Denton ISD has hired nearly all of the school security officers required by House Bill 3.
One such armed officer is required on every campus in the district, and 20 out of 24 of them are already on the job in DISD.
Mary Martin, the director of the district’s safety and security division, said the officials hired have a combined 423 years of experience in law enforcement.
Jeff Russell, a Denton ISD area superintendent and lead administrator on the year-old safety and security team, said Martin wasted no time in fulfilling the school board’s expectations for campus security. The district has an established network of school resource officers, a group of trained and active police officials. When the 88th Legislature passed HB 3 in 2023, Texas schools had a short list of choices to comply with the new law: They could staff campuses with school marshals; allow a trained district employee to carry a firearm on campus; hire trained and commissioned peace officers; or hire an officer from a private security company.
“I’m going to ... flash back a year ago from August, when we did our House Bill 3 presentation and what we said we would do with this unfunded mandate,” Russell said. “We said we would pursue excellence. We said that our neighboring districts were going to pursue compliance, but that’s not good enough for the students of Denton ISD.”
Martin, who has been a teacher and a police officer, said the biggest challenge in the past year was working through the Texas Education Agency’s District Vulnerability Assessment.
“I had no idea what it was,” Martin said. “But I found out real quick. We get that done every four years. And TEA chose us, as the district of this size, to be the first one to do [the assessment] with all of their new TEA investigators.”
Martin said TEA assessed 75% of the district’s campuses. The security team toured campuses with TEA investigators. They found that Denton ISD has been improving, Martin said, and the district earned praise from investigators on health services that are related to emergency response.
“We are the only district that they had seen that tagged our [Automated External Defibrillators], kind of like fire extinguisher tabs, so they could go to it and they could see the last check, and that it was current and up to date,” Martin said. “They actually are taking that to other districts across the state. They felt that was well thought out.”
By law, Texas public schools are required to have at least one automatic defibrillator on each campus. The devices are used to treat people suffering cardiac events. Texas school districts are also legally required to provide CPR and defibrillator training to employees and volunteers each year.
Aside from tackling the state’s vulnerability assessment, Martin and the team have spent the past year recruiting people to fill security positions. In filling the new security posts, Martin said, the team hired officers with experience in patrol, SWAT, traffic and accident investigation, and school resource officer work. The new hires also have experience in mental health investigation, university policing, firearms training and leading trainees through Texas Commission on Law Enforcement training. At least one of the security officers had served as a school resource officer for Denton ISD before.
Martin said the team has working partnerships with seven police departments in the district’s attendance zone: Denton, Aubrey, Corinth, Denton County Sheriff’s Department, Elm Ridge, Little Elm and Oak Point. The new hires join a team that serves students during the school year and during summers and that hosts camps and a police explorer program. New security officers will join school resource officers in connecting with students and cultivating communities on campus.
The team spent the first year “not knowing that’s what this program was going to be about,” Martin said. “But that’s exactly what this program is about. And we hope to continue that with the work that each of our SSOs are doing. SSOs are doing that in partnership with our SROs, and then just continually strengthening the safety and the security of our school district through this large partnership.”
