Legislature considers paying much more for school safety

 

Legislature considers paying much more for school safety

Under HB 3, an average-sized Texas elementary school — which has about 600 students — would receive about $21,000 per year from the school safety allotment. That figure comes well short of the at least $60,000 to $70,000 school officials say is necessary to pay an armed guard each year.

New funding for the armed guard requirement was in addition to several other new measures, like one mandating that certain school personnel must undergo a “mental health first-aid training program.” The law also gave the state more power to require active-shooter plans.

Though it received bipartisan support, HB 3 was not universally praised. Before and after the bill was signed into law, school district officials said the state wasn’t providing enough money for the new mandates.

During debate in early 2023, some lawmakers said that requiring an armed guard at each school could endanger students instead of making them more safe. A 2021 study by researchers at The Violence Project suggested that adding armed guards in schools doesn’t reduce gun-related injuries.

Efforts that session to tighten Texas’ gun laws were also a non-starter, with Uvalde parents left disappointed after a bill died that would have raised the minimum age for Texans purchasing semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21.

With no school safety funding increases since HB 3 passed, many school districts have taken “good cause exceptions” from the armed guard requirement. Districts can take an exception if, for example, they have school marshals that act as security guards or safety-trained employees who carry handguns on school grounds.

The Thorndale leader, Keypads, said his district, which serves about 600 students in a rural area 45 miles northeast of Austin, would hire armed guards for each of its three schools if they had much more than the $50,000 or so they receive from the school safety allotment each year.

Instead, the district for the past five years has taken part in the Texas School Guardian Program, in which about 10 safety-trained school employees from the three campuses have access to district-owned firearms. Kleypas said he would rather have paid full-time armed guards at each of Thorndale ISD’s three schools instead of putting an additional responsibility on employees who have other primary focuses.

How much new funding

With some money in the proposed budgets for 2026 and 2027, the door is open this session for school safety funding increases. Lawmakers from both parties have introduced legislation to increase the spending. The question remains: How much?

A bill with sponsors from both parties proposed by Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, would double the school safety allotment. Districts would receive $20 per student and $30,000 per campus each year for safety. Huffman, the Senate Finance Committee chair, is also the sponsor of the Senate’s proposed budget for the next two years, which incorporates the proposed safety spending.

In late 2023, she proposed an $800 million increase to safety funding that passed the Senate but didn’t get a vote in the opposite chamber. A similar $1.3 billion House bill met the same fate. In the final special session that year, the state legislature was unable to pass school vouchers legislation, and other priorities like safety funding increases also fell short.

“This session, I have prioritized making increasing school safety funding a separate issue from education policy issues,” Huffman said in an emailed statement to The Texas Tribune. “I am confident that increasing school safety funding will be supported in both houses of the legislature.”

Huffman said she’s trying to move the legislation through the Senate “as quickly as possible.”

Sen. José Menéndez, D-San Antonio, who proposed increasing school safety funding to $100 per student before HB 3 passed in 2023 said he thinks there’s “an appetite to increase” the allotment this legislative session.

Other legislation introduced this session would increase school safety funding by even more than Huffman’s bill. A proposal from Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, would give districts $100 per student and $60,000 per campus under the school safety allotment. West said the bill is a “marker, so to speak, to be a part of the discussion.”

The $100 per student figure, he said, is more in line with the needs of districts than the current $10 figure. Some district leaders are in agreement.

Substantial increases sought

For her district to be able to fully fund armed officer requirements mandated by HB 3, Tomball Independent School District Superintendent Martha Salazar-Zamora said the school safety allotment would need to be about $100 per student and $30,000 per campus. Tomball ISD is in full compliance with HB 3, she said, and has at least one armed officer at each of the district’s 22 schools. But her district has to pay about $2.1 million from its own funds to cover the cost.

Proposals to double the allotment are an “incredible starting point,” she said, but still well short of what her district needs. Tomball ISD currently receives about half-a-million dollars from the allotment each year.

For the past two school years, Tomball ISD has taken on deficit budgets. The mandates from HB 3 are partly to blame, Salazar-Samara said.

In late 2023, Texas school districts warned they would have to take on deficit budgets to comply with HB 3 and keep up with growing costs. That wound up being the case, with many of the largest ISDs in the state facing deficits for 2024-25.

“It’s not because we’re not managing the dollars properly,” said Salazar-Zamora, who is also president of the Texas Association of School Administrators. “It is because of increased unfunded mandates.”

Northside Independent School District, the fourth-largest district in the state, has enough funds allocated to have one armed guard on each campus, superintendent John Craft said. But the district largely uses its general funds to do so, a common thread in Texas.

To be in compliance with HB 3, Craft said his district was spending more than $10 million. Though the nearly $3 million the district gets from the school safety allotment each year is helpful, he said, it still leaves a large gap. Even doubling the allotment wouldn’t be enough to cover expenses. If just the per student allotment was increased to $100, then the funding gap would be filled, Craft said.

But even though Northside ISD can pay for an armed person at each school, it has bumped into another challenge. There are about 36 officer vacancies at the 132 campuses in the district, Craft said. Though the district has its own police department, he added local law enforcement shortages and competition with the San Antonio Police Department have made it difficult to keep all schools in the district staffed.

It’s not just a Northside ISD problem.

Law enforcement shortages

Law enforcement gaps have made it more difficult for school districts to find people to hire, including those — like Hays Consolidated Independent School District and Northside ISD — that have allocated enough money.

“It sent a lot of districts searching to hire the same kind of personnel at once,” said Amanda Brownson, deputy executive director of the Texas Association of School Business Officials, said of HB 3. “In some cases, those folks aren’t out there to hire.”

In recent years, law enforcement officials have reported hiring shortages both in Texas and nationwide. Though hiring increased in 2023, local law enforcement agencies — and some large cities — have had staffing shortages. In early 2024, the Austin Police Association said it was at a “breaking point” and was struggling to fill hundreds of open positions.

At Hays CISD, located about 20 miles south of Austin, superintendent Eric Wright said though his district is able to pay for armed persons in all 26 of its schools through general funds, only a little over half — 16 — have full-time officers assigned because of local law enforcement shortages.

Jeri Skrocki, head of safety and security at Hays CISD, said the state Legislature should make contact with local law enforcement agencies to better understand their recruiting struggles.

“Although I know that there was the best of intent when you talk about having an officer in every school,” Skrocki said, “the reality is local law enforcement across the entire state and, quite frankly, the country are suffering at being able to recruit qualified applicants into this job.”

Disclosure: Texas Association of School Administrators and Texas Association of School Business Officials (TASBO) have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune, a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy.