From KUT:
The Austin Independent School District is considering nearly doubling the size of its police department to comply with a new state law that takes effect Sept. 1.
House Bill 3 is a piece of sweeping school safety legislation that Texas lawmakers passed this year in response to the Uvalde school shooting. HB 3 requires school districts to have at least one armed security officer on each campus during regular school hours. Districts can meet the requirement in several ways, such as hiring school police officers or partnering with local law enforcement agencies to assign personnel to campuses.
The Austin ISD police department has about 80 officers currently. Typically two officers are assigned to each high school campus and one is assigned to each middle school. But it will take dozens of additional officers to staff the district’s 78 elementary schools.
“We’re going to have to hire more than 70 SROs — school resource officers — but in addition, of course, we also need the support staff that go along with that,” Austin ISD’s Chief of Governmental Relations & Board Services Jacob Reach said.
On top of officers, Reach said, the district will need to hire more lieutenants, detectives and dispatchers.
“So we would be looking at hiring over 85 new staff members potentially,” he said.
Austin ISD is still figuring out how much it would cost to add these positions. Reach said district officials will present the proposal and its cost to the...
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