AUSTIN, Texas — Hays CISD is yet another Texas school district declaring that it can't meet the requirement of House Bill 3 to have an armed officer on every school campus during school hours.
On Monday, board members unanimously approved claiming a "good cause" exemption due to the lack of available, qualified officers.
"With the officer shortage that I think we're all dealing with, we're all competing for the same officers," said Jeri Skrocki, Hays CISD's chief of safety and security.
Skrocki said the district contracted with the Hays County Sheriff's Office. According to its data, the district has 26 school campuses but only 15 school resource officers at the moment. The district spokesperson said the district has an SRO on each high school and middle school campus as well as three roving SROs that cover five elementary schools each.
During the meeting, some board members said the law is reactionary, but they will comply by coming up with an alternative. The State gives three options, which include creating a school marshal program where school staff are trained to bear arms, a guardian program where a civilian is trained or hiring a private company. All have their pros and cons.
"Do we have the right person psychologically to be in that position?" Skrocki asked. "You know, do we want to do minimum standards for training or do we have an expectation of we want to do much, much more rigorous training?"
Board members said another concern is finding training at the same time as the roughly 1,200 other school districts in the state. Parents at the meeting said while an officer is preferred, a trained person is better than no one.
"Obviously, I don't want anybody who has any kind of mental issues or anything like that to be in charge of safety of the kids. But as a dad, it's a program I would step up and participate in during my limited time off," parent Kacey Palous said.
"There are a lot of government facilities out there that are better protected than our schools are and, as a parent, that is unacceptable," parent Lelan Larroque said.
District leaders plan to meet again in September to decide their next move.
Other districts
Below are responses KVUE received from other Central Texas school districts regarding their ability to meet HB 3's requirements.
Manor ISD
"We will not meet the HB 3 rules as there are not enough officers to hire in time. We will be asking the board to pass an exception and adopt a local plan on Sept. 18."
Hutto ISD
A Hutto ISD spokesperson said last week that the board voted to hire nine new officers.
Leander ISD
"We will not meet a Sept. 1 deadline to comply with HB3. At our next Board meeting on Sept, 7, the LISD Board will consider passing a resolution claiming a good cause exception."
Georgetown ISD
Georgetown ISD said due to a lack of available qualified personnel and a lack of available revenue, it cannot comply and will claim an exception.
Now that the resolution has been passed, the district will begin creating a school marshal program and hiring for that program in order to meet this requirement. It is the intention of the district that school marshals are a stopgap to meet this requirement until it is able to hire enough SROs for each campus.
"TEA has not published a deadline of when districts that pass a resolution have to be in compliance with the armed guard requirement. However, we are committed to a process that is timely, yet intentional, about finding the best people to work collaboratively with our SROs to provide safety and security for our students and staff."