A Safer Tomorrow: Unifying School Security Approaches Across the Nation

Welcome to the secure podcast on Mike Matranga. Coming to you from the ASAP security studios here in Houston, Texas. Today, we have Marshall Kaplan with us. Marshall is recently retired from the k twelve industry as a, assistant principal and administrator at Humble ISD. And, who oversaw the safety and security of his campus. And he is now currently a Senior Security Consultant for M6 Global Defense. How are you doing? Doing awesome. Good. Thank you. Good. Good. Happy to have you. Thanks for being here with us. So you just retired from the k twelve space. How's that feel? That was awesome. That was great. Love her. Care to elaborate why? Yeah. I was in the industry for twenty nine years. I was an administrator for sixteen, and I was always over safety and security. When I first started education, my passion was curriculum. K. But then as I got to be more familiar with the space, I realized that I had more of a passion in operations, which then evolved in a safety and security, and that's where my expertise grew. Right. I thought, you know what? I really need to focus on on what really, you know, just jazzes me up. Right. And I got away from the big picture of education and now focusing on safety and security of education. Gotcha. So sixteen years, you kind of oversaw the, or you did oversee the security was it humble ISD in general or or your particular campus? I've been in South I was in South Africa for five years. I was in Conroe for a few years. K. I was only an unbowed the last three years. So for sixteen years, you've kinda seen this evolution of school security, unfortunately due to tragic events only in the state of Texas, but over the United States. Over the last sixteen years, do you feel like we've accomplished a whole lot? And you know, the goods, the bads, the ugly. What are your thoughts on that over the last sixteen years? I feel like we're chasing our tail. I don't think we've really nailed it yet. We've been reactive to each scenario. Mhmm. But different things keep happening. Right. So I think we need a more proactive approach, a more holistic approach to try to prevent these things from happening in the first place. Do you feel like not only in the state of Texas, but just in general, there needs to be some type of standardization you know, if you go to, multiple different states, they have, you know, let's say, in Texas, we have the Texas school safety center, other States have, you know, resource centers as well. And then you have, you know, past K twelve, which you know, we we absolutely love past K twelve, but, you know, everybody seems to have a best practice. Mhmm. And they're not always the same. They're not always consistent. How do you feel about there being some type of basic standardization and requirement throughout the United States. Do you think that that would be beneficial? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And it's not just in safety. It's all of education. If you look at curriculums going back to that again. Not only is it inconsistent from state, the state, and district to district, it's even con inconsistent from school to school. Uh-huh. We don't even see a standardized practice of safety within the same school district. How do you feel, like, or do you feel like parents are aware of the inconsistencies? No. Yeah. I always say that too, you know, being a former administrator, secret service, then administrator in the k twelve space, and then jumping over into the school board arena as a school board member. I've always said that the power truly lies in the parents. If the parents were aware of the inconsistencies and of you know, how schools are just essentially chasing their tail, whether it be in curriculum or whether it be in you know, security or HR practices or whatnot. I think parents would be extremely upset. Yeah. And so how do we get Not just from the k twelve security space, but how do we get parents more engaged? For number one, to be more vulnerable with them, more authentic with them, to let them know what's really going on, instead of just trying to please parents with telling them what they wanna hear. Right. But to actually let them know what the troubles are, what the challenges are, Yeah. You know, I agree with you. I've always said, you know, let's let's not hold anything back. Let's be open. Let's be honest. Let's tell them the truth and then let's work on a solution together. But one of the things that that I have seen in my time is that schools operate essentially like a business. Right? Your business is your brand or your brand is your business and your decides your success. And I have not been surprised at all to see that a lot of the things that we've discovered through testimony with noncompliance of security mandates or, you know, you can list it all out. A lot of that stuff is not shared publicly, and that's by design because it affects the brand. Right. You know, I've always said that schools need to be held to a higher standard just like law enforcement is in regards to keeping people safe. We saw last year after the Evaldi shooting, myself, director McGraw from the Texas Department of Public Safety, TEA Commissioner Mike Marath, and the, director of the Texas School Safety Center, Kathy Martinez Prather, or doctor Kathy Martinez Prather, testified, and it was determined that you know, three years after the law had been passed in two thousand nineteen where schools were required to do an audit, you know, less than ten per percent, really less than eight percent were compliant. Wow. With the state, this was discovered after twenty one more additional bodies had perished where individuals and innocent souls had perished. And we're now fourteen, fifteen months in. And there really has not been much movement on compliance. And no one seems to care. We've had off the record conversations with individuals that are in high positions that oversee this stuff that has told us flat out. We don't wanna see the data because if we've missed something and we don't afford it, then we're we're negligent. We're held liable. That's complete trash. Mhmm. And I wish that the parents knew that. Yeah. You know? And so What are your thoughts on how do we successfully engage those parents? I mean, I know I just asked you that same question, but is it a is it a matter of information not being shared on purpose or is it there's not a a direct means to report these these things to these parents or to engage these parents, there has to be some type of break here. Right? We've gotta get some type of breather. Where people are starting to engage their school boards and their administrators. How do we do that? Well, you just said yourself that they're afraid