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A year after a state law requiring armed police officers on every school campus in Texas sent school districts into a recruiting frenzy, school leaders are still grappling with how to scale up existing security forces to comply with the law, which was passed in the wake of the 2022 Uvalde school shooting.
Anticipating some of the difficulties districts would have, including inadequate funding and a shortage of qualified peace officers, lawmakers created an exemption, in which some of the largest school districts in San Antonio are now using to implement alternative security plans.
Those alternatives are left up to districts, with possible alternatives laid out in the law, including contracting with or hiring armed security guards, or arming district employees.
North East Independent School District, for example, created a safety specialist position in addition to their already existing police department, recruiting 46 former military personnel and other qualified candidates for those roles.
Heading into the next school year, the district has filled 40 of those campus-based positions created since House Bill 3’s passage in 2023, according to district spokeswoman Aubrey Chancellor, with others in the interview process.
The district will hire two additional positions to fill in and assist with other security needs, like auditing secondary school campuses, Chancellor said.
However, the armed officials have a limited scope, according to a letter shared with parents by Superintendent Sean Maika, who said that law enforcement duties would remain with certified NEPD officers.
“Our Safety Specialists will focus solely on safety and security on campus,” he said. “In fact, the only time the specialists are authorized to use their weapon is if there is a direct threat to life.”
The specialists will undergo extensive training, including active shooter training and firearms requalification, Stop the Bleed training and crisis and trauma training to better understand and intervene when a safety situation arises, Maika said.
Beyond personnel, districts have spent millions on upgraded doors, locks, fencing and more, according to various district leaders. NEISD also spent $2.5 million to quickly make a confidential purchase in order to bolster security last year.
The majority of the funding for that purchase came from a Texas Education Agency grant.
The law also provided an additional $15,000 per campus to be used for security needs, which falls far short of the actual costs to comply with the law, according to district officials.
Various grants and that added security funding from the state are nothing compared to the costs required to cover armed guards every one of the nearly 9,000 campuses across the state’s 1,200-plus school districts.
The increased expenses come as districts face difficult financial choices, with declining enrollment and no increases to base state funding since 2019.
Competing for talent
Other districts are aiming to bolster their existing police departments in the wake of the law instead of creating new positions.
Northside Independent School District, which is among the largest in the state with 128 campuses across 355 square miles, added 20 new police officers and brought 13 retired officers back into active service over the last year as part of those efforts.
The cost of those hires add up to about $1.6 million, according to the district, all new spending since the law was passed.
Charlie Carnes, the police chief for NISD’s police department, said other options are not currently under consideration.
“There are allowances for security guards, armed security guards, there’s allowances for armed teachers,” he said. “We feel that’s more problematic than problem-solving.”
With around 40 vacant positions, however, there are still gaps in coverage the police department is working to fill.
“We have about 85 elementary schools,” Carnes told the San Antonio Report. “So that’s almost a whole new police department for us.”
Carnes echoed other school officials who said that identifying and recruiting these guards is a challenge: “They’re just not in the pipeline to be hired.”
Instead, officers are being hired from agency to agency, reflecting a competition for teachers that has pitted districts against each other during a complex budget cycle that has resulted in program cuts to retain and recruit staff.
The police academy at San Antonio College, now that it’s being offered full time, could help bring more qualified police officers into the pipeline to be hired, Carnes said, but in the meantime, recruitment efforts remain difficult.
The 13 part-time retired officers who were brought back to Northside are each responsible for four elementary schools, helping assist the elementary campus division.
“Each instructional day, they visit each of those schools that they’re assigned, so our goal is to touch every school every day,” he said.
Each high school has two officers, and each middle school has one, along with a patrol and supervisory division.
Without having enough officers to cover every campus full-time, the district is also using the exemption in the legislation, which was officially triggered when the school board adopted a “good-cause exemption.”
Each district is required to keep documentation of exemptions and alternative plans on file, and provide it to the TEA upon request.
San Antonio ISD also adopted an exemption in the wake of the law going into effect last year.
The district has hired eight new officers since last year after implementing an “aggressive recruitment plan,” according to SAISD spokeswoman Laura Short, who said the district will “continue to use our current hiring process to fill vacancies as we move closer to the end of our two-year exemption in September 2025.”
The district is also pursuing other funding options from the state as they become available, she said.
‘Unfunded mandates’
The costs of added security are also affecting charter schools, which are also publicly funded and under the armed personnel requirements of the law.
Wade Dyke, the interim Superintendent of the Great Hearts Texas charter school network, said costs for officers last school year across 11 campuses were around $1.5 million.
“The safety and well-being of our students and staff are our top priorities,” he said. “We are equipped to have an armed guard at our Great Hearts campuses as the school year begins, having taken the steps to meet the new state requirement.”
Jubilee Academies, which has nine charter schools across the state including one in San Antonio, has had contracts with armed and unarmed guards going back as far as 2019. Still, Diana Centeno, executive director of student services, said “every time we have unfunded mandates such as HB 3, it causes financial difficulties for school districts.”
Northside’s Chief Carnes said that district has gone to great lengths to bolster security in recent years, with more than 9,000 cameras watching every NISD campus and property, systems to run instant background checks for those entering campuses and the installation of bulletproof glass.
Moving forward, he hopes more is done to help districts achieve compliance with the armed guard requirement when lawmakers return next year.
“I mean, the cost is millions and millions of dollars that Northside has invested,” he said. “But as far as paying for police officers and fulfilling House Bill 3 … that would be very advantageous if there was help from the state.”
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