Keeping Our School Kids Safe

By Gloria Way

  The classroom is supposed to be a safe place for our children. Parents drop off their children and expect to see them six or seven hours later safely at home.

  The innocence and sense of security felt by children in their schools was destroyed forever when two troubled students planned and executed an attack on fellow students at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado in 1999. Sixteen people were killed. The reality that no one, not even our children, is safe from determined, deranged individuals became crystal clear. Horror struck again in 2012 when a madman opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton Elementary in Connecticut and murdered 27 people. In 2018, a mentally ill student shot and killed 10 people at Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Texas. And in 2022, another troubled young adult, walked into Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and in a timeline of 45 minutes, systematically murdered 21 students and adults. And now, the most recent is another confused transgender female killed two little boys who were attending mass at their church school Anunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

  In Texas, in the early 1990’s, some larger cities in Texas such as Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio were already placing School Resource Officers (SROs) in schools due to alleged gang activity. These programs were often funded locally or through federal grants. Texas began enacting statewide SRO programs in the early 2000s. Federal grants from the COPS in Schools initiative which was launched by the US Department of Justice helped many Texas school districts hire SROs.

  After Columbine and Sandy Hook, there was a nationwide increase in demand for school safety which led to significant expansion of School Resource Officers (SRO)s. In 2023, the Texas School Safety Center was established by the state legislature to support school safety initiatives, including SRO programs. After the school shooting massacre in Uvalde that left 21 dead, a law went into effect requiring at least one-armed officer on every public school campus. This law significantly increased the deployment of SROs or armed security in schools across Texas.

  In Chambers County, law enforcement and local elected officials take protecting our kids from a crazed shooter very seriously. Funded by the Chambers County Sheriff’s Office, both Anahuac ISD and East Chambers ISD have a fulltime SRO on each school campus. Each ISD has an SRO in primary school, elementary school, middle school, and high school.

  The SROs are highly trained for an active shooter situation as is the school staff and local enforcement. Students are also made aware as to how to respond to a potential threat on campus.

  Keeping our kids safe has been a priority of local and state officials. Thank you for funding fulltime SROs at our schools.