The Dallas Independent School District Police Department is facing a monumental task in recruiting and hiring peace officers in compliance with a recently-passed Texas law.
House Bill 3 requires all Texas schools to have an “armed security officer” on campus by September 1, according to the Superintendent’s Report released Thursday.
An armed security officer can be:
- A school district peace officer — a district employee licensed by the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement and commissioned by the district;
- A commissioned peace officer — an off-duty peace officer whom the district contracts either directly or through a licensed security services contractor; or
- A school resource officer (SRO) — a commissioned peace officer employed by a local municipality who is assigned to a school through a contract between the municipality and the school district.
However, DISD, like many other districts in North Texas, is having a hard time meeting those requirements due to a shortage of trained and licensed peace officers in the area.
And while some school districts may be able to negotiate a contract for local police officers to serve as SROs under a memorandum of understanding (MOU), this is a challenge for DISD.
Currently, 72 DISD campuses have active SROs, but it is unlikely the district will be able to fully staff the remaining schools with municipal officers, as the City of Dallas Police Department is already severely understaffed.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, a City analysis indicates the Dallas Police Department should have roughly 4,000 sworn officers, but the department has averaged around 3,100 officers.
“Dallas ISD would not have the availability to engage in an MOU with the City of Dallas because the workforce is already a challenge for the city of Dallas,” Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde said at a DISD board meeting attended by The Dallas Express.
“So you could see that us saying ‘let’s go get an MOU with the City of Dallas,’ they would be like, ‘we don’t have enough officers to take care of the municipality,’ so they would not be wanting to develop an MOU with us just because of the constraints that they have,” Elizalde said.
“When [HB 3] was created … the intent was to have police officers in our schools,” DISD Police Chief John Lawton said at the board meeting.
He explained that if a district cannot comply because of a problem with funding or a lack of personnel, it can apply for a “good cause exception,” which is “the direction we are going,” he said. Both funding and lack of personnel are issues for DISD.
Under the exemption, school districts may hire school marshals, school guardians, or private security officers (Commissioned Level III) in lieu of licensed commissioned peace officers.
Level III security officers may carry a gun but have no law enforcement abilities, meaning they cannot make arrests and are limited to protecting people and property in emergency or active violence situations.
“Of course, we also have a lack of available personnel who qualify to serve as Level III security officers,” Lawton noted.
HB 3 provides $15,000 in funding per campus per year to help offset the cost of hiring security officers. That amounts to $3.6 million for DISD, but the actual cost to the district is estimated to be $12 million annually, not including any pay raises the officers may receive.