Austin ISD officers to split time between campuses due to shortage

At Tuesday night’s meeting of the Austin ISD School Safety and Security Committee, the district laid out how AISD plans to adopt House Bill 3, which becomes law Sept. 1.

AUSTIN, Texas - At Tuesday night’s meeting of the Austin ISD School Safety and Security Committee, the district’s Chief of Governmental Relations Jacob Reach laid out how AISD plans to adopt House Bill 3, which becomes law Sept. 1.

The law will require an armed guard at every public elementary, middle and high school in Texas.

"We've only had about three months since the bill was officially passed to start planning for it," said Reach.

The district has made the decision to have an AISD police officer on each of the district’s 113 campuses, rather than other options allowed under the law, such as arming teachers, school staff, guardians or volunteers.

Local school districts hiring more officers

Del Valle ISD says it's hiring 9 additional officers to comply with a new Texas law which requires at least one armed guard on each campus. Austin ISD is set to take up the issue on August 10.

"We do believe that Austin ISD police officers, with all the specialized training that they're provided, is going to be what is best for our students and our staff. We don't want teachers having to worry about do they need to be carrying a weapon on campus," said Reach.

The problem? Austin ISD only has 82 officers right now, including 43 school resource officers, and needs to hire 83 more in order to be in compliance.

It’ll be impossible to have all those cops actually hired by next Friday, so in the meantime they’ll split their time between campuses.

The other issue is money. The state is only forking over a school safety allotment $15,000 per school, and another $10 allotment per student for this. However, AISD says the actual cost of each officer will be around $80,000.

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"We hope that the state will continue to consider the funding needs of districts and how if they're going to have an important priority like this, that funding also come along with it," said Reach, adding AISD will somehow find the money for this year.

Several residents spoke out at Tuesday’s meeting, saying more cops on campus don’t necessarily equal more safety.

"We fought assiduously against HB 3," said Andrew Hairston of Texas Appleseed’s Education Justice Project.

Now that HB 3 has become law, Hairston has a message for Austin ISD.

"They need to hold the line. They don't need to exceed the demand or the mandate of one armed security officer per campus. So instead they need to use discretionary funding to support restorative practices, social emotional learning," said Hairston.

In the meantime, Austin ISD is also working to implement other elements of HB 3, such as mental health training, threat assessment, emergency response plans and educating parents on safe gun storage.