This fall, Texas students are receiving a serious message: If you see or hear a threat, do not make it, do not share it and do not ignore it. Report it.
The message comes from the Texas School Safety Center’s new “Threats Are No Joke” campaign, created for students in grades four through 12. It reflects an important truth. Students are often among the first people to see a troubling post, hear an alarming comment, or notice that something about a classmate’s behavior has changed.
The State of Texas understands that students are essential to recognizing danger. But it has been slower to recognize that we might also have something useful to contribute when adults decide how schools should prevent and respond to it.
Every Texas school district and open-enrollment charter school must establish a school safety and security committee. Under Texas Education Code Section 37.109, these committees help develop emergency plans, review district safety needs and audits, and make recommendations to school boards and administrators.
The state is specific about who should be in the room. The Texas School Safety Center’s current guidelines list emergency-management and law-enforcement representatives, the school board president, another trustee, the superintendent, a classroom teacher, a special-education administrator, and at least two parents or guardians. The committee must meet publicly at least once each academic semester and during the summer.
One perspective is not required: that of a current student.
I serve as the non-voting student member of my district’s Safety and Security Committee. I will not discuss confidential information or operational details from that work. But the experience has shown me that student participation in school-safety planning is possible, useful, and compatible with the seriousness of the subject.
Texas law does not prevent districts from adding students. My district chose to do so, and that decision deserves credit. But student inclusion should not depend on whether a superintendent or school board happens to create the role. The districts that most need honest student feedback may be the least likely to seek it voluntarily. A statewide requirement would create a consistent floor while leaving districts free to decide how students are selected, trained, and connected with campuses. It would also make clear that student knowledge is a normal part of safety planning, not an experiment reserved for a few willing districts.
I do not have the emergency-management expertise of a police officer or the operational knowledge of a district administrator. Students should not be asked to replace either one. We bring a different kind of knowledge.
Students know how information actually travels across a campus. We know which social-media posts spread before an adult ever sees them. We know whether classmates understand a reporting system, trust the adults receiving a report, or worry that speaking up will make them a target. We experience drills from underneath desks and behind classroom doors. We can explain which instructions make sense in practice and which become confusing once hundreds or thousands of students are moving through a building.
Those observations do not substitute for professional training. Professional training cannot manufacture them, either.
A safety plan may look complete in a conference room and still feel unrealistic in a crowded hallway. An anonymous reporting tool may technically exist while students remain uncertain about who receives a report or what will happen afterward. A campaign may tell teenagers to speak up without addressing the social risks they believe come with doing so.
Without students in the discussion, adults are left to make assumptions about all of this.
The Legislature should amend Section 37.109 during its 2027 session to require at least one current secondary-school student on every district safety and security committee. The student could serve in a voting or advisory capacity, but the role should include regular access to the committee’s non-confidential work and a clear way to place recommendations before the committee. Larger districts should consider students from multiple campuses and grade levels.
There should be safeguards. Student members should receive appropriate training, understand their confidentiality obligations, and be excluded from discussions involving identifiable students, individual disability plans, or tactical information whose disclosure could create a security risk.
Confidentiality is a design problem, not a reason to exclude students from the entire process. Districts already distinguish between public discussion and executive sessions. They can determine which materials student members receive and excuse them from limited portions of meetings while still including them in broader work on drills, communication, campus climate, and reporting systems.
Selection matters, too. A district should not appoint its most visible student, take a photograph and call the work complete. It should publish the opportunity, explain the responsibilities, and select a student willing to gather perspectives beyond one campus or friend group.
The position should connect to a wider feedback loop. A student member could consult student councils, meet periodically with campus representatives, and bring recurring concerns to the committee. Afterward, the district should tell students which recommendations it considered, what action it took, and why.
That follow-through separates participation from symbolism. Institutions often say that they value student voice without explaining what students can influence or what happens after we speak. On school safety, the stakes are too high for a ceremonial seat.
Requiring student representation would not solve every school-safety problem in Texas. It would not compensate for broken locks, inadequate mental-health support, poor communication, or failures by adults entrusted with protecting children. It would make one part of the system better informed.
Texas already places real responsibility on students. We are told to report threats, follow emergency instructions, take drills seriously, and watch out for one another. If a crisis occurs, the quality of a district’s planning can determine what happens to us within seconds.
Students should never carry the primary burden of keeping schools safe. That responsibility belongs to the adults and institutions with the power, training, and resources to act. But if Texas expects students to provide the first warning, it should also let at least one of us into the room where adults decide what happens next.
The post Texas Tells Students to Report Threats. It Should Give Us a Seat at the Safety Table. appeared first on The Texas Observer.
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