School Safety

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Almost a year after Texas' deadliest school shooting in Uvalde, state lawmakers passed sweeping legislation on school safety during the 2023 regular legislative session. Among its most significant changes, House Bill 3 (HB3) ordered school districts to secure schools with armed police officers and to train more staff to identify students who may need mental health support. It also granted the Texas Education Agency (TEA) more authority to ensure school districts have robust safety plans to respond to an active shooter and only slightly raised the amount of funding districts receive for school safety expenses. It's almost as if someone in the legislature (i.e., Texas Governor Greg Abbott) wants public schools to fail for some reason.

Now I don't want to get off on a rant here, but even before HB3 went into effect in September 2023, school safety experts warned that placing an armed officer at every campus would be costly and hard to implement amid a law enforcement shortage. But don't worry; we have "lockdown drills" because nothing says "preparing for academic success" like hiding under a desk and whispering quietly to your best friend about how you'd rather be in the cafeteria trading Pokémon cards.

And despite subsequent proposals for more school safety funding, school leaders' hopes were dashed after the fourth 2023 special session ended amid a stalemate on school voucher legislation. Which makes me wonder why he wants this legislation to pass so badly because it's obviously NOT for the benefit of most public school students. If I had to guess, I'd hope that it failed because they wanted to exclude measures that someone (Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, also known as "Costello") inserted into the bill designed to prevent anyone from being able to identify the cafeteria's mystery meat (because you know that ain't right). 

As stated earlier, House Bill 3 allows school districts facing financial or staffing constraints to secure schools with alternative plans, including by hiring security guards or training school staff to be armed, and does not punish districts for failing to meet the armed officer requirement. Even with these alternatives, school leaders working to follow the new school safety requirements have said that they may be forced to make budget cuts unless they are able to receive additional funding because we all know that as far as fundraisers go, bake sales and car washes are just not going to cut it.

Who's Going to Protect Our Children?

But let's look at the issue from a different perspective: that of the teachers.

The average starting salary for a teacher in Texas is (as of Feb 2024) $36 per hour, or $73,000 per year. For that, we ask them, in addition to their normal classroom teaching duties, to supervise extra-curricular activities, and oversee state-mandated standardized testing that enables the school to receive state and federal funding. They coach, teach fire drills, safety procedures, and healthy eating habits. Many are certified in first aid, food sanitation, and CPR (which requires annual retesting - often at their own expense - to maintain that certification). They spend an additional ten to twenty hours per month preparing to meet with their student's parents who are either so remarkably unconcerned with their child's actual progress that they don't even show up for the meeting, or who (after being constantly force-fed horror stories by politicians and the media) far less concerned about their child's actual progress than they are about WHAT is being taught in schools that they feel justified in berating the teacher for the school's supposed shortcomings

Now, in addition to all of this, let's also include both armed policing and psychological evaluations. How many of us know or can do half of the tasks that we expect our teachers to do, and yet we make more than the mere pittance - dare I say "slave wages" - that our teachers make? Is it any wonder that half of our nation's teachers are quitting the profession within five years?

Never mind "who's going to protect our children?" Who's going to teach them?