Senate report: Investments in school safety, mental health care needed after Uvalde shooting

A Texas Senate special committee released a report last week with a list of policy recommendations to improve school safety after the Uvalde mass shooting, with the majority focused on increasing campus security and investment in mental health care.

The 11-member Senate Special Committee to Protect All Texans, consisting of eight Republicans and three Democrats, was tasked with examining existing regulations in five areas — school safety, mental health, social media, police training and firearm safety — and developing suggestions for legislative improvements.

The nearly 100-page report, released Wednesday, summarizes expert testimony provided during two days of hearings in June and lists the committee’s 24 policy recommendations, 17 of which are related to improving school security and investing resources in the mental health care system.

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The committee made only one proposal related to firearm safety — adding state penalties for people who knowingly purchase a firearm for someone who is not legally allowed to own one, an offense referred to as a “straw purchase.” However, such a policy would not have affected the Uvalde shooter’s ability to access the weapons he used in the May 24 massacre because he purchased them legally after his 18th birthday.

The report’s release comes less than a month before the start of the next legislative session Jan. 10. Lawmakers are likely to debate the report’s recommendations as well as other policies aimed at preventing another mass shooting like the one that killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, the deadliest school shooting in Texas history.

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Uvalde shooting committee's firearm safety recommendation

The committee’s sole recommendation on firearm safety was to make “straw purchasing” of firearms, when a person buys a gun on behalf of someone who is not legally allowed to own one, a state felony.

Straw purchasing is already illegal under federal law, but the committee expressed concern that it is rarely enforced. By making the crime a state felony, the committee said, law enforcement would be better empowered to fight illegal gun trafficking and might prevent a future mass shooting.

Since the massacre, the families of the victims have demanded that lawmakers enact several gun restrictions, including raising the minimum age to purchase a semi-automatic weapon from 18 to 21, but the Senate report notes that “there remains a strong lack of consensus of the Committee to this idea.”

Gov. Greg Abbott has said he believes raising the purchase age would be unconstitutional, although the Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the issue.

In a letter included at the end of the report, committee member and state Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, expressed support for a state law banning straw purchases but said lawmakers should consider additional gun control measures. West cited a recent Texas Politics Project poll that found 52% of Texas voters support stricter gun safety laws and a recent Quinnipiac University poll that found 73% of Texas voters support raising the minimum age to purchase any gun to 21.

Committee member and state Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, D-McAllen, also supported the policy and wrote in a similar letter that it would be a “disservice” to those killed at Robb Elementary not to include recommendations for such legislation, as well as for “red flag” laws, state-required background checks and a “cooling off” period.

In the final two letters included in the report, committee members and state Sens. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury, and Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels, emphasized their opposition to such policies.

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How to improve school safety after Uvalde

In the report, the committee made seven recommendations for how to improve school safety. First, the committee suggested establishing “School Safety Review Teams” that would check schools for vulnerabilities on a semiannual basis. The committee also recommended adjusting how much money the state allocates to schools for security, and continuing to fund the School Safety and Security Grant.

The committee proposed several amendments to the school marshal program, including increasing the number of training providers, adding the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (also known as ALERRT) to the curriculum, expanding who is eligible to become a school marshal, adding a more time-flexible training option, and increasing funding for the Governor’s School Marshal Grant program.

The report also called for changes to the truancy system. In 2015, state lawmakers passed a bill that decriminalized truancy, with the intent of disrupting the “school to prison” pipeline. However, after some district leaders testified to the committee that the current process is “exhaustive and lacking teeth,” the committee report suggested that the Legislature give school districts more authority and options for dealing with truant students.

In his letter attached to the report, West urged caution.

“I believe that it is not appropriate or necessary that we dismantle the entirety of the current truancy system to make it functional. I heard and understood the complaints of superintendents concerning the current law, and believe we can make the current construction less complicated, without recriminalizing any conduct we had previously decriminalized surrounding truancy,” West wrote.

The committee also suggested that lawmakers consider legislation that would allow disciplinary records or any “behavioral threat assessments” to follow students if they transfer to another school district within the state, and to clarify the authority, responsibilities and jurisdiction of the Texas Education Agency and the Texas School Safety Center when it comes to school safety measures.

Mental health

In the report, the committee pushed for the state to make telemedicine mental health services available to all school districts and to take action to increase the number of mental health practitioners available to treat students — including allowing practitioners to volunteer to participate, investing in practitioner loan repayment programs, offering paid fellowships and internships, and streamlining licensure requirements.

The committee recommended that the state create a database of community in-patient beds, especially those for pediatric patients; increase funding to make more in-patient beds available; and commission a study to determine what the need for such resources will be in the next 10 years.

Other mental health recommendations:

• Ensure that Texans in the criminal justice system can continue to receive any mental health-related prescription medications they’re prescribed.

• Evaluate the costs and benefits of providing coordinated specialty care coverage for Texans younger than 21 who are diagnosed with psychosis.

• Increase funding for the Multisystemic Therapy Teams and the Pediatric Stabilization Teams through the Youth Empowerment Waiver program.

Social media

On the topic of social media, the committee suggested the Legislature direct the Department of Public Safety to carry out a public awareness campaign for iWatchTexas, the state’s community threat reporting system, and encourage school districts to use the platform or a similar program.

Police training

The committee recommended that ALERRT training be mandatory for all law enforcement officers and allowed to fulfill the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement’s active shooter training requirement.

It also called for requiring school districts to share their emergency operations plans with law enforcement and to allow law enforcement officers to access the mental health records of people they encounter.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Uvalde report pushes for school safety, mental health investments