Ever since a new law required schools to have armed guards at every campus a number of districts have asked for exemptions.Some said they don't have the budget
Ever since a new law required schools to have armed guards at every campus a number of districts have asked for exemptions.With a new school year around the corner safety is top of mind. "I can't think of anything more honorable than to protect our future and our kids," Northside ISD Police Chief Charlie Carnes.
His force, when at full capacity, will have 123 officers. Around 20 of those positions added in 2023 to help meet the mark set by House Bill Three.As law, HB3 requires every Texas school to have an armed guard on campus. This is not the case for all school districts right now. Some, like NISD, approved a good cause exemption, citing the need for additional money and availability of officers. "We're doing all we can do as far as recruitment and doing the best we can to cover all of those schools, at least each school every day, walking the campuses, talking to administration, and making sure that our doors that should be secured are, in fact, secured and recruiting," Right now, there are two officers at every high school, one officer at every middle school and a group of centrally located officers for the district’s elementary schools.Other districts, like North East ISD, utilize a different option. "We knew that police officers are hard to come by right now, so if we just posted more positions for police officers, we likely wouldn't have any success. So we did it in a little bit of a different way. We decided we were going to hire safety specialists," NEISD Executive Director of Communications Aubrey Chancellor said."We do think it's important to have an armed person at each and every one of our campuses. We already had them at our middle and high schools, so this will ensure that we have them at all of our elementary schools as well," Chancellor said.Some, like NISD and NEISD, have made progress from the 2023-2024 school year to the upcoming 2024-2025 one. We reached out to every area school district on their plan for the upcoming school year. East Central ISD said they have had armed security offices at every campus even before the law went into effect.We submitted a good clause exemption to TEA in September 2023 in response to the lack of funding to support the bill and the inability to find and hire qualified personnel. We implemented an aggressive recruitment plan, and since then, we have hired eight new officers that started the department's academy on July 22. We will continue to use our current hiring process to fill vacancies as we move closer to the end of our two-year exemption on September 2025. Additionally, we will continue to search for and secure adequate funding to support the process and monitor any amendments to the bill from TEA moving forward. Comal ISD is working with local law enforcement agencies to have School Resource Officers at every campus for the 2024-2025 school year. They also had them for the 2023-2024 school year. Schertz, Cibolo, Universal City ISD will also be working with local agencies to have an officer at every school in the district, which is what they also did for the previous school year. Alamo Heights is working with local agencies to have an officer at every school in the district. The previous school year they had officers at three out of their five campuses.
Armed Guards School Districts Recruitment Officers Exemptions Safety Armed Personnel
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