Santa Fe struggles with rising security costs
New legislation hopefully brings long-term fixes
First came the calls to keep children safe — no matter the cost. Then came the grants and donations to pay for some of the increased security.
But now comes the question: How will Santa Fe ISD afford the substantial costs of increased security following the May 18 massacre that killed 10 and wounded 13 at the district’s lone high school? And how will other districts that followed suit in fear and at the pleading of concerned parents and politicians manage to maintain their beefed up security?
While Texas lawmakers have called school safety a funding priority for the upcoming legislative session that begins in January, finding money to sustain the salaries of additional counselors, social workers and security personnel for the long haul is a tall order. And
without legislative action, Santa Fe and other school systems would be left contemplating a tax rate hike or classrooms cuts to keep up with security and mental health demands.
“If we want to continue our officers and counselors, we’re going to have to have the ability to do that and fund that on the long-term basis,” Santa Fe Superintendent Leigh Wall told a crowd at the Texas Tribune’s annual TribFest in late September.
Santa Fe ISD district spent more than $2.1 million of its own tax dollars on emergency renovations and an overhaul of its security infrastructure. Officials are quietly counting on the state for reimbursement to those funds, which account for more than 5 percent of the district’s annual budget.
That comes on top of the $1 million recovery grant the U.S. Department of Education gave the semi-rural Galveston County district in May and the $200,000 it paid on Oct. 2 for a mental health training program. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Garrett Metal Detectors pledged enough walk-through detection devices to outfit the entire district. Gov. Greg Abbott gave $322,000 in state money, enough to pay the salaries of at least four mental health counselors for one year.
Other states made school safety spending a legislative priority in the wake of mass shootings. Following the shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland last February, Florida lawmakers approved $69 million to help cover mental health expenses in that state’s 67 regular school districts. Connecticut increased annual mental health funding for at least three years after a massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary left 20 first graders and six educators dead, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Connecticut also gave $50 million to raze and rebuild the elementary school in Newtown in 2013.
Safety ‘can’t get done’ quickly
Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar told lawmakers in June they likely would have about $2.8 billion more to spend in the next biennium than during the 2017 session. Multiple needs have already been identified for that new money, including $2 billion for Medicaid, $2.5 billion for highways and ongoing Hurricane Harvey costs.
Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath has asked lawmakers for an additional $54 million to help schools hire more counselors and law enforcement officers, as well as provide more safety training. Overall, however, Morath estimated the state’s share of general revenue funding for education will drop by $3.5 billion as home values and property tax collections continue to rise.
Between the 2017 and 2019 sessions, House Speaker Joe Straus charged representatives to study and recommend ways to update the way Texas funds its public schools, which hasn’t changed substantially for decades. Straus and Patrick also tasked legislators with recommendations to improve school safety.
Final proposals for changes to the school funding system have not been released, but both the Senate and House committees on school safety recommended additional funding for counselors, security infrastructure and centralized safety and mental health resource centers.
State Sen. Joan Huffman, a Houston Republican who served as vice-chair on the Senate’s Select Committee on Violence in Schools & School Security, proposed tapping the state’s $10.3 billion Economic Stabilization Fund to make some immediate changes. She said she does not want safety spending to get lost in the debate about how to best fund schools.
“I would hate for more immediate needs for school safety to hover while we solve the school finance issue,” Huffman said. “I’m not positive that can get done as quickly as we need to make schools safe.”
‘How do we help them?’
A one-time infusion of rainy day funds, or cycles of grants, will not be enough to sustain the changes some districts already have made, education leaders across the state say.
The 61,500-student Conroe ISD floated a plan to add 46 officers to the district’s police department over the next two years.
Clear Creek ISD, which serves more than 42,000 students, increased the number of school liaison officers patrolling its schools from 25 to 40. That district’s school board approved 37 other changes recommended by a security committee, all of which will add more than $2 million to its 2018-2019 budget.
Those are large expenses for districts already struggling to make ends meet. A Houston Chronicle analysis of the area’s 10 largest districts found all but three approved budgets that contained deficits of at least $1 million ahead of the 20172018 school year, despite growing property tax revenues.
That is because the state’s school funding formula dictates that the more money districts collect from local taxpayers, the less the state contributes.
School leaders long have argued that system has placed too much burden on homeowners. Some state officials, including Patrick, have argued that the state’s share of funding actually has increased if one includes additional grants and some stipends.
Rep. Dan Huberty, an Humble Republican who chairs the House’s Public Education Committee, said he would support using rainyday funds for one-time expenses, such as building security vestibules. Lawmakers, he said, need to identify revenue streams to help districts cover the ongoing costs of hiring personnel and staff time spent assessing threats.
“We talk to our schools and our districts, and I think about Humble ISD, which has a pretty large police department. That’s a true cost; they’re not getting paid for that,” Huberty said. “They’re spending millions of dollars on security for those campuses, so we have to look at those and say those are true hard costs and how do we help them.”
‘A step forward for change’
If nothing changes at the state level, however, Santa Fe ISD Chief Financial Officer Lee Townsend said the district would have three options to cover the costs: Ask voters to approve a property tax hike, seek additional grants or pass a bond. Otherwise, she said, the district will have to cut spending elsewhere. Neither Townsend nor school board trustees have discussed what cuts could look like or what they would do if they can’t find additional state funds or grants.
Townsend said the district is paying for the facility improvements out of its maintenance-and-operations budget in the hopes of getting reimbursed by the state. She said she would like to see onetime grants to help schools cover costs, such as building security vestibules and installing new cameras, and continuing grants for additional counseling and security staff.
“The current state funding formula is not adjusting fast enough to keep up with the increased cost to educate students,” Townsend said. “At this time, the district cannot sustain the additional security staff, wellness counselors and other staff using the current maintenance-and-operations budget.”
Rosie Stone, whose son Chris died in the Santa Fe shooting, has been among the most outspoken advocates for school security. She talked to Abbott and Patrick about the need to better secure schools but is unsure what action lawmakers will take come January.
“I do feel confident we will be heard,” Stone said. “It might be small or it might be big — for me it doesn’t matter. As long as it’s a step forward for change.”