The Dallas Independent School District Board of Trustees voted in favor of filing for a “good cause exception” to an impending state law requiring every public school in Texas to have an armed security officer on campus.
State lawmakers passed HB 3 in late May in an effort to better secure schools following the mass shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde last year. Gov. Greg Abbott signed it into law on June 13.
Dallas trustees discussed security matters and the new law in a closed session at the top of Thursday’s meeting before moving on to more routine business.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, Dallas ISD started the school year some 167 security officers short of being able to comply with the forthcoming law, citing a lack of qualified personnel. The overwhelming majority of campuses without an assigned school resource officer or certified security officer were elementary schools.
While a few agenda items at the meeting were pulled for some brief discussion, trustees voted unanimously 8-0 to pursue an exemption to HB 3 due to “the availability of … funding; or … personnel who qualify to serve as a security officer,” as allowed by the law. The agenda item was not pulled for discussion.
Under such an exemption, school districts must instead hire school marshals, school guardians, or private security officers (Commissioned Level III) instead of licensed peace officers.
Robyn Harris, executive director of strategic engagement and crisis communications for Dallas ISD, previously told The Dallas Express that sergeants and lieutenants with the Dallas ISD Police Department would likely be deployed to some of the campuses that do not already have a student resource officer.
When asked if Dallas ISD would opt to lean on the Marshal Program, Harris said at the time, “That’s not something we’re going to do.”
Other discussions in the board meeting included Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde giving a report touting the district’s 3-8 grade STAAR scores for the 2022-2023 school year. This year’s scores largely improved over last year’s but still fell below statewide averages in most categories.
“With a few exceptions, we’re catching up to the state scores across the board and scoring higher than in many other neighboring suburban school districts and charter schools,” Elizalde claimed.
While the Texas Education Agency has yet to release accountability reports for student achievement outcomes for the last school year, Dallas ISD saw only 41% of its students score at grade level on their STAAR exams the previous year. The statewide average was 48%.
Additionally, nearly 20% of its graduating Class of 2022 did not earn a diploma in four years. The statewide average for on-time graduation was 90%.
Elizalde also boasted a relatively successful first day of school, noting that there were only 70 teacher vacancies on the first day and that “almost every single classroom” had working air conditioning.
“I think the only place we saw an auditorium filled was with parents registering their kids because we did have a large influx of charter school families that were relocating their children back home to Dallas ISD,” Elizalde claimed.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, Texas public schools have been seeing declining enrollment, partly due to low performance in academic metrics and the perception on some parents’ part that curricula have been politicized. Dallas ISD has seen its own share of enrollment decline in recent years.
