AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A vision of armed officers at every school in Texas is crashing into the reality of not enough money or police as a new mandate took effect Friday, showing how a goal more states are embracing in response to America’s cycle of mass killings is proving unworkable in many communities.
Dozens of Texas’ largest school districts, which educate many of the state’s 5 million students, are reopening classrooms without meeting the state’s new requirements of armed officers on every campus. The mandate is a pillar of a safety bill signed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who rejected calls this year for gun control despite angry pleas from parents of children killed in the Uvalde school massacre.
Texas has nearly 9,000 public school campuses, second only to California, making the requirement the largest of its kind in the U.S.
“We all support the idea,” said Stephanie Elizalde, superintendent of the Dallas Independent School District, which has more than 140,000 students. “The biggest challenge for all superintendents is that this is yet again an unfunded mandate.”
The difficulties lay bare limits of calls to put armed guards at every school, more than a decade after the National Rifle Association championed the idea in the face of an intense push for stronger gun laws following the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre in 2012.
The new Texas law allows exceptions but also does not require districts to report compliance, making it unclear how many schools are meeting the standard.
But by all accounts, many are not.
The Associated Press contacted 60 of Texas’ largest school districts about whether they were able to start the school year in compliance. The districts, which cut across a wide swath of Texas, from rapidly growing suburbs to the U.S.-Mexico border, enroll more than 2.7 million students combined.
Not all districts responded and some declined to discuss staffing levels, citing security concerns. But statements to the AP, along with a review of school board meeting actions and statements made to local media, show at least half have been unable to comply with the law’s highest standard.
A major struggle is staffing elementary schools, where officers are traditionally less common. But those campuses came under calls for more protection after a gunman killed 19 fourth-graders and two teachers last year at Robb Elementary School — a tragedy in which the failures were not over a lack of police, who were on the scene within minutes, but the inaction of hundreds of officers once they arrived.
Spokesperson for Abbott did not respond to questions about the rollout of the law. The Texas Education Agency did not address questions about concerns raised by schools and instead provided criteria for districts to seek an exception.
“How these exceptions look locally is determined by the school district’s board, and they must develop an alternative safety standard with which the district is able to comply,” spokesman Jake Kobersky said.
But local school officials say the additional funding Texas gave districts under the new law, about $15,000 per campus, is hardly sufficient. In Dallas, Elizalde said an extra $75,000 is needed for each additional officer in Texas’ second-largest district.
In the scramble to comply with Texas’ new standards, options some districts previously never considered are now on the table: Some are turning to private security firms or arming more staff and teachers.
“This is probably new to everybody at this stage of the game. It’s expensive,” said Charles Hollis, director of operations at L&P Global Security in Dallas, which until this year had not put guards at public schools. The company now has contracts with four booming districts and is in talks with four others.
