Since even before the 2022 Uvalde school shooting, Texas lawmakers have mandated more campus security -- everything from window film and panic buttons to armed guards in every school.
Now, some districts are even looking to new technology like drones, an emerging but widely used tool in the growing school security toolbox.
Earlier this month, Justin Marston, CEO of the Texas startup Campus Guardian Angel, demonstrated three laptop-sized drones at Lancaster ISD Middle School. They would deploy from a closed box on campus after remote pilots got the alert about an armed intruder
“If we're the only capability on site that day, especially in elementary schools, a lot of the less well-funded districts don't have people at every elementary school,” Marston said, “our goal is respond in five seconds, be on the shooter in 15, degrade or incapacitate in 60 seconds.”
The goal is to occupy and threaten the intruder, flying above him while buying time for police to arrive.
On hand at this demonstration was Dallas state Sen. Royce West. After lawmakers mandated armed guards during the 2023 legislative session, they increased school safety funding to nearly $35,000 dollars per campus during the most recent session.
“It's real clear that it's touched the bases that the legislature had in mind,” West said of the drones. “That is, making certain that we reduce the number of minutes that a perpetrator has in order to inflict carnage within a school.”
Drones wouldn’t replace the guards, but they’re an additional method some districts are looking at to boost security. They’re already being tested in Boerne ISD, in the Texas Hill Country, and Campus Guardian Angel has held demonstrations in both Highland Park ISD and Lancaster ISD. Other district police chiefs attended, too.
Marston sees drones as scouts or lead dogs, able to peer around corners or zoom into a room while the armed guard stays safely behind.
“Nobody cares when a drone gets shot,” Marston said. “Drones are just a lump of plastic that's totally expendable.”
Drones are also part of a growing and pricey school safety industry. Reports estimate the value at anywhere from $1 billion to more than $3 billion a year.
“The school business has obviously boomed the last five to eight years,” said Eddie Schultz, whose company, Strong Glass Systems, was one of about 160 vendors at a recent national school safety conference in Grapevine.
The business sells window film designed to slow a shooting intruder trying to break into a campus.
“The product has intensified, the strength has intensified, the thickness of what's being installed, and honestly the demands of what needs to be installed has really increased,” Schultz said.
Texas requires window film and panic buttons in classrooms. Many districts have also installed metal detectors at some schools.
Tom McDermott is with CEIA, an Italian company that makes and installs metal detectors around the world.
“Schools right now, K-12, is our biggest business in the United States right now, and it's nuts,” said McDermott.
Not everyone is sold on these school security efforts.
Donna Schmidt, with the gun control advocacy group, Moms Demand Action, said they’re a distraction from a bigger problem, “which is easy access to firearms in our country, in our state, in our communities.
“It's senseless,” she said.
As for drones – with a starting price tag of $15,000 for a box of six -- they don’t yet make sense to Dallas ISD Police Chief Albert Martinez, who watched the demonstration in Lancaster. He said there has to be a test program -- but he and others are always looking at how to improve school safety.
“It's good that some school districts are already putting it into place, and it's also good that we'll be able to see how it's working out for them,” said Martinez. “We’ll evaluate this as well, and see can it be integrated and will it fit what we need?”
Bill Zeeble is KERA’s education reporter. Got a tip? Email Bill at bzeeble@kera.org. You can follow him on X @bzeeble.
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