that they don't want the data to get out because then we'll be negligent. Mhmm. Parents have to be provided the data. I'm I'm just blown away to hear that only eight percent of the districts in the state were compliant. Mhmm. And they have three year window to get those orders done. But if there's not gonna be any accountability, then they're not gonna do it. Yeah. And so that that information needs to be sent out to parents. That, I'm sitting here thinking if we make it a requirement of the district to share this with your parents, they're obviously not gonna do it because they're not held accountable anyway. Mhmm. So it has to come from higher up. The same people who are saying you have to make sure you get these audits done. Also have to be saying to the communities, to the school district's parents, this is what your school district did or didn't Yeah. Well, that's actually supposed to happen. So in senate bill eleven, the bill that we're discussing that requires the audits if the school is not compliant with their audit process, they're supposed to have x amount of time to rectify that or at least report it. And then you know, get that somewhat, accountable, right, accounted for. And then if not, then they're supposed to have public meeting, school board is supposed to have a public meeting to answer why they didn't. And then if they still are not compliant and they still have not done what they need to do, then that's when the governing body or regulatory agency, which is Texas education agency is supposed to step in and and they can remove that school board and that superintendent. But, you know, we just talked about last last year, it was discovered in that testimony that wanna say it was roughly a hundred and ninety, two hundred, districts out of almost twelve hundred. Actually submitted their their report during that three three year cycle or audits. And, let me ask you a question. How many of those, roughly a thousand nine hundred do you think were reprimanded by TEA. Zero. One. One. Yeah. The general public does not know this. Parents do not know this. Right? But they should. And I think that's the bigger issue. So let's switch gears just a little bit. One of the things that I always talk about when I testify or when I talk to parents or present or whatnot is that, you know, we look at law enforcement response or whether it be educators or politicians. They seem to lean heavily on the law enforcement response. You go to any security conference or educate conferences. It's always an officer in there talking about, you know, you know, standard response protocol, reunification, law enforcement response, tactical training, all this stuff. Right? And I've always said that though we we need law enforcement on our campuses, so what I'll say is is that very few times has law enforcement response ever made a difference. Mhmm. You know, we always talk about needing to establish command and the, you know, the incident command structure, then the, you know, standard response protocol. I love you guys reunith education. No school has ever really deployed that. There's always a plan there, but it's never been successfully done because the incident happened so fast. You're looking at between a minute to twelve minutes. Or in Yevalde's case, seventy seven minutes. And command was still never established. Mhmm. Let's talk about emergency operations plans. How effective are they? They're not used. It's it's a book that most people don't look at. Right. We need emergency action plans. K. Not emergency operation plans. Right. And emergency action plans being specific to that particular campus. Exactly. Those particular administrators, understanding their climate, their culture, their, facility from a structural perspective, from a terrain perspective, which is why you need an expert agency to come in and tailor fit what each campus needs. Technically, whatever it is, instead of an, a biased internal group of people from the school district, who are going and doing a cookie cutter for every campus in our district. If you It doesn't work that way. If you grade your own paper, how many times are you gonna fail? Yeah. Exactly. Right. You know, as a as a former school board member myself, you know, I always promoted us having a third party audit though the state allows school districts to conduct their own audit, when we help or when I help Senator Larry Taylor write that bill, the initial bill stated that it had to be a third party because not having a third party just opens up the district to liability it opens up the district to, potential claims of, conflicts of interests, or, you know, hiding things, sweeping things under the rug. And, I never wanted to be accused of any of that. And so we always promoted a third party. I know there's a lot of districts that that don't. They do their own. I would say that they're increasing their liability by doing their own. And how qualified are they to do it in the first place? Right. How qualified are they? I mean, they took a class and took a couple online classes. Yeah. You know, with our team at M6 Global with you joining here, you know, we've got five hundred plus years of experience at the highest level. And we believe in a holistic team. We believe in a very diversified team. You know, we've got security professionals. We have former educators like yourself. We have former administrative educators, superintendents, psychologists, counselors, behavioral threat assessment, individuals So when we do a complete analysis or an audit of your your campus or your district, we're looking at it from multiple different angles, not just you know, your your critical infrastructure, your your physical infrastructure, it goes well beyond that. And so, real quick. One of the things that I always talk about as well is and people seem to be puzzled. And, let's say it umbilized the What what student database did y'all use? Skyward? Ejuphoria. Ejuphoria. Okay. In Ejuphoria, you have all your discipline data. Correct? Right. K. In that discipline data, you have a plethora of information at your disposal to determine, you know, who is more likely to harm themselves or someone else. Correct? Right. Why do you think it is that we have all of this data, whether it be Skyward or Egeforia or x, y, and z student database Why do you think it is that we are not taking that data, breaking that down, analyzing that, and then determining you know, who needs to be seen by a medical professional or a mental health counselor in order to prevent them from hurting themself or or someone else because, you know, what we see in the school security space, everyone wants to talk about active shootings. Because it feels good because it gets the media's attention. But no one wants to talk about the