AUSTIN, Texas — Dallas ISD's next superintendent, Dr. Stephanie Elizalde, has seen it all -- anything and everything over her more than three decades of being an educator.
And Elizalde says these days, she never stops thinking about school safety.
“It consumes all of our day. And it consumes all of our nights,” Elizalde said on Inside Texas Politics.
In the aftermath of the Uvalde massacre, Texas leaders have put forward a number of proposals to secure our schools.
Some Republicans, including U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, have pushed for a single entrance at schools.
The current Austin ISD superintendent says that would be a logistical nightmare and says just think about the TSA waits at an airport.
“So, imagine then, you know, I've got a high school here in Austin, let's say Bowie High School. There's 3,500 students. One entrance for 3,500 students? What time am I going to start school,” the superintendent asked out loud. “And again, to me these seem very reactive. This is about what do we do after the fact.”
Watch the segment below:
Arming teachers isn’t the way to go either, she told Inside Texas Politics.
Elizalde and many other educators say having a weapon around students, particularly as they’re going through puberty, is just dangerous.
“So, I think back to times when students that are teenagers and haven't matured and have had outbursts. And I think what if they had had access to a gun that was on my hip as I was a classroom teacher,” she mused.
"You know, you think about these things having spent 35 years in public education. And there is not one scenario right now that I could say putting a gun on my hip would make me feel safer or would make me feel safer as a superintendent in the school districts that I serve," she added.
