For 24/7 mental health support in English or Spanish, call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s at 800-662-4357. You can also reach a trained crisis counselor through the by calling or texting 988.

LUFKIN — Georgia DeVries misses sleeping in a car.

“It was safer than any house I’ve been in,” the 17-year-old said.

By her count, she’s lived in at least 13 different places since the sixth grade, including multiple homes with her mom, extended stays with friends and family, and four trips to behavioral health clinics.

Then last November, after staying with her aunt, she ended up in her now ex-boyfriend’s broken-down Mitsubishi parked on his family’s property.

It wasn’t much, but she felt at peace — most of the time.

This is how many teenagers in rural Texas experience homelessness: a revolving door of sheltered and unsheltered living, friends’ couches, stints with extended family, nights spent outdoors. Homeless shelters are not an option in Lufkin, a town of 34,000, 90 miles south of Tyler, the nearest major city. Shelters here don’t take unaccompanied minors without reports of violent abuse.

A dearth of shelters is just one way homeless teens in rural areas are at a more significant disadvantage than their urban peers, experts say. A lack of good-paying jobs, poverty and drug abuse can be more common.

Poverty rose in between 2018 and 2022; a majority of those counties are considered rural. East Texas had a higher rate of opioid abuse than the rest of the state, according to a regional needs assessment based on data from 2018 to 2020. Texas, as a whole, was one of eight states where rural communities suffered higher drug overdose rates compared to their urban counterparts, according to a 2022 published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

And teens in rural areas are harder to track, making it more difficult for policymakers to design solutions based on quality data.

More than U.S. residents in 2023 were counted as homeless, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. . The statistic is based on an annual census of homeless people on a single night in January.

Rural and nonrural communities have similar rates of youth homelessness, according to a 2021 study by the University of Chicago’s Chapin Hall, a think tank focused on public policy that supports families.

But these annual counts — which Chapin Hall’s research is based on — face criticism across the board as they struggle to measure homelessness accurately, even in urban areas.

Erin Carreon, a researcher at the University of Chicago, said there is likely a significant undercount in rural areas. That’s because rural teens are often “hidden” from counters.

Georgia, for example, was with her then-girlfriend during the 2023 count, escaping the census.

“When we think of homelessness, we might think of people in shelters or we might think of people on a busy street corner that people are walking by,” Carreon said. “In a rural area, young people are more likely to stay on couches, inside vehicles if they are outdoors, and it might be in a more secluded and hidden spot.”

Six years ago, Georgia was living with her grandma and legal guardian, Jan DeVries. That’s when Georgia’s mother asked her to move to Beaumont, a much larger city about 100 miles southeast of Lufkin.

Georgia said she was excited. But after just one week at the new home, she clearly made a mistake. She left to move in with her girlfriend in Lufkin and stayed for two years.

A lack of early, stable relationships and a stubborn independence streak led Georgia to move in and out of homes frequently, DeVries said. In the years following the breakup, Georgia would stay with friends and family, sometimes lasting just one night.

Georgia acknowledges she has played a significant role in contributing to her homelessness. Her mental health is not the best, she said. She is seeking help and meets with a therapist weekly.

While DeVries has been one of the most stable forces in Georgia’s life, they’ve had their own falling out over Georgia’s sexual identity.

DeVries said she tried not to judge Georgia, who first came out as a lesbian when she was about 14 and then bisexual when she was older.

“I just didn’t like the fact that she was going to make her life that much more difficult for herself,” DeVries said.

LGBTQ+ youths were twice as likely to experience homelessness as their peers, according to another by Chapin Hall.

Georgia loved the company of little stray black cats that roamed the area near the broken-down car she called home last November. A stray dog would wander by occasionally, too, she said.

She is stick-thin. And she rocks a short, modern-day punk haircut dyed a mix of red, blue and green. Tattoos she did herself using a gun purchased online cover her body.

Like any teenager, she can be talkative at points or sit pensively, staring into space.

“I could have stayed there forever,” she said.

However, the freedom she felt came with some consequences. It was November, and the East Texas region was experiencing its first cold front. She posted videos on TikTok of her breaking down, crying about how lonely she was.

