{"id":225980,"date":"2025-09-14T10:58:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-14T10:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/225980\/"},"modified":"2025-09-14T10:58:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-14T10:58:12","slug":"northside-isd-cuts-police-vacancies-but-hiring-gaps-remain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/225980\/","title":{"rendered":"Northside ISD cuts police vacancies, but hiring gaps remain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two years after the state passed a law requiring school districts to have an armed guard at every campus, Northside Independent School District still struggles to hire enough officers. <\/p>\n

The district has gotten much closer to having a police officer at almost every one of its 127 campuses. This requirement was a state mandate passed by lawmakers in response to the 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.<\/p>\n

As the largest school district in San Antonio, Northside ISD serves just under 98,500 students across 355 square miles. NISD has about 85 elementary schools, 26 middle schools and 21 middle schools.<\/p>\n

NISD budgeted to pay for more than 120 school officers for the 2025-26 school year and currently has 31 vacancies in its police department.<\/p>\n

Twenty of those empty positions were added by the school board after the school shooting in Uvalde and just before House Bill 3 \u2014 a big school safety bill passed by the state in 2023 \u2014 went into effect.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re getting close\u2026 closer than we have been in quite a few years,\u201d said Kelley Fryar, a police lieutenant for NISD who oversees the patrol and communication divisions, during a Sept. 2 interview.<\/p>\n

Fryar, who\u2019s been with the department for more than 30 years, says they\u2019ve been able to hire more because of the \u201csettling down\u201d of the COVID-19 pandemic, the increased frequency of law enforcement academy trainings and hiring early career officers.<\/p>\n

This year, the state allocated more funding for school safety under House Bill 2. <\/p>\n

Under the multi-billion dollar public school funding bill<\/a>, school districts get $33,540 per campus to fill security needs. It\u2019s more than double what schools were getting under HB 3, the school safety bill passed in 2023.<\/p>\n

HB 2 also increased the school safety allotment from $20 per student average daily attendance to $21.10.<\/p>\n

\"SergeantSergeant Mauricio Hernandez approaches his Northside ISD police vehicle at station headquarters in Leon Valley in 2024. Credit: Scott Ball \/ San Antonio Report<\/p>\n

Fryar also said the NISD police department has been leaning more heavily on its own training program as it hires more officers who are new to law enforcement.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a lot that we can learn to really build an officer the way we them to be for Northside ISD,\u201d Kelley said.<\/p>\n

Traditionally, the department tried to recruit officers from other agencies, but as most law enforcement groups feel the strain of understaffing, NISD\u2019s focus shifted to training their own officers for school policing.<\/p>\n

School policing is more akin to traditional community-based policing, said Fryar. While the NISD police department is a full-fledged law enforcement agency operating 24 \/7 and equipped to deal with \u201canything short of murder,\u201d school officers have more time and space to connect with students.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithin school district policing, we\u2019re different in that we take that extra step since obviously, we deal with a vast majority of juveniles,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

School districts can also contract with school resource officers or commissioned peace officers from other agencies. There\u2019s also allowances <\/strong>in HB 3 <\/strong>for hiring armed security guards or having armed teachers on campuses, but NISD opted not go that route<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe feel that\u2019s more problematic than problem-solving,\u201d Charlie Carnes, NISD\u2019S police chief, told the Report last year.<\/p>\n

HB 3 requires all public schools to have some sort of armed guard on campus. Big school districts like Northside ISD who may not be able to recruit for every position due to lack of funding or qualified candidates, can fill out \u201cgood cause exemptions.\u201d <\/p>\n

As part of the exemptions, districts have to provide alternative security plans that still meets the state\u2019s minimum standards. <\/p>\n

Northside ISD has two officers on every high school campus and one officer assigned to every middle school. For elementary schools, the district uses a \u201cgeographic cluster model\u201d that pairs an officer with a cluster of elementary schools, all located within proximity to one another, allowing the officer quick access to an assigned site.<\/p>\n

Having a full-time school officer at all 85 elementary schools would be like having \u201calmost a whole new police department,\u201d Carnes said last year.<\/p>\n

While school officer vacancies have steadily decreased at Northside \u2014 last year the district had about 40 vacancies \u2014 positions are still hard to fill, but it\u2019s not for a lack of budget, said district spokesperson Barry Perez.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a shortage of candidates for these positions. As positions get filled, the budget is adjusted to accommodate the new hires,\u201d Perez said. <\/p>\n

Security and monitoring services currently account for 1.04% of the district\u2019s operating budget or about $11.3 million. Last year\u2019s security budget was about $10.9 million.<\/p>\n

Even as the budget increases, NISD\u2019s police officers are taking on duties outside of their job descriptions to make up for the vacancies, Fryar said.<\/p>\n

Police supervisors, for example, usually work behind desks doing paperwork, but they have to take on more duties \u201cout in the field\u201d to increase the department\u2019s physical presence within NISD. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re still doing it, and it\u2019s working, but it\u2019s kind of asking 150% when 100% is your job,\u201d he said. \u201cIt just literally puts physical strain on officers that are having to do more than they normally do.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two years after the state passed a law requiring school districts to have an armed guard at every…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":225981,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5133],"tags":[122219,29557,5229,96836,2936,7287,21878,21879,5292,7202,7203,73474,358,7453,3187,7815,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,20705],"class_list":{"0":"post-225980","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-88th-legislative-session","9":"tag-89th-legislative-session","10":"tag-america","11":"tag-hb-2","12":"tag-law-enforcement","13":"tag-nisd","14":"tag-northside-independent-school-district","15":"tag-northside-isd","16":"tag-public-safety","17":"tag-san-antonio","18":"tag-sanantonio","19":"tag-school-safety","20":"tag-texas","21":"tag-top-story","22":"tag-tx","23":"tag-typedaily","24":"tag-united-states","25":"tag-united-states-of-america","26":"tag-unitedstates","27":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","28":"tag-us","29":"tag-usa","30":"tag-wc-750-1000"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115202301232148867","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}