Gun access, mental health addressed in Abbott’s plan

SCHOOL SAFETY

When Texas Gov. Greg Abbott praised the Standard Response Protocol developed by emergency personnel in Hays County during a recent visit to San Marcos, he also discussed his new 40-point school safety plan. His plan will provide $120 million in funding to help schools implement many of the strategies laid out in the plan immediately, at no cost to the schools.

At a crowded press conference held at the Hays County Law Enforcement Center, Abbott announced the details of the School and Firearm Safety Action Plan. The governor’s recommendations to guard against school shootings come after a threeday roundtable discussion held last week that included educators, administrators, law enforcement personnel, mental health experts, and victims and families. The talks were prompted by the school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas.

Abbot spoke about the roundtable discussions and his impressions of the student survivors from Santa Fe.

“We share with these students and these victims a very common bond. And that is we want, in fact we demand, action to prevent another shooting like what happened at Santa Fe High School,” he said.

Abbott said that the roundtable talks produced some “substantive strategies” and his staff worked around the clock to compile the strategies and solutions discussed.

The governor’s plan includes increasing the law enforcement presence at schools immediately and training more school marshals over the summer. The plan includes matching grants from the state to reimburse campuses for the cost of more law enforcement officers, up to $10,000 per campus.

“The school marshal program does not mandate that kindergarten teachers take up arms,” he said, adding that the program allows any school personnel who want to receive training to be trained. That includes coaches and administrators, he said.

The school safety plan also involves providing active shooter and emergency response training. The Texas School Safety Center at Texas State University will hold workshops on high-quality planning practices and provide training in the Standard Response Protocol for active shooter situations.

Abbott praised the school safety protocol program developed and implemented in Hays County through a collaboration among the sheriff’s office, local law enforcement and first responders.

“It prepares first responders, school authorities and students to respond to a dangerous situation,” he said.

Other points in Abbott’s plan involve hardening campuses with measures like metal detectors and better control of entrances and exits. The plan also includes extensive measures to prevent shootings in the first place, such as increased mental health evaluations and mental health first aid training, expanded on-campus counseling resources and Crime Stoppers programs, more fusion centers to monitor social media for threats, and an app for students to report anything they think might indicate a threat.

Abbott’s plan also includes some measures to improve firearm safety.

“I doubt there’s ever been a Texas governor with a more pro-gun record,” he said, citing his pro-gun actions as attorney general and as governor. “I will never allow Second Amendment rights to be infringed. But I will always promote responsible gun ownership. And that includes keeping guns safe and keeping guns out of the hands of criminals.”

Among the gun safety measures are closing information gaps, studying a protective order law to keep guns out of the hands of people legally adjudicated to be mentally unfit to have a gun and mandating a 48-hour reporting period of adjudications affecting gun ownership. Currently, there is a 30-day period for courts to report disqualifying felony convictions and mental health adjudications.

“That 30 day delay in reporting mental health adjudication could prove deadly,” Abbott said.

The governor said he wants schools across the state to begin implementing as many of these measures as possible over the summer so that students will return to safer schools in the fall.

“There is more money, and there is more work to do than teachers and administrators have time to do,” he said.