SAN ANTONIO — A new Texas law that went into effect last month requires schools to have at least one armed officer at each campus, regardless of a district's size.
But districts across the state are having a hard time meeting the directive set forth by House Bill 3, which was introduced in response to the Robb Elementary School massacre in Uvalde last year. One month into the mandate, we set out to see which San Antonio-area districts are in compliance.
KENS 5 reached out to all 19 districts with a campus in Bexar County and found that some are meeting what the new law demands, others haven't been able to and others still are asking for extra time to hire enough personnel.
More specifically: Out of the 19 districts we contacted, only two – Harlandale and Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City ISDs – hired new officers in response to HB3 in order to be compliant with the new law.
Meanwhile, half of the 19 already had armed officers stationed at each campus – including Comal ISD, which encompasses 34 schools – and several are seeking to be temporarily exempt from the law because they say they lack funding or staff.
Five school districts say they plan to seek an exemption with the state. Most of them are on the city's south side, in underserved neighborhoods.
In the map below, blue districts were unaffected by the new law, red districts aren’t in compliance, green districts are now in compliance and yellow districts are in compliance, but require extra context.
>>Click on your child’s district to find out what they said about whether or not they have armed guards at every campus.
Brett Cross, a gun reform activist whose son was one of 19 children killed at Robb Elementary, says he doesn't think the law would have changed the outcome of that May 2022 shooting.
"Because we had 376 (law enforcement personnel) sitting outside of Robb that refused to go in," he said. "But what could have saved my son's life is if that 18-year-old hadn't been able to purchase that assault rifle."
Cross said state lawmakers are focusing on the wrong policies.
"The solutions that most of them are offering are reactive, they are not proactive," he added. "Reactive means you already have children dead. You already have people shot."
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