I noticed an article in a recent online edition of The Texas Tribune that discussed the “hardening” of Texas public schools. “Hardening” is the word used when elected officials pass laws attempting to make schools safer for the students, teachers, other staff, and the public.
According to the article, back in 2019, after an armed 17-year-old opened fire inside a Santa Fe, Texas high school, killing 10, the Texas Legislature passed what was considered at the time the most profound school safety law in the country. The 2019 law allowed districts to “harden” schools from external threats. But a closer look today, after 19 children and two teachers lost their lives to a teen gunman in Uvalde, Texas, suggests all of those “hardening” strategies have come up short.
The article goes on to say that between 2019 and today, “Texas schools didn’t receive enough state money to make the types of physical improvements lawmakers are touting publicly. Few school employees signed up to bring guns to work. And many school districts either don’t have an active shooting plan or produced insufficient ones.”
According to The Tribune, “Even with more funds and better enforcement of policies, experts have said there is no indication that beefing up security in schools has prevented any violence.” “This concept of hardening, the more it has been done, it’s not shown the results,” said Jagdish Khubchandani, a public health professor at New Mexico State University who studies school security practices and their effectiveness.
Regarding arming teachers with guns, “While lawmakers tout it as a potential tool to prevent mass shootings, just 6% of school districts use the Texas school marshal program.”
The Tribune article goes on to say that Governor Greg Abbott, at a recent Uvalde-focused press conference, emphasized that the 2019 school safety law required school districts to submit emergency operations plans to the Texas School Safety Center and make sure they have adequate active-shooter strategies to employ in an emergency. But a three-year audit by the center in 2020 found that out of the 1,022 school districts in the state, just 200 districts had active-shooter policies as part of their plans, even though most districts had reported having them.
The article concludes, “Big changes often take big money, and officials have noted that the 2019 school safety bill gives about $100 million per biennium to the Texas Education Agency. The agency then distributes the money to school districts to use on equipment, programs and training related to school safety and security, a little less than $10 per student based on average daily attendance.” Two security vestibules, which basically secures the front and back lobby to the school, costs $345,000 on average. “Overall, Monty Exter, a senior lobbyist with the Association of Texas Professional Educators, said the per-student allotment and one-time grants set aside for school security could never pay for the types of construction projects lawmakers have touted publicly in the wake of the Uvalde shooting. ‘Thinking about making significant changes to 8,000-plus campuses, $100 million doesn’t necessarily go that far.’”
Even though this Tribune story focused on school safety, I’ve had similar experiences dealing with the Texas Legislature while working for a large, urban Texas school district. Texas, and other state legislatures, love to mandate what must happen regarding school safety, curriculum, testing, special education, gifted education, school construction and maintenance, and the list goes on and on. The problem is that, even though the legislature “mandates” action, most elected bodies don’t provide the money necessary to achieve the mandate. We called these “unfunded mandates” when I was in the school district, and there were a lot of them.
I know what state constitutions say about public schools. Almost all of them expressly state that it is the legislature’s responsibility to provide for an efficient system of public free schools. This language needs to change. What state constitutions should say regarding education is that “It shall be the duty of the Legislature of the State to establish standards and funding to support and maintain public schooling.” If a public schooling enterprise doesn’t meet the state expectation, then the state would pull its funding and provide it to another public schooling enterprise.
State legislatures haven’t demonstrated a strong enough track record over the years when it comes to mandating action that will positively impact the public. This includes education but isn’t limited to it. State legislatures should stick to expectations and financing and leave decision-making about process (or how do we get there from here?) to non-government groups, including non-profits, other community-based organizations, and parents.
Til tomorrow. SVB
A Better Path to Learning 
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