South San ISD will add armed marshals
Unable to fill vacancies in its police department, South San Antonio Independent School District has decided to employ school marshals to comply with a state mandate requiring an armed guard on every campus.
Trustees unanimously approved the program on Wednesday, joining scores of districts statewide that have resorted to arming staff as they face a lack of state funding to cover new peace officer positions and a shortage of qualified applicants to fill them.
“In rural areas, you’ll hear school marshals as being teachers who are the ones carrying the weapons,” Superintendent Henry Yzaguirre saod at the June 19 meeting. “At no point are we even considering that.”
Instead, the district of 7,400 students is encouraging its security officers — personnel who guard the parking lots but do not carry firearms — to get their school marshal licenses.
The job change would come with a nice pay bump, from $18.78 to $22 an hour. It would also require significantly more training, which the state would pay for.
South San has been trying to fill five peace officer vacancies so it can put an armed guard at every campus as required by House Bill 3, the comprehensive school safety law enacted last year in response to the 2022 deadly Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde.
South San was one of several cash-strapped districts in San Antonio — and hundreds statewide — to declare a “good cause exception” built into the law for districts unable to comply with the costly requirement.
“Security is peace of mind for a lot of our parents and one of the things we agreed on is that we’re going to try not to do another year with an exemption,” Yzaguirre told trustees. “We’re going to do what we can to make sure every campus is covered.”
Medina Valley ISD is also considering the marshal program, with the goal of recruiting retired law enforcement or military to protect its elementary schools.trustees are to vote on the proposal Monday.
Created by the Legislature in 2013, the school marshal program allows eligible staff to get trained and certified to carry a weapon on campus to respond to a crisis. It provides a way for teachers to carry weapons inside schools, but districts that adopt the program instead often employ retired police officers, military and security personnel.
In 2023, even before the state mandate, San Marcos CISD began using retired police officers and veterans as school marshals. San Antonio’s North East ISD has adopted the similar but more commonly-used guardian program to monitor its schools and fill “school safety specialist” positions created last year. They are authorized to carry weapons after training by district law enforcement.
NEISD spokesperson Aubrey Chancellor said there are still some vacancies, but all the safety specialists hired so far come from careers in security and emergency management, law enforcement or the military.
A recent analysis by Hearst newspapers of a random sample of 100 Texas school districts found more than one out of five have armed new school staff in response to HB 3. State data showed that 815 Texas educators across 90 school districts have received school marshal training to carry weapons on campus.
Unlike in the guardian program, school marshals are licensed and certified by the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, which defines the sole purpose of a school marshal as preventing “the act of murder or serious bodily injury on school premises.” School marshals must complete 80 hours of training, compared to the 16 required for guardians, according to the Texas Association of School Boards.
The South San ISD program is open to any district employee licensed to carry a handgun. Applicants must complete all required training — which covers firearms, crisis intervention, incident command, first aid, mental health and behavioral threat assessments — pass the state licensing exam and undergo a psychological evaluation.
The district’s secondary schools already have a peace officer on-site. The marshals will be assigned to its eight elementary campuses.
Currently developing its own police department, Medina Valley ISD officials recommended marshals due to the lack of funding that accompanied the HB3 requirement and the difficulty of recruiting police officer applicants. Marshals would be paid the same as first-year teachers — $57,750 — with a $5,000 stipend. Under the proposal, the school board would consider their appointment in executive session and their identities would be kept confidential.
South San ISD’S marshal position will not be a secret. They will wear uniforms and be identifiable at their assigned campuses.
“They’re not going to be out there issuing tickets,” Yzaguirre said. “Their main objective is to be the armed guard and to be prepared for active shooters.”