DALLAS — Signs of brewing trouble stain the academic history of the young man who would go on to kill 19 children and two teachers in Texas’ deadliest school shooting.
State education officials are conducting a reverse “behavioral threat assessment” for the 18-year-old who carried out the Uvalde massacre, Commissioner Mike Morath told lawmakers this week. They want to identify what school officials knew about the student’s troubles — and when.
“We have begun a review process of every aspect of the student’s educational history,” Morath said. The Texas Education Agency will provide “all of the information, sort of lessons learned, in order to improve the ability to train school systems around the state on recognizing and intervening.”
While the report isn’t expected to be complete for several more weeks, some key issues have already emerged, including that the shooter often missed school, becoming chronically absent in sixth grade.
This fact triggered a renewed focus from lawmakers on absenteeism and Texas’ truancy laws.
The Legislature reformed the truancy system less than a decade ago in response to widespread concerns that the state was criminalizing children, particularly those from poor families.
Previously, Texas children and teenagers who missed too much school could face steep fines and, in some cases, jail time. Advocates said that strengthened the school-to-prison pipeline.
Some senators indicated during a marathon hearing on Tuesday that lawmakers may have an appetite to revisit how Texas addresses students who skip school.
To be sure, the overwhelming majority of truant students do not become school shooters. But some lawmakers said at the hearing that the shooter’s absenteeism in Uvalde should have been one of many signals that officials needed to act.
“The more we’re finding out, there were certainly signals along the way for this latest, terrible tragedy,” Sen. Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood, said. “Truancy is one.”
Taylor, who has previously chaired the education committee, acknowledged that some people had been concerned about Texas’ over-reliance on the punitive truancy system when the reforms took place in 2015 that stripped away criminal charges. But bringing it back up for discussion is worth consideration, he said.
“It was working. You took away the teeth to truancy,” said Taylor, who opposed the reforms at the time.
After Tuesday’s hearing, he said in an interview that parents should face pressure if their children aren’t in school.
“Maybe there were some areas where it wasn’t being done well, but you could do a better job of crafting a law that limited abuses rather than just take it away completely,” he said.
Texas’ previous system ensnared huge numbers of families. In 2013, for example, more than 115,000 criminal truancy complaints were filed in Texas, according to the nonprofit Texas Appleseed, which studied the issue.
Children faced truancy charges in adult criminal courts, oftentimes with no legal representation. The U.S. Department of Justice launched an investigation seven years ago into whether Dallas County courts violated Constitutionally-required due process to children charged with the criminal offense of failure to attend school.
“The theory is that the threat of punishment will incentivize attendance,” Nathan Hecht, chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court, wrote at the time. “But when almost 100,000 criminal truancy charges are brought each year against Texas schoolchildren, one has to think, this approach may not be working.”
These days, districts are required to implement truancy prevention measures to minimize the need for court referrals. After a student misses a certain number of days, school officials are supposed to send a letter to the parent scheduling a meeting and then develop a plan of action, which can include intervention such as sending the student to counseling, community service or mentoring.
If a student continues to miss school regularly, the child or the parents still can be referred to truancy court, where a judge may assess fines.
Morath told lawmakers that he has heard from some superintendents that the current law presents challenges.
“There was some difficulty before COVID began. There has been gargantuan difficulty since COVID happened,” he said. “This was a common source of complaints I’d hear from school system leaders attempting to enforce truancy-related provisions.”
Attendance Works, a national advocacy group, encouraged school districts to use alternatives to legal action when setting their attendance policies amid the ongoing pandemic.
“Punitive actions disproportionately impact students based on race, class, disability and poverty, do not solve the barriers to attendance, and can be especially harmful in this moment of crisis,” the group wrote last year.
While it became more rare, some school districts are still filing truancy complaints.
Andrew Hairston, with Texas Appleseed, said social justice advocates are worried after the hearing that some of the changes to the truancy system could be targeted in the upcoming session.
“It would be a grave mistake to walk back the truancy reforms that were enacted,” he said.
After the Santa Fe school shooting in 2018, Texas mandated that school systems create threat assessment teams for each of their campuses, tasked with identifying students who make threats of violence and providing guidance on possible interventions for those students.
Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, asked Morath if missing so much school should be a marker for a school threat assessment.
“Any kind of ongoing absenteeism, it’s not necessarily that I would call it threat assessment,” Morath said. “The safe and supportive team should notice that and then begin the process of intervening.”
Lawmakers are diving into various aspects of the tragedy in Uvalde as Gov. Greg Abbott wants them to bring back recommendations on how to make schools safer. Also up for debate: Hardening campuses and arming more teachers. Discussions have rarely involved tightening gun laws, though Abbott has said firearm safety is an issue legislators should also examine.
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(The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas.
The DMN Education Lab is a community-funded journalism initiative, with support from The Beck Group, Bobby and Lottye Lyle, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Garrett and Cecilia Boone, The Meadows Foundation, The Murrell Foundation, Solutions Journalism Network, Southern Methodist University, Todd A. Williams Family Foundation and the University of Texas at Dallas. The Dallas Morning News retains full editorial control of the Education Lab’s journalism.)
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