HOUSTON — A new state law is supposed to guarantee an officer on every school campus, but a KHOU 11 investigation found only a few districts in the Greater Houston area said they're doing that.
In response to the Robb Elementary School shooting last year, the Texas Legislature passed an armed security officer requirement in House Bill 3. It requires districts to have an officer on every campus during regular school hours.
If a district can’t do that, its school board must pass a “good cause exception” because of a lack of funding or qualified personnel.
KHOU 11 Investigates dug into school board minutes and surveyed the top 20 school districts and found 17 have passed or plan to pass good cause exceptions for those reasons, even if they have more officers than campuses.
One of those districts is Alief ISD, where three officers are assigned to Elsik High School. On a recent day, they made their rounds, checked for unwanted visitors, greeted students and led a K-9 officer around campus while Alief ISD Police Chief Dan Turner supervised.
“I am really excited about having officers who not only want to be here but want to work with kids,” Turner said.
Alief ISD employs 49 officers for its 48 campuses. But Turner said he still can’t meet the new requirement. They are not alone. KHOU 11 Investigates found seven other districts like Alief – Alvin, Conroe, Clear Creek, Humble, Klein, Spring Branch and Spring ISDs -- that have more officers than campuses, but still don’t have one at every school.
The law also allows districts to “determine the appropriate number of armed security officers for each district campus.” So Alief ISD assigns three officers to each high school, and one to every middle school, leaving the district short the officers it needs to put one at each elementary school full time.
“Allow me, as the chief of police, and the superintendent, as the leader of our district, to allow us to make those decisions concerning safety, and if an officer needs to be moved, we will do that,” Turner said.
Districts pointed to other reasons that it couldn’t fulfill the law’s requirements. Humble ISD passed a good cause exception this summer despite having 73 officers and 47 campuses this school year. Along with having multiple officers at its high schools, it also pointed out that its officers work beyond school hours.
“Our police department is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so there are three shifts of officers working each day; and officers provide safety and security at events, like football games, outside of school hours,” Humble ISD Chief Communications Officer Jamie Mount said in an email to KHOU 11.
Success stories
Only three districts in Greater Houston told KHOU 11 they currently have officers at every campus – Tomball, Galena Park and New Caney ISDs. Instead of hiring full-time officers, Tomball and Galena Park beefed up their police force by contracting with Harris County constables.
“After the incidents across our country and school safety issues that have risen, our board felt like in order to make sure our community knew safety was a priority, that we should have an armed officer on every campus the entire time we’re open,” Galena Park ISD Superintendent Dr. John Moore said.
Galena Park and New Caney ISD both said they had an officer at every campus before it was required under the new state law.
“We’re just very fortunate that we were ahead of the game,” New Caney ISD Police Chief Matt Calvert said. “We had prepared for that from a staffing perspective and financial perspective. It’s just commonplace for us. We staff an officer on every campus, just like we staff a principal on every campus.”
Finding the right officer is the most challenging part, Calvert said.
“We’re definitely looking for a personality type that is going to work well with our kids, and be part of our community,” Calvert said.
Laws challenges
It’s been much more difficult to find officers for other districts.
Alief ISD has the funding. In June, the school board redirected funds to allow the district to hire more officers. But Turner said his challenge is finding qualified officers.
“It’s a whole different mentality to deal with kids. There’s a whole new training that you have to understand as a police officer when you move from a particular type of law enforcement where you are trained to write tickets, arrest, and conduct investigations to coming over here and becoming social professionals,” Turner said.
Turner said he doubts he’ll be able to find the officers they want – 30 more -- by this school year or even next school year.
“I just don’t know. The officers aren’t there,” he said.
Even if officers were available, other districts said the state didn’t give them enough money to pay for them. Spring Branch ISD, in its good cause exception, said it would need $1.5 million in additional funds to implement this and other new safety mandates implemented by the legislature.
State Rep. Joe Moody, R-El Paso, helped create the law and said the House wanted to fully fund the mandate and “make sure that these pieces of legislation were fully prioritized.”
“But the Senate had a different idea,” Moody said. “My hope is that when we come back, we have the evidence to show them we needed these funds to be able to implement these safety protocols.”
He was surprised to hear so few districts had officers on every campus and so many had passed exceptions.
“We were very careful in crafting this to make sure that this is homed in on providing safety and security,” he said.
For now, the law does not penalize districts for failing to place an officer on every campus.
“I'm not interested in punishing anybody. I'm interested in if there's an issue and they can't comply, and that we know because they're asking for exceptions,” Moody said. “Let's figure out how to meet them where they are and take them where they need to go.”