Her feet hurt from the cold. And once, she slept for nearly 48 hours straight fighting a urinary tract infection. A cousin later dragged her to the doctor’s office for help.

“There wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it,” DeVries said. “You pray real hard: ‘Protect her. Protect her. Protect her.’ Because she was out there and you can’t make her understand about the danger she’s putting herself in. It was misery.”

There wasn’t anywhere else for the teen to go in Angelina County. Local shelters only accept people over 18 unless violent abuse is reported.

Service providers don’t have an incentive to seek out these teens, because they have nothing to offer them. And public schools are supposed to act as a safety net, but students rarely know that, said Carreon, the University of Chicago researcher.

The Lufkin school district has a social worker. However, there’s little help for the kids who . And Georgia doesn’t remember the last time she was in a classroom.

Two adults who have tried to help Georgia are Pam and Yvonne Smith. They started the Kaleidoscope L.Y.F.E. Foundation to provide access to mentorship for at-risk youth.

Before launching the nonprofit, Pam Smith worked in the juvenile justice system and Yvonne worked at another youth advocacy center. For years, they watched the state and local foster care system struggle. Statewide, the system that is supposed to help young Texans find stable homes has faced scrutiny for staff , home placements and placing kids in hotels when foster homes were unavailable.

Local leaders and organizations, the Smiths say, have failed to close the gap.

“These kids are underage and can’t do anything for themselves,” Yvonne Smith said. “They’re stuck in a situation where they’re supposed to be an adult but are not legally able to act as one.”

They don’t receive support from the state, they can’t register themselves for school or GED programs, and they can’t sign a contract for an apartment or utilities, Yvonne Smith said.

Communities can begin to address homelessness by establishing strategies to divert teens from this path, according to Carreon. And she suggested that federal funding be made more broadly accessible to those communities.

Carreon thinks it really starts with schools, giving them the resources to identify these kids and provide them with help.

“Making sure schools have the capacity to fulfill their roles is really key,” she said.

Until that happens, rural teen homelessness will likely remain invisible and abstract.

Georgia had to move out of the car after it was vandalized.

And DeVries insisted Georgia return home before Christmas. She waits up each night for Georgia, who walks home from her job at Little Caesars. Georgia likes the work because she can munch on pizza during her breaks.

She puts aside as much money as she can for a car.

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The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Most Texas community college students who transfer to a four-year university don’t graduate, according to a report on college transfers released Wednesday.

The study from found that only 45% of students who go on to a four-year college get a bachelor’s degree in Texas. Black and adult students struggle even more after they transfer out of a community college, with just 33% and 37% completing their bachelor’s degree, respectively.

Community colleges have long pitched themselves as the most affordable place to start studying for a bachelor’s degree. But Wednesday’s report, the first to break down state transfer outcomes by race, socioeconomic status and age, suggests transfer students need more support to complete their degrees.

“No wonder there is this distrust in higher education when transfer students who enter these kinds of institutions can’t realize their goals,” said Tania LaViolet with the Aspen Institute.

The report also found low-income and adult learners are less likely to transfer to a four-year university from a community college, compared to their classmates.

Texas legislators last year to incentivize transfers. Community colleges now get more money when their students earn at least 15 semester credit hours before enrolling in a four-year university. In the 2024-25 school year, the first year under the new funding model, Texas community colleges earned nearly $327 million for funneling their students into four-year colleges.

That doesn’t guarantee success for a student once they enroll at a four-year university. For one, classes they take at their community college often . And those who do eventually graduate are not graduating fast enough, which delays their entry into the workforce and can mean the amount of money they pay for college continues to accrue, LaViolet said.

To save students from spending time and money on unnecessary credits, Texas encouraged universities to be more transparent about what it takes to get a degree. mandates universities for every major, so students can use them as a guide to select courses at community colleges. It also required universities to report any non-transferrable credits.

But many of the degree plans that universities have shared are not clear enough, said Lauren Schudde, a professor in higher education policy at the University of Texas-Austin.

“I’ve looked at some of the different transfer plans that students have to navigate. It’s hard for me to figure out what courses exactly they’re supposed to take,” Schudde said.

Texas public universities say they have struggled to meet the needs of transfer students partly because of gaps in staffing and funding, according to in a 2023 Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board report.

