Allen ISD approved private armed security for 17 of its campuses

In a unanimous vote Monday evening, the Allen Independent School District Board of Trustees approved providing armed security officers on every campus. The vote was to meet the requirements of the new Texas law known as House Bill 3.

Only two people signed up for public comment.

Beginning August 10, the school district will work with the Texas-based company L&P to serve the 17 campuses that currently do not have an assigned school resource officer.

"We began looking for a plan to cover our elementary and the Anderson Early Childhood Center with armed security," Brent Benningfield said. Benningfield serves as the assistant superintendent of operations for the school district.

According to HB3, "We need to be in pursuit of compliance by September 1^st,” Brent Benningfield said.  “The best thing to do is to provide that security for our students and staff. Why would we wait a month to provide it when they're already in the building?"

Benningfield said the contract runs during the entirety of the 2023-2024 school year and does not include security for after-school programs.

"These folks are there as armed security to protect against an active threat,” Benningfield said. “Right now, the way the contracts are built, it will be 30 minutes before and after school at these at these elementaries.”

The Allen Police Department will continue to serve students and staff during after-school programs.

“All of these security officers will be uniformed and easily identifiable,” Benningfield said. "The L&P company agreed to structure this much like an SRO program and have a consistent officer at each elementary day after day.... We would have a consistent person at each campus to be able to develop those relationships and have consistent practices. They also have a plan for subs that if one of those individuals is out of illness or things, we have appropriated subs... In addition to that, they will provide us with a sergeant as a point of contact and someone to oversee the program... Every single one of these officers that we would receive security will be level three commissioned."

According to Benningfield, the chosen company required some of the same programs as the Allen Police and Fire Department.

“I will say that the training as far as active shooter training, civilian response to active shooter, those things, the alert system, they use it,” Benningfield said. “They use the exact same systems, the exact same training that our first responders would.”

The one-year contract with the private security provider will cost Allen ISD approximately $694,000.

"We will be receiving $15,000 per campus for House Bill three to go towards this compliance that's going to give us about $360,000," Benningfield said.

Benningfield added there are several ways the district can explore to pay the remaining balance as the additional funds would not be needed until the Spring semester.

"Last spring, I know you're aware, we received from the State we received a safety allotment. Now, that money came attached essentially with a to-do list of physical safety features to add to buildings," Benningfield said. "We can send our evidence of compliance to the state and ask that that money be re-appropriated or allowed for our board to be appropriate for other safety measures."

The company said it would make available weekly reports to the district to make sure performance is up to par as well as require performance evaluations from its employees every six months versus annually.

Still pending are established protocols and procedures for staff in dealing with armed security.