Yelitza G. Martinez was in an English learner’s class at International High School, which shares a campus with Northeast Early College High School in Austin, on Dec. 5 when an emergency announcement came over the intercom — reports of gunfire near the school.
Martinez didn’t understand the announcement, which was in English, so the teacher translated it for the adult students in class.
“We began to hear the sirens, and I got very nervous,” Martinez told the American-Statesman in Spanish. “I got scared. I said, ‘It’s something serious that’s happened here, and it has to have been nearby.’ ”
It took several calls for her to get in touch with her son, who was in class at Northeast High. He and his classmates — in another building on the shared campus — had been taking a test and had put their phones away.
“He told me, ‘Mom, I’m really scared; don’t go out. I’m OK,’ ” Martinez said.
The shooter, who has since been accused of killing six people near San Antonio and in Austin in a daylong rampage, never entered a Northeast High building or International High School. It’s not clear whether the shooter was even trying to enter one of the schools.
The incident, however, rattled many parents and left some, like Martinez, nervous about school security.
As parents hope for safer schools, Austin district officials have moved up the timeline for security upgrades that were already planned at Northeast High as part of an $117.9 million renovation over the next four years. The district plans to install fencing, secured entries, cameras and other physical barriers as part of a voter-approved bond package that prioritizes safety upgrades across the district.
‘A secure, safe perimeter’
The Northeast campus is one of 25 schools scheduled for at least one phase of a major renovation as part of the $2.4 billion bond plan, which voters approved in 2022.
The district designed the existing campus to give students a collegelike feel. On a recent sunny Tuesday, students lounged on a grassy area near the front office and walked from building to building along open walkways — the awnings overhead lined with colorful, painted tiles.
More: Austin school district prioritizing safety, maintenance as 2022 bond projects get underway
That open-campus feeling is one the district doesn’t want to strip away from students, said David Simon, the district’s director of emergency management. However, it also means the campus has a fairly open concept.
As part of the bond upgrades, Northeast will get two layers of fencing, one around the perimeter of the school’s grounds and another that connects the buildings students use.
“Once you come into the campus, you can then freely move around the campus with a secure, safe perimeter, without feeling like anybody from the street can just come up and walk through,” Simon said.
Those fences will be at least 6 feet tall, higher than the existing 5-foot fence, and will be built with anti-scaling methods to prevent people from climbing over it, he said.
Like other Austin campuses, Northeast is also slated for a new secured school entry that requires front desk staffers to buzz visitors through multiple rows of locked doors before allowing them into the building.
The bonds will also pay for cameras, shatterproof window film and other security upgrades at the campus along Berkman Drive and across the street from Nelson Field in Northeast Austin.
Updated school security timeline
During the Dec. 5 shooting rampage, a man approached the Northeast campus with a gun and shot multiple times at school police Sgt. Val Barnes, hitting him in the leg. Police said Shane James, 34, then fled the school and headed to South Austin, where he is accused of fatally shooting four people and wounding two others, including a second police officer.
Police have also accused James of killing his parents near San Antonio.
Barnes, the only person injured in the Northeast High shooting, returned to work in January.
After the shooting, district officials decided to move up the timeline to install the planned fencing at the school, Simon said. Normally, workers would install the fencing during the renovation construction. Now the district plans to install the two layers this summer, he said.
The district wants to preserve the outdoor, multibuilding setup at Northeast High while keeping students safe, Simon said.
“What I don’t want to do is make this into one big building,” he said. “It’s unique in that it gives kids this open area.”
Texas school security concerns
School security was a hot topic during last year’s legislative session in the wake of the mass shooting in Uvalde on May 24, 2022, when a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School.
Almost exactly one year after that shooting devastated the community of 15,000 residents about 80 miles west of San Antonio, lawmakers in May passed a $330 million school safety bill that requires an armed officer on every campus, sets requirements for physical safety infrastructure and gave districts $15,000 per school for security.
Lawmakers put another $1.1 billion into school safety funding, though calls for stricter gun control laws, such as increasing the minimum age from 18 to 21 to purchase a semi-automatic firearm, went nowhere.
While physical safety infrastructure is helpful, the state should be investing in mental health resources, said Jason Russell, founder and president of Secure Environment Consultants, a security firm based out of West Michigan.
The Dec. 5 shooting at Northeast High was unusual, Russell said. More often, gun-related incidents on campus involve someone who is a student or otherwise connected to the school, he said.
“More money on prevention, less money on response,” Russell said. “If we could prevent the kid from ever having the desire to bring the gun to school in the first place, that’s a win.”
To read more, click here.