SB865

SB865, the Landon Payton Act, expands school CPR certification and requires more detailed cardiac-emergency response plans. It was signed and took effect June 20, 2025. It applies beginning with the 2025–2026 school year, but the new response plans have a separate implementation deadline: the first instructional day of 2027–2028. Final act and timing provisions; History.

School nurses and assistant nurses, athletic coaches or sponsors, physical-education instructors, marching-band directors, cheerleading coaches, other employees designated by the education commissioner, and student athletic trainers must receive and maintain certification in both cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and automated external defibrillator (AED) use. Certification must come from the American Heart Association, American Red Cross or a similar nationally recognized association. The previous specified-personnel requirement covered AED instruction and certification; SB865 adds CPR. It is not a new certification mandate for every student or every volunteer. Section 2; Prior training law.

Open-enrollment charter schools and private schools receiving an AED or purchase/lease funding from the Texas Education Agency must adopt the required training policy, making instruction available to school employees and volunteer nurses and meeting the specified-personnel requirements. The private-school funding/device condition remains; the final bill does not impose this provision on every private school. The district rule making instruction available to employees and volunteers is otherwise unchanged. Amended Section 22.902(e); Retained district provision.

The response-plan requirement covers school districts and the private schools meeting that same agency-AED/funding condition. Open-enrollment charter schools are also subject to Chapter 38 health-and-safety requirements through existing law. Plans must be developed directly with local emergency-service providers, fit their protocols and incorporate evidence-based practices from a nationally recognized organization focused on emergency cardiovascular care. Amended Section 38.018; Charter-school applicability, Section 12.104(b)(3)(K).

At minimum, a plan must establish a response team and activation procedures, circulate the plan throughout campuses, provide ongoing evidence-based first-aid/CPR/AED training for appropriate staff, conduct annual practice drills, and undergo annual review, evaluation and needed modification. It addresses cardiac-arrest emergencies on school grounds. The earlier general safety-procedure requirement is replaced with these specified elements; the law does not itself certify that a school has implemented them or guarantee a medical outcome. Plan requirements and 2027–2028 deadline; Prior safety-procedure rule.