SMCISD, other local districts, continue School
Following legislation requiring at least one armed security officer be posted at each Texan school campus, San Marcos CISD is supplementing their employment of school resource officers by implementing a program training former police and military personnel to work as school marshals.
The recently passed House Bill 3 includes various education reforms designed to improve school safety in response to the Uvalde massacre, most significantly requiring a school marshal or school district employee be used as a security officer if a police officer or SRO isn’t available.
Andrew Fernandez, chief of communications and technology at San Marcos CISD, said the district had already worked with Stan Standridge, the chief of police for the city of San Marcos, to implement a school marshal program well before the bill’s passing.
Fernandez said Standridge, “let us know the struggle that he was having hiring police officers for the city,” “And so he actually recommended the school marshal program to our director of safety.”
The San Marcos school board voted for the program in a 6-1 vote on April 17, 2023, with only trustee Mari Salmi voting against the program due to concerns about the general presence of guns in San Marcos schools and the extent of power the marshals hold being vaguely defined.
“The school Board of Trustees still has to appoint each school marshal, and the Board of Trustees has to promulgate a policy that governs the activities of school marshals,” Standridge said.
Before becoming a school marshal, applicants must undergo both an 80hour certification course including a firearm safety and expertise test and a psychological evaluation before becoming officially licensed. To retain the license, marshals must also complete new psychological evaluations every two years.
Standridge also noted that despite the state legislature requiring an armed presence as security on campus, funding hasn’t been provided for hiring police officers for these roles on top of issues with recruitment.
“I think if you were to ask most Texans, they would agree the ideal response would be to have a police officer on every campus, but it's cost prohibitive,” Standridge said. “And right now, there are simply not enough police officers in the state of Texas. So school districts throughout the state of Texas like San Marcos and Hays have to look at all options to determine which one meets their needs and which ones they can financially afford.”
Elsewhere in Hays County, Wimberley ISD solely utilizes SROs and Hays CISD is current- ly exempt from needing a program by using a “multi-year memorandum of understanding” allowing the district to forgo having a guardian program.
'Our district is actually not utilizing either one of those programs at this point,” said Jeri Skrocki, chief of safety and security for Hays CISD. “We are actually utilizing our multi-year memorandum of understanding. And we've requested law enforcement officers from our contract out agency, which is Hays County Sheriff's Office.'
She also discussed her understanding of the San Marcos CISD program.
“San Marcos opted to go with a marshal program where they were going to supplement their school resource program with marshals at their campuses, such as their elementary schools in which they didn't have a peace officer assigned to them,” Skrocki said. “Those positions are not moonlighting, that is a position that they hire specifically on their own salary with the school district.”
Other Hays County districts, like Dripping Springs ISD, are using school marshal programs to meet their security requirements in a similar vein to San Marcos CISD.
San Marcos CISD formed the Police Force Committee from a mixture of administrators, board members, staffers, students and parents to implement and oversee the marshal program and has meetings to discuss the program’s ongoing progress, with meetings coordinated by San Marcos director of safety Walker Cleveland and open to citizens who can bring up any concerns they have.
