HB121

HB121 updates Texas public-school safety requirements. It took effect September 1, 2025, and applies beginning with the 2025–26 school year. It does not itself raise the school-safety funding allotment. Final law; official history.

Security staffing exceptions must be revisited. A district’s good-cause exception from the armed-security requirement expires after one year; the board must reassess compliance and, if still necessary, renew both the exception and its alternative standard. For an employee or contractor serving under that alternative, HB121 permits a training route completed within 90 days of starting security duties, alongside the existing qualified-handgun-instructor school-safety route. The new route requires district-approved training developed with district police or local law enforcement: certified active-shooter response instruction, school safety and emergency management, crisis intervention, incident command, first aid, mental health and firearm qualifications. Written district authorization or regulations for carrying remain required. Separately, exceptions from school-facility safety standards expire after five years and require reassessment and renewal of an alternative performance standard.

Plans and emergency coordination become more specific. School and public junior-college emergency plans must address reunification after an emergency. The School Safety Center must notify superintendents and junior-college presidents of its additional requirements, developed with the education agencies; districts retain signed copies of safety-audit reports. School-district plans include safety-committee members and the previous year’s meeting dates. Districts and charter schools must give emergency-services districts serving their area campus maps, in addition to existing map and walk-through requirements for other responders. Sheriffs in counties below 350,000 people must hold school-safety meetings at least twice each calendar year, at least three months apart; one meeting may cover multiple districts or charter schools without requiring identical policies.

State oversight includes actual emergency responses. The Texas Education Agency may employ inspectors only to help monitor school safety requirements and coordinate with law enforcement during a district emergency. The law adds those inspectors to the peace-officer listing subject to those limits; it does not retain the earlier proposal’s broad commissioning language. TEA’s monitoring expressly includes districts’ responses and use of emergency procedures. By December 31 each year, TEA must report deidentified findings from the previous year’s vulnerability assessments and intruder-detection audits, with recommendations and possible corrective actions for recurring weaknesses. HB121 repeals the School Safety Center’s separate periodic progress-report requirement, not all school-safety reporting.

Threat assessments must account for the particular child’s disability. HB121 requires a special-education student’s assessment team to include at least one specified professional with specific knowledge of that student’s disability and how it appears: the student’s special-education teacher, a licensed behavior analyst, a licensed clinical or master social worker, or a licensed school-psychology specialist. HB6 separately added related language; the official compiled code displays both provisions. HB121 also makes the assessment team immediately attempt parent notification after finding a serious risk of violence, as well as report to the superintendent; it does not prevent immediate action against an imminent threat. Compiled Education Code, section 37.115; HB6, section 18.

Districts and charter schools must distribute safe-firearm-storage information to parents at least three times each school year. The School Safety Center board gains a public junior-college administrator while its general-public seats fall from three to two; the appointment deadline was February 1, 2026, not proof an appointment occurred. The law expressly allows safety-allotment spending on interior as well as exterior security upgrades, primary and secondary locks, and behavioral interventionists and other discipline-management practices. Safety-management personnel remain allowable; razor wire remains excluded.