Participation in dual enrollment — an effort Texas community colleges have invested in — are tied to better transfer outcomes, researchers at the Aspen Institute and the Community College Research Center said.

They also recommended community colleges should advise their students to get an associate’s degree first. Those who transfer out with an associate’s degree have much higher rates of bachelor’s degree completion within six years.

Earning an associate’s degree first guarantees students will have a postsecondary credential, even if they do not finish their bachelor’s degree. But in Texas, Schudde said students risk taking additional community college credits that will not apply to a four-year degree.

The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.

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Public school administrators were well aware that the last month would likely mean getting no new money for teacher raises and inflation adjustments this year. Gov. had long threatened to veto any education funding bill without a voucher component.

But they were surprised and disappointed that proposals that would have provided them with additional funds for school safety — a stated priority for many lawmakers in the aftermath of the Uvalde school shooting — also fell apart.

The fourth special legislative session this year ended without a vote on separate House and Senate bills that would have boosted school safety funding — both of which came after they didn’t have enough money to fulfill new safety requirements passed earlier this year.

Now, with many districts already operating in deficit budgets, superintendents across the state say they will be forced to make significant budget cuts to meet the new safety mandates.

“Whether we’re rural, large, small, urban, suburban, when we superintendents get together and chat… all of us are like, ‘Where are we going to get the dollars? What are you cutting?’” Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde said. She added that her district might have to nix extracurriculars, field trips and transportation for students in magnet schools — along with laying off teachers and increasing student class sizes.

— which the Texas Legislature in response to the — requires districts to post an armed security guard at every school and provide mental health training to certain employees. To fund these measures, the law gave school districts $15,000 per campus and $10 per student, along with allotting $1.1 billion to the Texas Education Agency to administer grants that schools can apply for. In 2022, lawmakers also approved to help school districts pay for safety upgrades.

Last month, the House that would have boosted that funding by $1.3 billion. The Senate , which would have also increased the funding schools receive for safety upgrades and given the TEA $400 million more for its school safety grants. Both bills failed to advance for a vote in the opposite chamber.

Elizalde said Dallas ISD went into a $186 million deficit this year to keep up with costs, including the implementation of the new security measures ordered by HB 3. The district has recently acquired a grant of more than $20 million from the TEA, she said, but the one-time grant won’t ensure Dallas public schools can keep up with security mandates in the long term.

With more than 220 campuses, the district needs approximately $3 million annually to post trained security guards at every school, Elizalde said. It’s not that school board members and leaders don’t want to meet these new expectations, she added — they just don’t have the funds to do so.

“That has become our biggest obstacle — how do you, time and time again, continue to make cuts to make sure that we have the safest schools possible?” Elizalde said.

Issues hiring security personnel

Elizalde said Dallas ISD has opted to hire trained security guards instead of licensed police officers, both because of and because security guards typically cost less.

But even the cost of security guards is barely covered by HB 3’s funding, Temple ISD Superintendent Bobby Ott said. Hiring security guards across his 15-school district can cost up to $900,000, which would be on top of the $1.8 million needs to pay for all the required infrastructure updates, Ott said. The district only got $200,000 through HB3, and the state only awarded it $400,000 through the new grant program.

“I’ve always said that House Bill 3 has really just passed on debt to school districts,” he said.

The district can mitigate security guard costs by choosing the ” option in HB 3, Ott said. The program trains teachers to carry handguns in case of emergencies.

But critics have this approach, saying it introduces yet more guns into schools. Ott said his district doesn’t support a guardian program because police officers are ultimately trained to eliminate risks — and if an officer is called to one of his schools during an emergency, they might accidentally target a teacher who is carrying a gun.

Ott said it’s a “sad state of affairs” how lawmakers have approached school safety, especially given Texas’ this year.

“I agree with the safety requirements. They’re all fantastic, and they’re what schools need,” Ott said. “What I don’t agree with is sitting on the largest surplus that we’ve had in our economy [in Texas] and not providing funding to public schools.”

Hurdles with grant-based funding

Craig Bessent, assistant superintendent of school operations for , said his district has posted former law enforcement officers on its campuses since 2013 by paying them out of Wylie ISD’s general salary budget. This isn’t a feasible option for most underfunded school districts, he said.

