Long before the Uvalde ISD school shooting incident, Hallettsville ISD realized it was in the staff and students’ best interest to implement higher security measures. Hallettsville ISD has been recognized by surrounding schools as a leader in safety and security and we are often called upon to consult on other school district’s safety measures.
On Aug. 24, 2023, the Safety and Facilities Enhancement (SAFE) Grant was announced and Safety and Facilities Enhancement (SAFE) Grant Cycle 2 was announced Feb. 15, 2024. These grants allowed our district to install several new safety features such as panic buttons, radios, gate improvements, securing exterior doors, and more. These safety standards are put in place to ensure the protection of not only students but staff, admin, parents and other community members on our campuses.
“The state of Texas along with TEA, after the most recent tragedy in Uvalde, went ahead and released the minimum safety standards for school districts and required all Texas ISDs to meet or exceed these standards,” said Chief Financial Advisor (CFO) and Co Emergency Management Coordinator with Dr. Jo Ann Bludau, Farrah Jernigan. “Whenever you have one of these unfortunate events like a school shooting, there’s a lot of legislation that gets put into place. The minimum safety standards were in response to flaws they identified in other school districts. The state realized that they were putting the burden on school districts in terms of not funding these mandates so they released Safety Grants to help school districts shoulder the cost.”
Grant Cycle 1 was an application process through TEA that the school applied for; not all districts in Texas took the chance to apply for this grant. We asked for $1.2 million and received $891,803.00. These funds are used to complete the minimum safety requirements. HISD has used these funds on projects for visitor identification, doors, fencing, further hardening of the school vestibules, as well as improving entry and exit gates to the parking lots. A repeater was put in place on the water tower in the center of town through another grant that allows the school’s radios to immediately connect to police dispatch and other school administrators and staff members. These radios also allow for more efficient communication between bus drivers and school administration.
“We have the radios that you see a lot of the staff using, we put those in key locations. We noticed that there was a dead spot within two of our campuses that we couldn’t get a radio signal from. Part of the Safe Grant Cycle 1 said we were allowed to use that money to improve our communication infrastructure. That allowed us to move the very high-powered repeater on the water tower by Walmart and locate it here within the school district. We then installed a smaller repeater on the water tower and another smaller one at the Junior High to allow us more coverage. So instead of 1 repeater we now have 3. The water tower repeater allows us to go around 40 miles outside the city, so as buses travel through the county, they have a way to communicate with the main campuses and each other.” stated Jernigan.
Grant Cycle 2 is used as discretionary funds to allow the district to use the funds as they see fit to improve safety and security in the districts; we received $150,000.00 for this cycle. Any leftover funds are used for the upgrade of security for the district, maintenance, school safety and security training and planning, and other projects as deemed fit.
The school also received the SPAT safety grant for $5,700.00. These funds are specifically going to the silent panic buttons for staff and admin. According to the TEA Safety Standards on the Texas Education Agency website, “These buttons are used to signal a life-threatening or emergency situation (such as an active shooter, intruder, or other emergency situation) requiring a response from law enforcement and/or other first responders.” The buttons are triggered manually, then an alert is immediately sent to administrators who confirm the emergency and begin to implement the school’s emergency operations procedures which may include sending a message to law enforcement and emergency responders.
“We are using those leftover funds strategically in different ways. For example, we can use those to upgrade our doors. We were able to do a lot with these funds to help ensure that every member of HISD is safe and secure.”
These two grant cycles have allowed us the ability to improve safety in our district. Students, staff, and families can feel safer and more secure knowing that the district has put in place ahead of development security advancements.
