July 20, 2023 - The Comal Independent School District announced today that during the 2023-24 school year it will be hiring additional School Resource Officers (SRO) with the goal of having an armed law enforcement presence at each campus, including all 20 of its elementary schools. This initiative began after the April 27 Board meeting when the Comal ISD Board of Trustees made the commitment to have an SRO at each campus.
“Throughout the previous year, we heard from parents and staff about their desire to have armed personnel dedicated to each of our elementary campuses,” said Russ Garner, Comal ISD Board President. “In April, we asked Dr. Chapman to bring to us in closed session options for accomplishing that goal. It was during that April meeting that we made the commitment as a Board to have an SRO at all our campuses to provide the level of security that our community desires to have in our schools.”
In May, after the Board committed to having an SRO at each campus, the Texas Legislature passed a bill that requires all school districts to have armed guards at each campus. “While we applaud the legislature for their work on school safety, as a Board we were committed to this concept of having armed personnel in all our schools regardless of whether the legislature mandated it or not,” said Garner.
Since April, the District has been working with local law enforcement partners, including the Comal County Sheriff’s Office, Bexar County Precint 3, Guadalupe County Sheriff’s Office, and the Bulverde Police Department to secure properly trained and licensed law enforcement personnel to provide security at each of our elementary schools.
While there will be a law enforcement presence at each Comal ISD campus during the first week of schools, it is anticipated that a full-time law enforcement presence will not be seen at every elementary school until later in the school year.
“The biggest challenge to accomplishing our goal of having an SRO at every elementary school is securing properly trained and qualified individuals,” said Comal ISD Executive Director of Safety and Security, Mario De La Rosa. "Our law enforcement partners are aggressively recruiting, hiring, and training reserve deputies to fill these crucial roles. In the meantime, we will be rotating the SROs we do have at the elementary campuses until we secured enough to have one at each school every day.”