2023 EDUCATION EDITION
2014 Cy-Fair ISD passes a $1.2 billion bond, which includes $55 million for safety and security.
2019 Cy-Fair ISD passes a $1.76 billion bond, which includes $207.7 million for safety and security.
2023 The Texas Legislature passes House Bill 3 to bolster school safety across the state. BREAKING DOWN HOUSE BILL 3 Gov. Greg Abbott signed House Bill 3 into law June 14, which will be e ective Sept. 1. The bill gives the state more oversight of districts’ safety and security measures.
2013
2015 2016 2017
2020
2021
2012 Cy-Fair ISD establishes its own police department.
2019 The Texas Child Mental Health Care Consortium is established.
2022 A school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, has 21 fatalities.
2018 A school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas, has 10 fatalities.
Legislative response At the state level, the Texas Child Mental Health Care Consortium is also addressing mental health for children. The Legislature established the entity in 2019 in part as a response to the Santa Fe shooting. As was the case in Santa Fe, 42% of school shooting perpetrators in the U.S. have been students, per the K-12 School Shooting Database, which documents gun re incidents at American schools. The consortium o ers districts, including CFISD, telehealth services to identify behavioral health needs and provide mental health services.
WHAT’S IN THE BILL?
implementation of the district’s emer- gency plans to help prepare for and prevent crisis situations, Emergency Management Director Scott Hud- son said in an email. The committee launched following the passage of Sen- ate Bill 11 in 2019. Starting in 2022-23, the district required all classroom doors to remain locked during class time, district o - cials said. The perpetrator in the Uvalde school shooting was easily able to enter unlocked classrooms, according to a report by the Advanced Law Enforce- ment Rapid Response Training Center, or ALERRT, at Texas State University. Since campuses have been subject to audit by the Texas School Safety Center in September 2022, 40 out of the dis- trict’s 73 campuses that were audited passed all phases, o cials said. Meanwhile, Franklin Sampson, CFISD’s director of guidance and coun- seling, said the district established its mental health intervention team in 2018-19—following a school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas. The team includes four licensed professional counselors, two licensed psychologists and two mental health police o cers. Additionally, the dis- trict has 288 counselors who focus on positive relationships with students, he said.
School Safety Center. The Texas School Safety Center and the ALERRT Center were both estab- lished after the 1999 school shooting in Columbine, Colorado. Texas lawmak- ers this year mandated o cers state- wide have active-shooter response training from ALERRT, Texas Region 2 Director Rusty Jacks said. Over the years, active-shooter train- ing has evolved to incorporate rst responder medical training to increase survivability of injured victims, Jacks said. The latest trend is the incident command system, which helps coordi- nate the e orts of multiple people. With more than 18,000 rst respond- ers in Harris County, it’s important for everyone to be on the same page in a crisis, said Justin Reed, chief of EMS for the Cy-Fair Fire Department. “A true uni ed command typically doesn’t happen for hours. ... We’re all working towards that common objec- tive, but we’re not doing it together,” Reed said. “We’ve realized now, espe- cially with active shooter incidents, time is not on our side. So we have to speed up all of these processes, and the only way to do it is to train together.”
1 At least one armed o cer must be on each public school campus during school hours. 2 School district employees who regularly interact with students must have mental health training. 3 Districts must create procedures for students to report concerning behavior by other students. 4 A child’s discipline record and threat assessments will be required to transfer with them between schools. 5 Parents will be noti ed via text or email about violent activity investigations on their child’s campus. 6 Districts failing to meet safety infrastructure standards must reallocate bond funds to x the issues.
Since 2019, the U.S. has seen 976 school shootings. This is a 211% INCREASE over the previous ve years.
HOW IS IT FUNDED?
28-cent increase in the per-student safety allotment + $15,000 per campus annually for security expenses =
Also in response to the Santa Fe shooting, lawmakers in 2019 required districts to provide access to school behavioral threat assessment teams. “We do need schools to be think- ing about not just having an e ective response should [an active threat] come, but what they are doing to pre- vent it in the rst place,” said Kathy Martinez-Prather, director of the Texas
$1.4 million in additional funding for Cy-Fair ISD
SOURCES: ADVANCED LAW ENFORCEMENT RAPID RESPONSE TRAINING CENTER, CY FAIR ISD, K 12 SCHOOL SHOOTING DATABASE, TEXAS CHILD MENTAL HEALTH CARE CONSORTIUM, TEXAS LEGISLATURE ONLINE, TEXAS SCHOOL SAFETY CENTER COMMUNITY IMPACT
For more information, visit communityimpact.com .
BACK TO SCHOOL SAFETY
DRIVING: -Never pass a school bus when red lights are flashing. -Obey School Zone speed limits. -Slow down and stay alert.
-Reverse with care. -Look for crosswalks and prepare to stop. -Avoid distractions.
WALKERS: -Walk on the sidewalk, if one is available; when on a street with no sidewalk, walk facing the traffic. -Before you cross the street, stop and look left, right and left again to see if cars are coming. -Make eye contact with drivers before crossing and always cross streets at crosswalks or intersections. -Stay alert and avoid distracted walking. BUS RIDERS: -Go to the bus stop with your child to teach them the proper way to get on and off the bus. -Teach your children to stand 6 feet (or three giant steps) away from the curb. -If your child must cross the street in front of the bus, teach him or her to walk on the side of the road until they are 10 feet ahead of the bus; your child and the bus driver should always be able to see each other.
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CY FAIR EDITION • AUGUST 2023
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