HB33

HB33 requires schools and emergency agencies to prepare, coordinate, train and learn from responses to school shootings. The Uvalde Strong Act was signed June 20, 2025, and took effect September 1, 2025, with several later implementation deadlines. It is not a finding that any particular school or agency now complies. Final law; official history.

Schools and facilities. School districts must promptly review security when they construct, acquire, renovate or improve a facility, identifying vulnerabilities and mitigation strategies under state rules. The law extends this requirement to open-enrollment charter schools, adds security reviews to the existing three-year school-district and public-junior-college audit, and adds state education-agency monitoring. District and junior-college emergency plans must use standardized response terminology and address prompt restoration of services; covered higher-education institutions must also plan for restoring services. Each school-district and charter campus must have at least one breaching tool—a tool for forced entry—and ballistic shield available for an active-shooter incident. Sections 2–7.

Coordinated response. The Department of Public Safety (DPS) must consult sheriffs to identify governmental responders likely to attend a school-shooting incident. Those entities, sheriffs and DPS must collectively hold a tabletop exercise in each odd-numbered year and an in-person drill in each even-numbered year. Mutual-aid agreements must address shared resources, compatible communications, coordination, evidence collection and jurisdiction; the initial agreements were due January 1, 2026. Separately, sheriffs in every county with a public school must hold an annual school-safety meeting. Previously, that requirement applied only below 350,000 population and required two meetings annually. Attendance requirements differ above and below that population threshold. Sections 13–14, 20 and 25.

Learning after an incident. Responding local law-enforcement agencies and emergency-medical providers must submit a preliminary evaluation by day 45 and a final report by day 90, or as soon as practicable thereafter, to DPS, the Texas Division of Emergency Management (TDEM) and Texas State University’s Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center (ALERRT). Reports cover deployment, costs, logs, injuries and deaths, investigation status, response problems and improvements. Complying avoids a duplicate evaluation under the general post-disaster provision. Information TDEM or DPS obtains or creates under this provision is confidential, and the specified interagency meetings are exempt from open-meeting requirements; these are not promises of public after-action reports. The required incident definition follows the FBI’s active-shooter definition. Sections 8 and 11; FBI definition, first page.

Training and equipment. The law directs agency rules requiring school-incident response training for local peace officers and emergency-medical personnel, with findings from incident reports incorporated into training. ALERRT’s template and training program, TDEM’s emergency-medical program, and TDEM’s public community-preparedness guide were due December 1, 2025. Officer curriculum adds introductory incident-command and national incident-management courses; supervisors must take advanced response-and-command continuing education, without the specified second-in-command exemption. The curriculum change applies to officers first beginning those requirements on or after January 1, 2026; advanced continuing-education requirements apply to training units beginning on or after September 1, 2025. Law-enforcement minimum standards also add access to a breaching tool and ballistic shield and detailed school-incident policies; qualifying neighboring agencies may share protective equipment by agreement. Sections 8, 10–11, 16–19, 21–23 and 27–29.

Public communication and recovery. Municipalities, counties, independent school districts, charter schools, TDEM, DPS and the listed local law-enforcement offices must designate a public information officer; an existing chief administrator may fill that role. Certification is generally due within a year of appointment, followed by continuing education once each 12-month certification period. Officers already appointed before the law took effect had a September 1, 2026 deadline. TDEM sets requirements, and the entities covered by Section 418.332 must maintain and submit compliance records. The law also requires a first-responder mental-health resources plan, implementation by receiving local governments, and regional sharing. There is a drafting wrinkle: the permanent section assigns plan development to TDEM with health agencies, while Section 26 also directs councils of governments to develop a plan as soon as practicable. Both instructions remain in the enacted text; this review does not assume one cancels the other. Sections 9, 12, 15, 24 and 26.