KERA’s Bill Zeeble, The Fort Worth Report’s Jacob Sanchez and the Denton Record-Chronicle’s Lucinda Breeding-Gonzalez contributed to this report.
Dallas, Fort Worth and Richardson are just a few of the North Texas school districts where students will once again fill school halls this week.
Meanwhile, Garland, Denton, Plano and other districts already welcomed their students back last week.
Aside from the usual chaos of back-to-school season, the 2023-24 school year also comes with new policies and changes informing the future of education across the region — impacting things likes school safety and academic performance.
Here are some of the biggest topics at hand.
School safety: armed campus officers, clear backpacks
All Texas school districts will be required to have at least one armed officer on every school campus once House Bill 3 goes into effect Sept. 1.
The new law, signed by Gov. Greg Abbott in May, also requires districts to put school safety measures like emergency preparedness plans and mental health training in place.
Although HB 3 allocates $15,000 per campus to school districts in order to help meet these requirements — plus extra dollars per student — it also allows school officials to come up with alternative plans to comply if they still lack funding or qualified personnel.
Districts like Allen and Wylie ISDs have already partnered with private companies to provide security officers at their schools.
But Dallas ISD officials told KERA News the district will need more than $8 million to meet HB 3's requirements by September.
"Historically, we've been underfunded in public education across the board, so it's not surprising to see another mandate and resources not matching that," said Dallas ISD Board of Trustees President Justin Henry.
As for other safety measures, Dallas and Mesquite ISDs are requiring their students to wear clear backpacks to school this year. A Mesquite ISD administrator told NBC 5 it's what helped the school discover a gun in a Horn High School student's bag Aug. 7.
Policies targeting LGBTQ+ students
This year has been a busy one for controversial legislation aimed at the LGBTQ+ community in Texas, and some North Texas schools have weighed in with their own district policies.
In June, Keller ISD's school board passed two policies concerning LGBTQ+ students. One prohibits staff from using pronouns for students that don't align with their assigned sex at birth, and another requires students to only use bathrooms and locker rooms that match their assigned sex at birth.
Then in July, Carroll ISD trustees passed a measure to remove gender-based harassment from the district's nondiscrimination policy. The board also approved a bathroom policy similar to Keller's.
Critics and civil rights groups including the ACLU say these policies discriminate against LGBTQ+ students, specifically those who are transgender or non-binary. The ACLU of Texas has asked the U.S. Department of Education to launch formal investigations into such policies, arguing they're civil rights violations.
Student academic achievement
STAAR test results for Texas students in grades 3-8 won't come out until Aug. 16 when school is already in session for several districts.
According to the Fort Worth Report, Fort Worth ISD administrators are hoping their revised approach to academic success will help increase student achievement at some of the district's lowest-performing schools before those standardized test results come out.
These new strategies include personalizing the approach based on which schools need help and to what extent. That help may come in the form of putting more than one teacher in each classroom, for example.
“We have to educate, support our folks, but we have to hold people accountable for doing what’s right with kids," Fort Worth ISD's Associate Superintendent Charles Garcia said at a school board workshop meeting Thursday.
Expansion in Denton ISD
For some Denton ISD schools, the challenge this school year is managing the sheer quantity of students enrolling.
The opening of the brand new Pat Hagan Cheek Middle School in Prosper is just one example of the district's growth. The Denton Record-Chronicle reports it was named after a former middle school teacher in the district whose contributions to Denton also included social justice work in the time of school segregation.
Cheek Middle School's campus includes an athletic complex, community garden space, cameras and a secure vestibule at the school entrance. Superintendent Jamie Wilson said the district plans to hire more peace officers at its schools in accordance with HB 3.
The Record-Chronicle also reported some Denton ISD elementary schools including Union Park and Sandbrock Ranch are at or approaching capacity, requiring them to close enrollment in some grade levels.
Administrators say growth across the district is widespread and will likely require more campuses to open before next year.
“From two days before [school] to about 60 days into the school year last year, we increased by about 500 students,” Denton ISD Deputy Superintendent Susannah O’Bara told the Record-Chronicle. “So if we were to apply this — those exact same metrics — we’d be up close to 33,000 in 60 days. So that’s good news.”
Got a tip? Email Toluwani Osibamowo at tosibamowo@kera.org. You can follow Toluwani on Twitter @tosibamowo.
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