reality. And the reality is is that we are more likely to have a kid who wants to commit suicide -- Mhmm. -- or a kid who's showing those precursors to suicide by cutting themselves or, you know, some type of, self mutilation. Why are we not focusing on that? Mean, everything that we need to know about the next kid who wants to hurt themselves or someone else, we have that data. Yeah. Why do you think that is? Multiple reasons, resources, time, and staff. Accountability or versus negligence. If you really started digging and identifying everybody that you needed to identify, it would be more than we are qualified to handle. And then even if you if it was a smaller amount, and you identify the kids that need the behavioral threat assessments. The trainings that are provided for school districts to do the behavioral behavioral threat assessments are just surface level. Yep. So they're not able to really say this is what's wrong with kid and this is the, intervention plan that we need to put in place for him. There might be an out risk counselor on your campus who was slightly more call qualified than, student counselor. Oh. Yeah. To help with an intervention plan, but most campuses don't have that. Right. And the most counselors aren't expertise don't have the enough expertise to do it. Right. Most school counselors and my hats go out to them and my heart goes out to them, they're inundated with scheduling. Mhmm. And not able to focus on the kids that actually need counseling. So with that said, and we'll start wrapping up here pretty soon. With that said, in the eighty eighth legislation, governor Abbott, mandated that every school to include elementary campuses in the state of Texas starting September first should have a armed law enforcement officer or an armed licensed security officer on campus. Yeah. What do you say to that? From a funding perspective, from a a manpower perspective, from a, proactive and and preventative perspective, do you think that the governor in the eighty eighth legislation's priorities were were out of line? I think so. It could be a deterrent in an upper, you know, middle school and high school. But I'm just learning about the fact that there's a requirement for an SRO to be on a elementary school. I'd much rather see you take that money and instead of being reactive, actually be proactive, and that's not with an armed officer, but put that money into an at risk counselor. Right. You can do this threat assessment. Oh, I absolutely say it. I think that the decision was politically motivated. Mhmm. You know, campaign season rolls around. It gives the governor the ability to say, hey, we put a armed officer on every campus when in reality, you didn't. Because you didn't fund the schools properly. Mhmm. And now you're putting the onus on the schools and the taxpayers to be able to pay for that, at the at the expense of your political agenda. It it frustrates me. It frustrates me that myself and multiple other subject matter experts and individuals much smarter than I. From a behavioral health perspective have said the key to stopping this is preventive. It's not reactive. Right? And I'm not saying that we shouldn't have officers on campus, but they should not be priority number one. That's right. They should absolutely not be priority number one. Culture and climate, empowering the staff that's there, training them to a certain standard, having a full scale behavioral threat assessment, process and then a management plan to build out those IEPs for those kids, something that's analyzing that data on a daily basis, removing race so that no one could ever say that you're profiling a child, that you're simply looking for behavior, you know, all of those things would be my priority. And then, you know, yes, let's put somebody there with a weapon to protect the kids. You know, let's put put a sheepdog there. But even then there is some hurdles, that we're seeing in the law enforcement or in the school based law enforcement space where, you know, law enforcement officers are there to enforce the law. School educators need their need them there to improve culture and climate, and also help with administrative tasks and duties related to school security, but then you have this argument that, you know, law enforcement officers are working outside of their scope of employment And so it's a it's a very delicate balance. And so, I was happy to hear you say that, you know, it wasn't that you thought that the priorities were No. We're not right. You know? And at the end of the day, as we said earlier, to share information with the community. Right. If the community saw that the school district is actually putting an emphasis on a proactive report re approach to safety and security that would actually gain loyalty and trust from the community. Mhmm. I think the the districts are just so scared of what they might think and say if they found out. Right. When in actuality, I know as a parent and a community member, yeah, I would have much more trust in my administration and my school district. One of the other issues that no one wants talk about. It's just like teacher shortages. Mhmm. There's there's such a teacher shortage in all fifty states. Right. There's a law enforcement shortage as well. How are we going to put an officer on every campus in the state of Texas? Where are they going to come from? Mhmm. You know? But the governor can sit back and say that that's what they did, that they they mandated that. Yeah. You know, and I've said that before to the to our legislation is that your guys are good at creating laws. You're not good at developing a process nor funding it. And so, you know, I'm not afraid to say that. I said it. I don't take it back. I'm not apologizing for it. That's the truth. Because here's the deal. The the this individual schools are now stuck. Holding that bag. Yeah. And, you know, fifteen thousand dollars per campus, twenty eight cents additional allocation, to kids. It's not enough. It's not enough. I was watching an interview yesterday where School District in North Texas, the the superintendent said, they don't know where they're gonna need the money from. They need an additional two hundred fifty thousand dollars just to staff that. Right. And that's one district a smaller district. You know, you've got two hundred and eighty three schools and Houston ISD alone. Two hundred and eighty three schools. Now that requires two eighty three officers. It's just not feasible. They don't exist. Doesn't exist. So you know, it's like everything else. It's a it's a good idea, but, that's all that is. So Well, thanks for, joining us any, last minute things. Yeah. We're just gonna pray for the best. Pray for the best. I appreciate it. Thank you. Alright. Thanks.