Houston Chronicle By Jacob Carpenter May 23, 2018
Less than a week after the Santa Fe High School shooting that left 10 people dead and 13 others injured, political and education leaders across Texas are proposing ways to avoid the next campus shooting: more law enforcement officers, more counselors, more metal detectors.
All of which requires more money — something many cash-strapped school districts do not have right now.
Legislators and school district governing boards soon will start grappling with how to pay for expensive upgrades designed to keep Texas schoolchildren safe, as state leaders seek more secure campuses in light of last Friday’s massacre. The cost of those improvements, however, likely will extend into the hundreds of millions of dollars statewide, at a time when many school districts are dipping into reserves to balance their budgets.
The tug-and-pull over who will pay for the new security measures figures to further complicate the ongoing fight over school finance in Texas, which is expected to loom large over the 2019 Legislative session. Local school districts are demanding legislators increase the state’s contribution to public education, which has dropped roughly 48 percent to 39 percent over the past decade, with local taxpayers picking up the slack. Overall education funding has remained relatively stagnant during that stretch when adjusted for inflation.
More:
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/State-leaders-seek-campus-security-upgrades-but-12939100.php
