PFLUGERVILLE — At 12:56 p.m., a single shot rings out at Windermere Elementary School.
A second later, a few more rounds pop off, their harsh blasts echoing off the main hallway's high ceilings. Then, the screams begin. Nearly two dozen people stream out toward the main exit, their hands up, running toward safety. A man and woman stand at the end of the hallway, navigating slowly through the oncoming pack. But before they reach the source of the shots, before they peer around the hallway's blind corner, out steps a man with a gun, his barrel pointed high at those fleeing.
Bam! Bam bam! The couple unholsters their Glocks and targets the shooter. He falls, his shirt marked with blue paint where the bullets would have entered his chest.
The whole simulation takes less than two minutes. That's how long the man and woman, who are training to become armed school marshals, have to make life and death decisions about the teachers, administrators and children they've pledged to protect.
"It's sad that we're having to have these concerns," says the man, a school administrator from suburban southeast Texas who declined to identify himself because of security concerns. His district spent a year debating whether to put guns in the hands of teachers and other school staff. The discussions were tough, but the 46-year-old father of two says the hardest part for him wasn't the decision to carry a firearm, but the knowledge that someday he might have to use it.
"Our biggest fear," he says, "is actually having to use our training."
Many school boards haven't signed off
After this summer, the number of armed employees in Texas schools could double.
Four different kinds of people can legally bring a gun into a K-12 school, where firearms are otherwise banned. Some schools have dedicated police departments or school resource officers, trained law enforcement personnel assigned to specific campuses or districts. Texas also allows schools boards to designate so-called "guardians," armed individuals who may or may not be trained but who the district authorizes to be armed at school.
Then there are the school marshals. The program was created in 2013 after 26 people, most of them schoolchildren under the age of 7, were shot dead at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
It has been scrutinized by Democrats and criticized by gun control advocates, who argue the solution to school shootings is not more guns in the classroom. Rep. Jason Villalba, a Dallas Republican who lost his re-election bid this year, said he authored the law because he wanted to feel like his kids would be safe.
Today I attended a school marshal training near Austin, #Texas.
— Lauren McGaughy (@lmcgaughy) August 10, 2018
The state could more than double its number of armed school employees this year. The program got a lot more popular after the #SantaFeshooting.
Here’s what the training looked like. Story soon @dallasnews. #txlege pic.twitter.com/0JG2SQdZmE
"More guns in the schools are not the answer to this problem," Kim Vickers, executive director of the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, which trains the marshals, said Friday. "But they're part of a multi-faceted approach to trying to make our kids safer and our schools safer."
But school districts have largely failed to tap into the program. Of the nearly 700,000 school employees in the state, only 71 were certified as school marshals between the law's inception and Friday afternoon.
That could change soon, however, as Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republicans push for the program's expansion. Abbott's office has offered districts more than $100,000 to pay for the training, which can be costly, and the program's popularity surged after the shooting in May that left 10 people dead at Santa Fe High School outside Houston, state officials said Friday.
By summer's end, an additional 94 school employees would be headed back to school — armed. Still, this would mean that just two one hundreds of 1 percent of Texas school employees would be certified under the program.
"Teachers in Texas are truly split on the issue," said Monty Exter, a lobbyist for the Association of Texas Professional Educators, which represents more than 100,000 school employees. "But whether it's due to a lack of knowledge of the programs available or a lack of will to implement them, school boards have clearly not made arming educators a priority."
Scrutiny and anonymity
If everything goes to plan, the man and woman who drilled at Windermere on Friday will be certified by Saturday.
To become a school marshal, they've undergone 80 hours of training. Everything from target practice to discussions about liability and other legal issues are covered. They also have to undergo psychological exams and retraining every two years to remain certified. Applicants must be an employee of a school district — anyone from the superintendent to the night janitor — who have opted into the program and have a Texas handgun license, which means passing a written exam and shooting test, as well as a background check.
But it's the hands-on drills that the participants said are the most helpful aspect of the training. On Friday, they practiced checking and clearing classrooms, moving through the school's hallways with military-like efficiency. And before meeting a gaggle of reporters ensconced in the school library, they were given a scenario: You're in the main office and you've just heard there's a shooter somewhere in the school. What do you do?
"We train them that the firearm is only a tool for a school marshal," Michael Antu, TCOLE's director of enforcement and special services, said. The trainees, he added, need to wrap their head around "making the determination of whether you can use that weapon and use that level of deadly force on potentially a student that you know or a citizen in the community that you know."
Moving cautiously out of the office, the 46-year-old man and his female colleague carefully unholstered their weapons. The shots rang out and soon, dozens of actors standing in for terrified teachers and students came streaming down the hallway toward them. The trainees held their firearms at the ready, watching each person who passed for potential weapons or injuries.
Then, the shooter rounded the corner, his gun raised.
In a split second, both marshals-in-training had him in their sights. They target him using Glock-17s with barrels modified to shoot only simulated colored markers, like paintball guns. Even though the markers only sting, not maim, adrenaline ran high during the drill, and both trainee and trainer wore black masks and neck guards for protection.
"I'm fairly familiar with firearms. But I have learned a tremendous amount of techniques and skills this week that I've never been exposed to," the man from southeast Texas said. "How to manipulate the firearms and how to approach certain areas of the building that may present a risk to us and our students, and how to address those risks and how to keep safety first in all of those decisions.
"They have really taken this to a new level."
Some school districts have decided be open with whom and how many employees they're arming. Others have chosen to keep the identities and locations of their school marshals secret,
a level of anonymity allowed under the law that's disliked by some parents and teachers. TCOLE confirmed that all trainees on Friday were school employees.And while all school board votes are public, it's unclear which districts — including in the Dallas-Fort Worth area — have opted in.
The man from southeast Texas says the secrecy is just the name of the game. He's won't give his name or his district and they're training during the summer, all with the hopes that anyone with nefarious designs on his school won't know who's packing and who's not.
"That's part of our program, is the anonymity," he said, adding every school needs to make those calls on their own. "I think those are community decisions."
