Three days ago, roughly 110,000 Shelby County Schools students logged on for the first day of class. They did it from kitchen tables, bedrooms, living room couches, and in some cases from the parking lots of fast-food restaurants that offer free Wi-Fi. They did not set foot inside a school building.
Superintendent Joris Ray made the call in late July: SCS would open the fall semester entirely virtual. COVID-19 case counts in Shelby County were still climbing. The health department backed the decision. Teachers had been lobbying for it since early summer, arguing that sending 110,000 students and thousands of staff into close quarters was reckless while community transmission remained high.
So the buildings are empty. All 160-plus of them. Elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, magnet schools, career and technical centers. Empty hallways, empty cafeterias, empty gyms. Five days a week, from now until the district decides it’s safe to bring students back.
That decision created an immediate and practical problem that has nothing to do with lesson plans or Zoom fatigue. Who’s watching all those buildings?
The scope of what’s sitting vacant
SCS is the largest school district in Tennessee. Its 160-plus buildings are spread across Memphis and unincorporated Shelby County, from the Frayser community in the north to the Southwind area near Germantown. Some of these campuses are modern facilities built in the last 15 years. Others date back to the 1950s and 1960s. A few are genuinely historic structures.
Each building contains computers, projectors, musical instruments, kitchen equipment, athletic gear, maintenance tools, and custodial supplies. The newer schools have sophisticated HVAC systems worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Every building has copper wiring and copper piping, which has been a target for thieves in Memphis for as long as anyone can remember.
During a normal school year, these buildings are occupied 10 to 12 hours a day. Teachers arrive around 6:30 a.m. After-school programs and sports practices run until 6 or 7 p.m. Custodial staff works evening shifts. On weekends, many schools host community events, church services, and recreation league games. The constant presence of people is itself a security measure. Occupied buildings rarely get broken into.
Strip all of that away and you have 160 structures sitting dark and quiet in neighborhoods across the city. That’s an invitation for trouble.
The specific risks
Copper theft. This one keeps facilities managers up at night. Copper prices have been climbing steadily through 2020, and Memphis has a long, ugly history of copper theft from vacant properties. Thieves rip out wiring, strip HVAC condensers for the copper coils, and pull plumbing fixtures. A single HVAC unit can contain $200 to $400 worth of copper at current prices. Multiply that across dozens of rooftop units at a large high school campus and the math gets expensive fast. The damage from the theft itself often costs ten times what the copper is worth. Ripping out wiring means rewiring entire sections, and gutting an HVAC condenser means replacing the whole unit.
Vandalism and graffiti. Empty buildings attract bored teenagers and anyone looking for a surface to tag. Broken windows lead to water damage, which leads to mold, which leads to expensive remediation before students can return. The “broken windows” theory of crime, the idea that visible disorder invites more disorder, applies literally here.
Squatting. Memphis has a significant homeless population, and empty buildings with working utilities offer shelter. School buildings are particularly attractive because they have bathrooms, running water, and climate control. Once someone establishes themselves inside a building, removing them becomes a legal process that takes time. Meanwhile, the building sustains damage from unauthorized use.
HVAC tampering. Even without copper theft, HVAC systems in unoccupied buildings are at risk. Systems need to keep running to prevent mold growth and pipe freezing (less of a concern right now in September, very much a concern by December). If someone cuts power to a building or tampers with the mechanical systems, the district could face tens of thousands of dollars in environmental remediation before reopening.
Fire. This is the catastrophic scenario. An arson incident or an electrical fire in an unoccupied building at 2 a.m. could burn unchecked for minutes before anyone notices. Memphis Fire Department response times vary by location. A school in a residential area of Whitehaven or Hickory Hill might not have anyone driving past late at night to spot smoke. The fire at Hawkins Mill Elementary in 2019, which happened over a weekend, caused major damage partly because the building was unoccupied when it started.
What the district is doing
SCS has its own security department, which employs both sworn officers and civilian security staff. During a normal school year, these personnel are assigned to individual campuses. They handle access control, respond to incidents, and coordinate with MPD on serious matters.
