School Districts Take Action In Wake Of Another School Shooting

CLEAR LAKE, TX — The recent mass shooting in Parkland, Florida that took the lives of 17 students and teachers has school districts in the Houston area on edge, and many of them have begun implementing measures that provides an anonymous line of communication between parents, students and the school districts.

Clear Creek ISD Superintendent Greg Smith sent a letter to parents on Thursday, assuring them that their children's safety is the district's top priority.

"While I am proud of the efforts taken to keep our students safe, I also recognize that we cannot let an incident like yesterday pass without our own reflection of current practices and what we can do to better serve our community," Smith said in his letter.

By state law, schools are required to have safety measures in place to help protect students and teachers in active shooter situations, or other dangerous situtaions.

Some of those safety measures include:

• Security vestibules and Electronic Access Control
• Perimeter Fencing
• Video Surveillance
• Security Officers
• Communications

To help ease concerns, there law enforcement patrols were increased at campuses all over the Houston area.

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In the months followling the Sandy Hook shooting, school districts all over Texas took steps to enhance and improve safety measures.

Related: Guns, Online Threats Rampant At Schools Across Texas

Among those were Clear Creek ISD, Houston ISD, Fort Bend ISD, Tomball ISD, Spring ISD, Cy-Fair, ISD, Katy ISD, Humble ISD and Klein ISD, many of which helped pass bonds to improve security, or made the changes through the use of the district's general fund balance.

Some school districts have taken extra measures to keeping their students safe with online tools that allow students and parents to report issues anonymously.

Such a system that was enacted in Humble ISD in 2015 and may have helped alert district leaders and police about an alleged threat at Kingwood Park High School earlier this month.

On Thursday, Tomball ISD Superintendent Martha Salazar-Zamora alerted parents to a new communications tool called Anonymous Alerts on the district's website that can be used to report bullying or other sensitive issues to school or district personnel.

"District and camus administrators reviee safety protocols regularly. Our students and staff conduct safety drills throughout the school year to be prepared for different types of emergencies," Salazar-Zamora said in her letter to parents. "Your child's safety while at school is of the utmost importance."

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