The Texas Senate passed a school safety bill that was prompted by last year’s school shooting in Uvalde, which left 19 elementary school students and two teachers dead.
Public outrage over a lack of security and an allegedly slow and ineffective police response prompted the legislature to take additional steps to ensure Texas public schools become safer.
Police waited 77 minutes before entering the classroom and killing the murderer in the Uvalde incident.
Senate Bill 11, authored by Senator Robert Nichols (R-Jacksonville), is summarized as a bill “relating to measures for ensuring safety and security in public schools, including measures related to certain student records and truant conduct and active shooter training for certain peace officers.”
The bill changes security funding from attendance-based allocation to even, flat-rate allocation per campus. Some rural Texas schools currently receive less than $1,000 per year to address safety. The flat rate will allocate anywhere between $15,000 to $16,800 per campus for security.
The bill also creates the Office of School Safety as a subagency of the Texas Education Agency. The subagency is tasked with working with the Texas School Safety Center to create and enforce school safety regulations.
The bill also mandates school safety reviews that include a yearly intruder detection audit, a full safety review every four years, and mandatory active shooter training for school resource officers.
The bill passed the Texas Senate unanimously, signaling overwhelming bipartisan support for school safety measures.
Association of Texas Professional Educators lobbyist Mark Wiggins applauded the legislature for passing the bill on Twitter.
“Keeping our children safe should be the top priority of the entire [Texas Legislature]. Congratulations [Senator Nichols] and staff on the passage of school safety SB 11. Thank you for prioritizing safety and for working with stakeholders to strengthen this critical bill.”
The Dallas Express contacted Senator Nichols’ office for comment on SB 11 but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
SB11 is a welcomed first start to highlighting the need for additional measures in protecting our kids and faculty while in our schools. Increased funding is an important first important step and this is where we don’t want to see things go sideways. First, there needs to be threat assessments performed in each school this can be done with an on-site visit or even virtual with the facilities manager or designated individual. Identifying both policy and physical security needs related to this subject will be the baseline for what comes next. The increased funding will help but, it will require a real expert to guide schools through this next step, additional funds will be needed to stop an individual from doing harm. Once we start prioritizing this side of school safety we will stop these senseless acts of violence and save our kids and faculty from harm. ~ SME in the field of Facility Security.
Thank you Senator Robert Nichols for leading SB11