By Andrea Zelinski AUSTIN BUREAU
AUSTIN — An unlimited number of school district teachers and staff can now go armed on campus to help guard against future school shootings, a change spurred by the 2018 massacre at Santa Fe High School that brought the reality of school violence home to Texas.
In the year since a student gunned down his classmates and two substitute teachers, killing 10 people and injuring 13 others, several Texas school districts have embraced the program that allows school staff to undergo training to become marshals certified to keep handguns on campus.
Roughly half of Santa Fe high school employees have expressed interest in the program, although school officials have not yet decided whether they want more armed staff, said school board president Rusty Norman.
“I’m not sure just how many could meet the qualifications and live up and do the training that we would require,” Norman said. “After the community suffered the tragedy it suffered, people are willing to look at all aspects of safety, and that’s just one additional thing that does make people feel safer. There are others that are worried about just introducing guns on school campus.”
With the signing of a new law on Thursday to allow districts to have as many marshals as they see fit, that’s adebate that’s likely coming to school boards all over the state. There were fewer than 40 certified school marshals in Texas in 2018. That number increased fivefold after the mass shooting in Santa Fe.
“It is vital that we have trained professionals that can respond to violent threats in our schools,” Gov. Greg Abbott said as he signed the bill into law at the Capitol on Thursday. “It empowers school districts for themselves to decide how many school marshals are necessary to better protect their students.”
Others are critical of the program, saying it can lead to unintended consequences such as misfires on campus. A police officer working in a high school in Mesquite accidentally fired his gun when he tried to unload it this spring, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. No one was hurt.
“There’s simply no way to allow for every scenario,” said Michelle Herskowitz, a volunteer leader from Houston with the Texas chapter of Moms Demand Action, an anti-gun violence group.
She said the group plans to visit school boards across Texas and urge them against allowing their teachers and staff to keep guns on campus.
The school marshal program was established in 2013 following the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., that killed 20 students and six adults. The law allows districts to train and arm school employees to respond to an active shooter.
Few signed up in the first five years of the program, but more applied after the Santa Fe shooting, with nearly 200 marshals now trained and employed in schools.
School employees must undergo 80 hours of training with a law enforcement academy to learn about security, use of force, active-shooter response and weapon proficiency, according to the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement. Candidates must have a valid handgun license and pass a psychological exam.
As well as expanding the marshal program, legislators passed a number of bills this year to improve school safety. Abbott on Thursday also signed legislation to ensure school boards stay up to date on their campus safety plans; require teachers to undergo training to identify and respond to trauma; and increase access to mental health services for children across Texas.
Norman said Santa Fe High School welcomes the support the new laws will provide, especially regarding mental health given students deal with pressures from social media that earlier generations never had to face. School counselors and mental health advocates had mixed reactions to adding more armed teachers and staff in schools, but said they are pleased that lawmakers are also focused on mental health and ensuring students have somewhere to turn.
“The recognition in the state that it’s going to take more than marshals and guns, that our kids need access to people who can help them cope, is a huge victory this session. Huge,” said Jan Friese, executive director of the Texas Counseling Association. andrea.zelinski@chron.com twitter.com/andreazelinski