Both the House and Senate’s failed school safety bills would have introduced additional grant money to help schools cover those expenses. But educators said a grant-based funding program poses extra logistical hurdles for schools and isn’t helpful in the long term. Bessent, who is also a board member appointed by Abbott, said grants work well for one-time expenses, such as building fences or securing doors.

“Once you hire someone, you’re trying to keep them on, just like teachers,” he said. “If you told a law enforcement officer, ‘I’m going to hire you, but you’re only going to for sure be here one year [with this grant]’… that’s not very good job security.”

Navigating a grant application process is also tough for smaller, rural schools, said Michelle Carroll Smith, superintendent of . Her rural district was able to submit an application since it has a temporary, grant-funded staff member to write funding applications, she said. But not all small districts have someone on staff to spearhead these processes.

“It comes with a lot of red tape,” Smith said. “Something as serious and important as safety and security should not be dependent on grants.”

Like many , Smith said seeing another legislative session end without additional school funding has left her frustrated and discouraged. Her district did not enter into a deficit budget this year but might have to if the Texas Legislature waits until the 2025 session to reconsider extra funding, she said.

“To pass bills and have mandates in them without adequate funding is irresponsible at best and political gamesmanship at worst,” she said of HB 3.

Superintendent Adrain Johnson said his rural district hired two full-time police officers for each of its campuses this year and purchased some security equipment like metal detectors. But the district is in a deficit budget and still needs an additional $500 million to meet the remaining safety requirements, he said.

Johnson said he particularly hopes to see more funding for mental health support in schools. Adding more security infrastructure and running regular active shooter drills can take a mental toll on students and staff, he said.

“When I visit the Capitol, I’m always pleased to see the strong security that exists there to protect democracy, to protect our legislators, to protect visitors, to protect us all,” Johnson added. “We want to see that same approach to our schools… because our education is part of our democracy, and it needs to be protected.”

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Texas community colleges saw a big post-pandemic recovery this year, preliminary fall enrollment data shows.

A total of 676,141 students were enrolled in community colleges this fall, representing a 4.25% increase in enrollment since 2021 and bringing those numbers closer to where they were before the pandemic. About in public two-year colleges in 2019.

The uptick comes after community colleges saw enrollment fall by about 80,000 students between 2019 and 2021, causing community college enrollment the state’s four-year universities for the first time since the 1990s. The drop came as a surprise to many community colleges expecting student enrollment to increase during the pandemic, as it typically does during economic recessions when students look for more affordable schooling options.

Texas Community Colleges Association President and CEO Ray Martinez said he believes affordability is a driving factor in the recovery.

“I think a lot of students are assessing the value of having a post-secondary degree or certificate,” he said. “When they do that, they often look at what is the most affordable option, and the one that will give [them] the most return on value. That usually points toward a degree or certificate from a community college.”

After Alvin Community College saw an 11% drop in enrollment between 2020 and 2021, director of recruitment and enrollment Amanda Smithson said the college made an effort to expand its dual enrollment and certificate programs. Placing Alvin Community College academic advisers on local high school campuses made a big impact on the program’s success, she said.

Dual enrollment courses allow high school students to earn college credit at a discounted rate through community colleges. This method has bolstered community college’s enrollment in recent years.

Since 2021, the college has seen a 6.22% increase in enrollment.

Smithson said the college received several million dollars in federal funding as a result of the pandemic, allowing it to provide more grants to students in need. In addition to federal funds, the college’s ACC Foundation also helps some students cover the cost of textbooks and other expenses.

“We’ve been able to kind of put aside some emergency funds to help students who are just kind of in a bind,” she said. “If you have a flat tire, and that flat tire is the thing keeping you from coming to class, then we can try to help you with that.”

Temple Community College also saw a steady recovery in enrollment, which went up by almost 20% between 2021 and 2023. School officials said they had over 4,800 students enrolled this fall. Temple Community College Provost and Interim President Susan Guzman-Trevino said the increase was a result of the school’s focus on expanding its programs and outreach.

