Sen. John Cornyn announced the federal grant awards as part of the U.S. Department of Justice’s School Violence Prevention Program.
SAN ANTONIO — Two rural school districts have been awarded federal grants totaling more than $815,000 to enhance security and safety.
Republican Sen. John Cornyn announced the Lytle Independent School District and Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District as the recipients of the grants.
A big portion of funds come from the Cornyn-authored Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which was signed into law June 25, 2022. The goal is to improve security in the schools by including violence prevention training for law enforcement, metal detectors and installation alarm systems to notify police in the case of an emergency.
Uvalde CISD, which received $500,000, did not respond to KENS 5’s request for an interview regarding the grant.
19 children and two teachers were killed in a shooting at Robb Elementary on May 24, 2022, sparking criticisms on law enforcement’s delayed response while reigniting conversations about gun control.
Lytle ISD Superintendent Michelle Carroll Smith noted how the district has been proactive in addressing school safety for years.
“First and foremost we want all of our students and all of our employees to feel safe when they’re here. We took extreme measures three years ago to get started down that pathway,” Smith said.
Smith said about $1.5 million of a community-supported bond went toward various infrastructure and technology enhancements. Despite the upgraded protocols, there’s still much work to be done. That’s where the $315,000 federal grant comes in.
“Upgraded our current camera system, we did door monitoring, badging into our doors, we’ve created vestibules for all of our campuses,” Smith said. “We were still lacking a few components to it, we needed more cameras, we needed more door access and so this grant has been a God send that will allow us to expand that and allow us to cover more area.”
Lytle ISD is also working to hire additional personnel with a focus on surveillance. Smith is looking ahead to the future, saying the district hopes to install non-scalable fencing and one day hiring three additional school resource officers to cover every campus.
“It will allow us to have someone in place watching cameras, watching all of our doors. The doors are monitored and they have alerts if they’re open for a certain amount of time,” Smith said.
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