With students gone, the district has reportedly redeployed its security staff into roving patrol teams. Instead of one officer stationed at one school all day, teams drive circuits through clusters of campuses, checking doors, scanning parking lots, and looking for signs of forced entry. It’s a fundamentally different model: mobile coverage instead of fixed-post coverage.
The district also relies on alarm systems and camera networks at most of its buildings. The quality and age of those systems varies widely. Some of the newer schools have modern IP camera systems with remote monitoring capability. Older buildings may have analog cameras that record to on-site DVRs that nobody checks unless there’s an incident.
I reached out to SCS for specifics on their security plan for vacant buildings. The district’s communications office declined to discuss details, citing security concerns. Fair enough. You don’t broadcast your patrol routes.
The suburban comparison
While SCS went fully virtual, some of the suburban districts in Shelby County took a different path. Collierville Schools, Germantown Municipal School District, and Bartlett City Schools all announced hybrid models, mixing in-person and virtual instruction. Arlington Community Schools initially planned for in-person classes.
These districts are smaller, generally better funded per pupil, and serving communities with lower COVID transmission rates. Their buildings won’t sit completely empty. Staff and at least some students will be present during the week, which reduces the security concern.
The contrast exposes an old divide in Shelby County education. When the city and county school systems merged in 2013, the suburban municipalities formed their own districts specifically to maintain local control. Those districts now have the resources and demographics to try hybrid learning. SCS, serving a larger, more urban, more economically stressed population, didn’t have that option.
From a security perspective, the takeaway is simple: SCS has a bigger problem on its hands than any of the municipal districts.
Practical guidance for securing vacant school buildings
Whether you’re a school administrator, a facilities director, or a private security consultant working with a district, the principles are the same. Here’s what works for buildings that will be unoccupied for weeks or months at a stretch.
Maintain the appearance of occupancy. Put lights on timers. Keep landscaping maintained. Overgrown grass signals an empty property. If the parking lot is always empty, consider having staff park there during daytime hours even if they’re working remotely from inside the building.
Secure the mechanical systems first. Lock down rooftop HVAC access. Install cages around exterior condenser units if you haven’t already. Copper theft is opportunistic. Most thieves won’t spend 20 minutes cutting through a steel cage when the school two miles away has unprotected units.
Upgrade alarm monitoring. A local alarm that rings inside an empty building is useless. Make sure every building has monitored alarms that alert a central station and dispatch security or police. Test the systems now. Don’t wait until December to find out the alarm at a Frayser elementary school hasn’t been transmitting since October.
Randomize patrol schedules. If you’re running roving patrols, don’t follow the same route at the same time every night. Predictable patterns are easy to defeat. Vary the timing, vary the route, and occasionally double back.
Build relationships with neighbors. Many SCS campuses sit in residential neighborhoods. The people living next door to a school will notice unusual activity before any patrol team does. Give neighbors a direct number to call if they see something. A community tip line isn’t a substitute for good policing, and it isn’t a long-term solution, but right now it’s a cheap and effective early warning system.
Document everything. Walk every building weekly. Photograph the condition of doors, windows, mechanical rooms, and storage areas. If damage occurs, documentation speeds up insurance claims and helps police investigate.
The longer question
Nobody knows when SCS students will return to physical classrooms. Superintendent Ray has said the district will revisit the decision as public health conditions change. Some board members have mentioned October. Others say January is more realistic. A few have privately suggested this entire school year could be virtual.
Every week those buildings sit empty adds cumulative risk. The costs of a major incident (a fire, a massive copper theft, a flood from burst pipes in January) would come out of a district budget that’s already stretched thin.
SCS spent $1.5 billion on its operating budget last year. The vast majority goes to salaries and instruction. Facilities and maintenance get a fraction of that. If the district has to spend emergency funds repairing vandalism or replacing stolen equipment, those dollars come from somewhere else.
The virtual learning experiment is happening for good reasons. Keeping students and staff safe during a pandemic is the right call. The buildings, though, need their own plan. A hundred and sixty empty schools in a city with Memphis’s crime rate is a problem that won’t solve itself.