“With the workforce opportunities and new businesses and industries that are coming to our area, the emphasis on [career and technical education] for the school districts and for us, [and] adding new programs to the college, I think those are going to be strategies that [we] are going to ensure our enrollment continues to trend upward,” she said.

A new state funding model approved by the Texas Legislature this year could help community colleges sustain the upward trend in enrollment.

House Bill 8, which went into effect in September, now funds the state’s community colleges based on how many of their students graduate with a degree or certificate or transfer to a four-year university. The bill incentivizes community colleges to offer more robust program offerings, including certificates, degrees and industry-based credentials. HB 8 also rewards colleges when students complete short-term programs like non-credit, workforce education.

Smithson said the new funding model allows colleges to focus on student success and takes focus away from just having a student fill a seat in class.

“Now we’re able to really drill in and see how we can help that student to be successful across the whole process,” she said. “That provides us with an amazing opportunity to help this next generation of students excel here in school, and then be prepared to take on the real world outside of school.”

As Texas community colleges’ enrollment levels return to normal, Martinez said they have not forgotten about the students who dropped out of community college during the pandemic.

“A lot of marketing and outreach efforts are going on by our community colleges to make sure that those students that stopped out know that there are options to come back into post-secondary education,” he said.

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A coalition of Texas bookstores and national bookseller associations filed suit on Tuesday over , which aims to ban sexually explicit material from school libraries.

in the Legislature and was signed by Gov. Greg Abbott earlier this year. It is set to go into effect on Sept. 1 and requires book vendors to assign ratings to books based on the presence of depictions or references to sex. In school libraries, books with a “sexually explicit” rating will be removed from bookshelves. And students who want to check out school library books deemed “sexually relevant” would have to get parental permission first.

Plaintiffs in the suit include two Texas bookstores, Austin’s BookPeople and West Houston’s Blue Willow Bookshop, as well as the American Booksellers Association, the Association of American Publishers, the Authors Guild and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

They are suing defendants Martha Wong, chair of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission; Keven Ellis, chair of the Texas State Board of Education; and Mike Morath, commissioner of the Texas Education Agency.

According to the , the plaintiffs argue that HB 900 violates the First and 14th amendments by regulating speech with “vague and overbroad” terms and targeting protected speech.

They go on to argue that HB 900 forces the plaintiffs to comply with the government’s views, even if they do not agree, and that the law operates as prior restraint — which is government action that prohibits speech or other expression before the speech happens.

“The book ban establishes an unconstitutional regime of compelled speech, retaliation, and licensing that violates clear First Amendment precedent and this country’s history of fostering a robust marketplace of ideas,” the complaint says.

The CEOs of both bookstores say it is not possible for them to comply with the rating system required of book vendors in HB 900. The sheer volume of titles they would need to rate is too much, Charley Rejsek, CEO of BookPeople, said in a statement.

In a joint statement by the three bookseller associations, they said they are not questioning that content for students should be age-appropriate, but rather that they believe HB 900 does not accomplish such a goal.

“It robs parents, schools and teachers from across the state of Texas of the right to make decisions for their respective communities and classrooms, instead handing that role to a state entity and private businesses,” the statement says.

The complaint emphasizes how the plaintiffs believe HB 900 will “shatter” small bookstores in Texas, placing “additional economic pressure” on them.

Supporters of HB 900, like Cindi Castilla, president of conservative think tank Texas Eagle Forum, characterized the proposal as a child protection bill. In a Senate education committee hearing in May, Castilla said explicit materials in books are educationally unsuitable for students and that taxpayers should not fund such books.

“Our schools must not sexualize our students or provide them pornographic reading material or introduce them to inappropriate materials that distract from the educational goals we’ve set as a state,” she said.

Lawmakers like state Sen. , R-McKinney agreed, arguing that HB 900 is a “tool” to be used by communities to address “harmful sexually explicit material.”

Opponents ofhave been worried that by targeting so-called “sexually explicit material” lawmakers will be specifically targeting books that explore LGBTQ+ themes, including books such as “” and “” Bill author Rep. , R-Frisco, also condemned the book “ a graphic novel that traces the author’s experiences with gender growing up.

Many librarians and booksellers, including representatives from the Texas Library Association and individual libraries across the state, testified to the House and Senate in May that the bill will slow down book sales and acquisition of books by school libraries.

