School Safety Reforms - Senate Bill 11

Senate Bill 11 by Rep. Greg Bonnen, M.D., implements multidisciplinary school safety strategies designed to prevent school violence and protect Texas children. The bill better prepares and equips schools to handle security threats and provide resources to support the mental health of students and staff. Following a tragic school shooting in 2018, the governor and legislative committees developed recommendations to address school violence, several of which are included in the bill.

Emergency planning. SB 11 improves the ability of teachers and school personnel to respond to a school shooting or other emergency by requiring better emergency response planning and training. The training would be extended to substitute teachers, who have been victims of school violence in Texas. Local officials would be held accountable if they failed to follow the bill's requirements for stronger emergency operations plans.

Threat assessment. SB 11 recognizes the need to prevent security threats through early identification of students who are in crisis and the provision of services to help those students. The threat assessment teams bring together multiple people with relevant expertise to identify student behaviors that could signal the desire of students to harm themselves or others. Concerns that a student could receive mental health treatment without a parent consenting are unfounded because existing laws require parental consent for school-based health care. Federal and state laws protecting student educational privacy would ensure that a student who was identified through the bill's threat assessment processes would not be subjected to future consequences involving the right to own a gun.

Healthy relationships education. The bill could improve school climates by permitting local school health advisory councils to recommend age-appropriate instruction on healthy relationships. One of the best ways to keep schoolchildren safe is to have a positive school climate based on strong, healthy relationships and interpersonal communication.

Facilities and funding. School building codes will be updated to ensure best practices were used in designing and retrofitting school facilities. It is important that schools have security features that make them a harder target for a person desiring to cause harm to the students and staff inside.

The bill would provide a funding mechanism that recognizes the ongoing costs of securing school facilities and providing mental health resources. Local school officials would have flexibility to decide how to use the funding for ongoing costs of making schools safer.

The Governor signed the bill June 6 and it took effect immediately.