PUBLISHED 8:18 AM CDT Jul. 18, 2022Texas has 1,022 school districts, but only 67 of those districts have an emergency operations plan complete enough to be considered sufficient, according to a 2020 audit of plans by the Texas School Safety Center at Texas State University.
School districts often claim to have portion of a plan that, when audited, doesn't appear to be in writing Emergency-operation plans were added to the Texas Education Code in 2005, along with the creation of the Texas School Safety Center. Those plans, known as EOPs, required school districts to train district employees on various emergency scenarios, ensure districts have open communication lines to first responders, and added mandatory emergency school drills and exercises.
Despite the requirement of mandatory filing, 162 school districts do not have an existing EOP. Only 67 have an EOP that was deemed sufficient, “meaning it met the common or best practices necessary to be a viable EOP,” according to the report. The audit also has multiple findings on other disaster scenarios: Only a fraction of districts with facilities within 1,000 yards of railroad line had a train derailment policy. Many districts had failed to complete a comprehensive hazard analysis. The vast majority of districts and charters do not have a viable continuity of operations plan.
And the governor sure as heck isn't helping them with his education cutbacks.