School officials in Uvalde, Texas, promised to do everything they could to protect students from a mass shooting.
Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District had doubled its security budget in recent years, according to public documents, in part to comply with state legislation passed in the wake of a 2018 school shooting in which eight students and two teachers were killed.
The district adopted an array of security measures that included its own police force, threat assessment teams at each school, a threat reporting system, social media monitoring software, fences around schools and a requirement that teachers lock their classroom doors, according to the security plan posted on the district’s website.
The investigation remains in its early stages, and the school district has not answered questions about how its security plan was implemented. But the death toll suggests that even security plans that appear to be comprehensive and up to the latest research-based standards may have gaps and ultimately fall short of preventing the worst-case scenario, experts said.
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Authorities have not explained how the shooter got in the back door — or the classroom door, which according to the district’s security plan should have been locked.
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