Gov. Greg Abbott stated that school security laws passed by the Texas legislature following the deadly shooting at Santa Fe High School in 2018 were not enforced.
“We can see from what happened in Uvalde that, in fact those laws either did not have teeth or they were not fully complied with,” Abbott told CBS News on August 3. He continued:
“And so we expect to do two things: One is, we expect to reach agreement on even more enhanced standards and ensure there’s going to be teeth to it so there will be compliance. I’ll add to that, we will ensure that there is going to be accountability at all levels through the process.”
Following the Uvalde school shooting in May, Abbott urged the Texas Education Agency (TEA) to “develop strategies to encourage school districts to increase the presence of trained law enforcement officers and school marshals on campuses,” as reported in The Dallas Express.
The governor’s remarks come as school districts across Texas welcome back students, teachers, and staff this month.
School districts must check all exterior doors of each school and facility before the new school year begins and every week after that. School districts in Texas must also complete partial safety audits.
During a state senate committee hearing in June, the director of the Texas School Safety Center said they do not perform compliance checks at the schools themselves because they are unclear whether they have the authority to do so, according to CBS.
Abbott said that has since changed.
“I created a new position, the Chief School Safety Officer (CSSO) in the Texas Education Agency,” Abbott explained, “That person and their team will be in charge of ensuring that schools across the entire state of Texas will be in compliance.”
Abbot said CSSO would work alongside the Texas School Safety Center, the ALERRT program, local school ISD police, and local police to ensure all public schools comply with the standards.
“We all agree on one thing, we want our schools to be safe,” Abbott stressed. The governor continued, “We agree we need to have the best safety standard programs in place and we agree those protocols need to be followed. We will execute on all three of those components.”
Two Texas House committees held their second joint hearing Monday. The committees discussed online communications’ role in mass violence scenarios and identified technological resources and solutions for detecting, mitigating, and reporting threats, a notice for the meeting stated.
The committees are also looking into the state’s needs for mental health professionals, educators, school administrators, and other professionals in charge of youth mental health programs and the delivery of those services.
Amid concerns about student safety in Texas, a 2022 World Population Review survey found Texas’ public schools K-12 ranked 33rd in the nation for academics.
As Texas falls behind the rest of the U.S., Dallas ISD has fallen behind the rest of the state. Dallas ISD’s STAAR scores for the 2020-2021 school year were below the statewide average across the board. For all grades and all subjects, only 60% of Dallas ISD students received scores of “approaches grade level,” compared to 69% in the state.
Additionally, a four-year longitudinal study on the class of 2020 indicated that only 82.8% of the district’s students graduated high school on time, compared to a statewide rate of 90.3%.