“Such oversight has not been needed in the past and is not needed now,” said Mark Smith, the former director of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. “The bill will interfere with student learning and achievement by blocking access to materials that have been restricted.”

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A new poll sheds light on how Texas voters feel about one of the most hotly debated proposals of the legislative session so far: letting parents use tax dollars to take their kids out of public schools.

The , released earlier this month, found 46% of voters supported the idea, while 41% opposed it. The 5-point margin was unchanged since the pollsters last asked the question in April 2022, but the political landscape has shifted significantly since then.

Gov. has thrown his weight behind the proposal and is traveling the state to pitch parents on it, particularly in rural communities. The idea has historically faced opposition in the Legislature from Democrats and rural Republicans who are fiercely protective of public schools in their districts.

The latest survey was conducted in mid-February and included 1,200 registered voters. Notably, it did not find any rural divide; a plurality of rural voters — 46% — backed the proposal, compared to a plurality of 49% of urban voters. Suburban voters were more split, with 44% supporting and 45% opposing.

While that is good news for Republicans like Abbott, the poll also found the idea is not a high priority for voters when it comes to education this session. Sixty-four percent of voters said it was an important issue for the Legislature to address in the K-12 public education system, ranking eighth among 10 issues provided. The No. 1 issue was school safety, which 94% of voters called important, followed by “teacher pay/teacher retention” at 89% and “curriculum content” at 85%.

Abbott has named both “education freedom” and school safety as emergency items for the session, designating them as top priorities that lawmakers can pass off the floor immediately. But he has put the most effort into promoting “school choice” legislation lately, crisscrossing the state to try to show lawmakers the public support it enjoys.

Abbott regularly cites the 2022 Republican primary proposition on the issue, which passed overwhelmingly, including in rural Texas.

“In rural areas, if a Republican representative votes against this, they’re actually voting against their own constituents,” Abbott said in a recent TV interview.

Abbott is specifically championing education savings accounts, where the state would deposit funds for parents to subsidize the cost of educating their children outside the traditional public education system. The UT-Austin poll asked respondents whether they support “redirecting state tax revenue to help parents pay for the cost of sending their children to private or parochial schools.”

Oftentimes, school choice is framed around support of “vouchers,” which is similar to an educational savings account, except that the money from the state goes to the school instead of the parents.

When it came to voters’ overall priorities for the Legislature this session, the No. 1 issue was immigration and border security. Twenty-four percent of respondents said that should be lawmakers’ top priority, and no other issue registered double digits. The runner-up was inflation and the cost of living, which got 8%.

In other poll findings, Abbott’s approval rating declined slightly, with 46% of voters approving his job performance and 43% disapproving. In December, the survey found a 49-41% split.

For the first time, the pollsters tested how much Texas voters like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a likely 2024 presidential candidate who to be the nation’s most conservative governor. Forty percent of Texas voters said they had a favorable view of DeSantis, while 38% said they did not. That was not too different from how voters view Abbott — 47% favorably and 43% unfavorably.

But among Texas Republicans, Abbott is more popular, with an 85% favorability rating compared to 75% for DeSantis.

The poll also looked at how supportive Texas voters are of President Joe Biden running for reelection — and of his predecessor, Donald Trump, running against Biden. Wide majorities of voters in solidly red Texas agreed that Trump should run and Biden should not. But Texas Republicans were more supportive of Trump running than the state’s Democrats were of Biden running. Republicans said by a 23-point margin that Trump should run, while Democrats said by only a 7-point margin Biden should run.

The survey was conducted using an online panel from Feb. 10-21. The margin of error was plus or minus 2.83 percentage points.

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Texas school districts are set to receive nearly $8 million from the Justice Department to improve campus security this year through funding from the bipartisan gun safety law passed this summer. That includes nearly half a million for Uvalde.

The gun safety law allocates $100 million for a DOJ grant program for school districts to invest in safety programs and technology. Twenty-eight Texas school districts were awarded grants through the program, totaling $7,923,719. The grants are distributed via the DOJ’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services based on districts’ fiscal needs and security proposals.

More school districts were awarded grants in Texas than in any other state. Still, with over 1,000 public school districts in the state, the grants touched only a sliver of Texas’ schools.

