CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — As the state reaches the midway point of its 88th Legislature's regular session, Texas lawmakers continue to engage on the topic of education.
Among the dozens of proposals are a school choice voucher system, arming teachers and teacher pay raises.
On Monday, the house will take up the debate on perhaps the biggest item facing lawmakers this session -- school security.
It's an aspect of education that has been at the forefront since the tragedy at Robb Elementary School last year.
But even this week, we've seen back-to-back shootings at high schools in Arlington and Dallas.
House Bill 3 would require school districts to have a minimum of one armed security officer on each of the state's 26,000 public school campuses during regular school hours.
Inside Texas Politics' Jason Whitely told 3NEWS that some are wondering whether the bill goes far enough.
“It's great to have a police officer there but remember, 376 officers showed up to Uvalde last May, and it took them more than an hour to actually engage the suspect, who had the same firepower that the police officers did,” he said.
HB3 would also allocate a minimum of $15,000 to each campus every year for school safety measures.
Behind property tax relief, the bill is the most important on house speaker Dade Phelan's list of priorities. The debate will be taken up in Austin Monday afternoon at 2 p.m.
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