and they’re protected. So there’s no simple solution.”
Collegedale Academy receives school resource officer
Local School Safety Measures
In June, Tennessee’s SRO Grant Program application became available to help public schools afford to have one SRO per school, according to the program’s page on the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security website. These SROs are armed law enforcement officers employed by local law enforcement entities, sheriff’s offices and police departments and are assigned to a public school within their jurisdiction.
Additionally, private schools have access to a Non-Public School Security Grant through the State of Tennessee. After applying for the grant, Collegedale Academy (CA) received $130,000 that will go towards school communication technology called an “Audio Enhancement’s EPIC speaker system,” according to Collegedale Academy Safety Coordinator Stacie Schepers. CA also has employed an SRO that also works for the Collegedale Police Department during school breaks. CA pays a portion of the SRO’s salary with parents contributing to the cost via tuition.
In 2022, Hamilton County Schools (HCS) worked with the County Commission and the Board of Education to secure funding to have SROs in all of their schools beginning with the 2022-23 school year, according to Communication Officer Steve Doremus.
Doremus said, “They continue to work with the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office, Chattanooga Police Department and other jurisdictions across the county to collaboratively provide safe school environments.”
“In the meantime, this is what we do to protect our teachers and our students. We put in other layers, other processes, other things that make our schools safer.”
Both HCS and CA utilize a Standard Response Protocol developed by the “I Love U Guys” Foundation, with school administrators and teachers being trained in the protocol.
While having an SRO is a part of the solution to school safety, John Jerman said it is not the entire solution.
“Everybody thinks we do this, we’re done. We’ve got it figured out. No, it is a part of the solution, not the whole solution,” he said. “Not even the ballistic shield is the whole solution. No one’s gonna change the Second Amendment. So if we think that’s not really going to happen, and we don’t think there’s going to be anything meaningful done to suppress the sale of assault weapons … then what are we going to do in the meantime? Well, this is what we do. In the meantime, this is what we do to protect our teachers and our students. We put in other layers, other processes, other things that make our schools safer.”