But for some of the recipients, the grants are a major boost in security funding. Uvalde received $442,400 from the grant program — more than the $435,270 the school district allocated for security and monitoring in its 2021-22 budget. In addition to Uvalde, the recipients include some of the biggest urban school districts in the state, such as Austin, San Antonio and Fort Worth. Houston-area school districts received a total of over $1 million, as did North Texas districts.

Uvalde received $69,000 in 2020 to “harden” its schools from a Texas Education Agency grant program as part of a after the deadly shooting at Santa Fe High School. Those efforts , but Republicans in both Congress and Texas are digging their heels into school-hardening efforts to prevent future tragedies.

Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath that the agency planned to review the entry points of every school in the state — which amounts to over 3,000 campuses and as many as 80,000 buildings. U.S. Rep. , R-Los Indios, introduced legislation just before the October recess to redirect $11 billion from the Internal Revenue Service toward state grants for school mental health programs, security and other violence-prevention measures. That includes an additional $300 million for the COPS grants program.

Democrats, on the other hand, have criticized school hardening as secondary to gun control reform. Bridging the two priorities was a central pillar in the bipartisan gun safety legislation, spearheaded by Sen. . It was the and goes far beyond the scope of school safety, including a provision to tighten access to guns for those convicted of domestic abuse. Still, it fell short on several Democratic priorities, including universal background checks, raising the legal age to purchase firearms and the a ban on assault weapons. The bill passed in the Senate on a wide bipartisan basis.

Other Texas Republicans, however, were less supportive of the legislation. Sen. did not vote for the bill, nor did any Texas Republicans in the House except for Rep. , R-San Antonio. Gonzales’ district includes Uvalde.

The gun safety law also allocates a further $200 million to help schools with student and faculty training and other violence-prevention efforts.

“No parent should fear for the safety of their student when they drop them off at school, and no student should be afraid when they walk into the classroom,” Cornyn said in a statement. “In the aftermath of the tragedy in Uvalde, I’m grateful that meaningful solutions are starting to be delivered through this funding to prevent violence, provide training to school personnel and students, and apply evidence-based threat assessments in Texas schools.”

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Gov.  on Monday appointed former U.S. Secret Service agent John P. Scott as the Texas Education Agency’s first chief of school safety and security, a position the governor created in response to the Uvalde mass school shooting that left 19 students and two teachers dead.

Scott formerly served as a Secret Service agent in the Vice Presidential Protective Division from 2006 and 2010 during the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, according to his LinkedIn profile. He later helped lead the Secret Service field office in Dallas.

In his new role, which started Monday, Scott will “take every action possible to ensure schools are using best practices to safeguard against school shootings or other dangers,” according to from Abbott’s office.

Abbott to create the position four months ago in June, just over two weeks after the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde.

Abbott’s press release on Monday listed other actions the governor has taken since the Uvalde shooting, including his to “enhance school safety and mental health services” in Uvalde and across the state.

Since the shooting in May, Uvalde parents have called to raise the age to buy semi-automatic rifles — the kind of guns that the Uvalde gunman bought immediately after his 18th birthday in May — from 18 to 21. In August, to raise the age, that Texas cannot ban 18- to 20-year-olds from carrying handguns. Since then, Texas has started the process to , but Abbott has not said whether a successful appeal would change his stance on the constitutionality of raising the age to buy semi-automatic rifles.

On Friday, publicly endorsed Beto O’Rourke, who is running against Abbott in November, just hours ahead of the two candidates’ only planned debate. O’Rourke that he would focus on raising the age to buy semi-automatic rifles to 21 if he were elected next month in addition to supporting universal background checks and red-flag laws, which would allow judges to seize firearms from people deemed dangerous.

O’Rourke attacked Abbott at the debate for refusing to call a special legislative session to discuss school safety and gun laws after the Uvalde shooting. He also for expanding gun access in Texas by signing a law allowing Texans who can legally carry guns to carry handguns without a license or training and for sending a video message to the National Rifle Association’s conference in Houston just days after the shooting in Uvalde.

Scott and the TEA could not be immediately reached for comment.

This article originally appeared in , a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.