What to know about school safety requirements this upcoming year

As parents drop their kids off at the first day of class this week, a thought might undoubtedly cross many minds – how safe is your child at school?

Texas lawmakers are enforcing several changes this year, from a continued push on the mandate to place armed guards at every public school, to panic buttons in classrooms and more staff training.

Many of the changes come from House Bill 3, which Texas lawmakers passed last year in response to the Uvalde school massacre.

As Richardson ISD welcomes students back to class on Tuesday, Superintendent Tabitha Branum thinks about all 37,000 of her students – including her little one.

“I have a rising fourth grader in our school district, and so when I think about safety and security, it's very personal to me,” she said. "I want to ensure that every parent, every student, and every staff member walks into our buildings knowing we have done everything we can. We've been as proactive as we can to ensure the safety of our students and to mitigate risk as much as possible.”

Her top focus right now is training and re-training during their safety drills.

“It's not about doing a whole bunch of new things, but it's about getting good at the things that we know are best practices,” she said. "We practice those drills four times a year and we send communication home to our parents. So when their children get home, they know how to have that conversation with their child at home after that drill has happened.”

The district is continuing to get students well-rounded on ‘I Know What To Do Days’ – an in-school training scenario for students and teachers that is aptly named to take the fear and anxiety around the reality of what it’s like to go to school in 2024.

Richardson ISD

“I think that is the balance that every superintendent, as we think about ushering in a new school year, we want our schools to be a place where students can have joy,” said Branum. “But we also have to balance that with we know there are certain safety protocols we have to implement to mitigate that risk.”

There are several new safety requirements parents will notice this school year, including:

• A silent panic button in all classrooms that immediately connects to first responders.
• A continued push for armed guards at every public school campus.
• Training of certain district employees to recognize mental health concerns or substance abuse in students
• Provide an up-to-date map of school campuses to the Texas Department of Public Safety, local police, and first responders
• Contact parents when violence is happening anywhere within the district

School districts are also required to have one drill of each of the following each semester: lockdown, evacuation, secure, and shelter in place.

To keep track of it all, the Texas Education Agency recently announced a new program called Sentinel, which allows the state to track threats, standardize safety protocols across all districts, and monitor which ones are following those requirements.

School safety experts like Craig Miller – former Dallas ISD police chief who now does consulting work – worry about the feasibility for districts to meet all these new requirements, especially when it comes to staffing armed guards. School districts use local police to staff high school and middle schools, but finding even more officers to do the same for many more elementary schools has proved difficult.

“Because let's face it, every police department in state Texas has openings right now,” said Miller.

Miller says some districts have applied for an exemption to use alternate methods like arming teachers or hiring security guards, which comes with another set of standards.

“Those fall under two different statutes. One is called the school marshal, and one is called the guardian provision. If you do have teachers who are going to be armed, it's important for parents to know, do those teachers fall under the guardian provision or do they fall under the marshal provision. Because the standards for each one of those are a little bit different than each other,” he said.

Security guards, who are civilian-hired and trained employees of the school district, are being brought in to meet the requirements for armed guards.

“To think that we're going to see for 9,000 schools, who haven't historically had law enforcement or had a uniformed person. Security companies are coming into this field. And that's a change for some people because security companies many times don't have relationships with law enforcement,” said Miller.

Additionally, bringing in more officers who are directly employed by their police departments may cause some more challenges for school districts.

“In the state of Texas, you have 1,025 public school districts, but only about 350 of them have their own school district police departments. If you're a school district police department and you're the chief of police, you're reporting to the superintendent of schools,” said Miller. “So your mission sometimes can be viewed differently than an SRO who's supplied to the school district from the local municipality or sheriff's department. They come in and do their job as police officers, but they report back to the sheriff or they report back to the chief of police. So they see their mission somewhat different than the school district police officers.”

Branum says Richardson ISD has been able to staff its elementary schools with trained campus security officers.

"These are individuals that are hired employees by Richardson ISD. They go through a very robust screening and testing process and then a really rigorous training process before they are named a campus security officer. We are very fortunate that our board approved a compensation schedule that allows us to be very competitive,” she said.

That also has come at a significant financial cost and an investment.

“And as we know, the legislature did not fully fund that mandate. And so our board has had to make decisions around there are some things that maybe we wish we could invest more in,” Branum said. “And as we know, the legislature did not fully fund that mandate. And so our board has had to make decisions around there are some things that maybe we wish we could invest more in.”

When it comes to panic alarms, Miller said parents should ask their school how they plan to implement this efficiently.

“If law enforcement gets notified if a kid bumps into a panic system, what's going to happen? It's important for parents to understand that those are going to be in the classrooms,” he said.

There is also a call for the state to make a bigger effort to address mental health in students.

“We want to throw metal detectors or we want to throw bullet-resistant shields in situations, but if we would put more emphasis on the mental health for the kids who are experiencing these problems, I think we'd be much more successful,” said Miller. “I think that's one of the things where we're not putting enough emphasis is on the counseling. I don't think unless you've been in school in a long time you really understand what's going on in a lot of these kids’ lives and what social media plays in their lives.”

Branum agrees.

"We absolutely have seen a growing need within our student body for those additional social-emotional supports," she said. "So we are making sure that as a system, we can support our parents as they help their children as they go through these experiences."

She said her district has even applied for grant funding to hire additional social workers. Two licensed social workers will be placed in every one of their four high school feeder patterns.

“To help both support students as well as support parents and accessing those wraparound services that we know when a child is in crisis or when there is that kind of need,” she said. “Now, again, we would love to see additional funding and investment from the state and from Austin and our legislators. But we know we can't wait for that. And so we're trying to be very innovative in finding solutions to make sure that that help is available when our students need it.”

Miller said with so many new requirements and schools still working to meet those guidelines, parents need to take advantage of upcoming parent-teacher nights to ask questions and get familiar with their school’s emergency plan so everyone is on the same page.

“If it's a lockdown or a shelter in place and the doors are locked, parents need to understand that they're not going to be allowed to get into the school if that's a situation,” he said. “When a situation happens at a school, parents are supposed to be notified. Ask your teacher, what are the situations when a parent will be notified. What is it as a parent that the school wants me to do if there is a crisis? Where is their reunification site going to be?”