AMARILLO, Texas (KVII) — How to further enhance safety for students and staff at a public-school campus is the focus of this year’s Region 16 School Safety Expo in Amarillo.
School administrators, along with school resource officers and those working in the law enforcement community, came here to a conference at Region 16 to discuss implementing new strategies that will further enhance safety and security at all campuses.
“School safety is very real, and the relevancy of it is that it takes everybody,” said Chris Homen, school safety specialist. “It takes administration nurses, counselors, law enforcement, everybody to keep schools safe.”
“We travel all over the country to use the expertise that we have from the behavioral threat assessment model that the Secret Service uses, which we adapt to communities across the country, whether it’s to keep schools safe or colleges and universities,” said Dr. Lina Alathari, chief of the Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center.
“Some of the things that we learned today are how to be better at our behavioral threat assessment systems that we have in place,” said Richard Kelley, superintendent at River Road ISD. “We want to make sure that we not only identify students who are struggling with issues but also have plans in place to assist those students.”
Despite numerous efforts to enhance safety and security, there were 233 shootings at school campuses in grades K-12 in the year 2025. So, what is going on that is driving this number up, and what are some of the warning signs that people need to look for?
“Unfortunately, in this day and age were constantly having to learn and put things together with different teammates, and this kind of opportunity is nice,” said Randy Tinsley, chief of Dalhart ISD Police Department.
“One of the things that we’re always going to be doing is finding new ways to implement new technologies and new programs to better take care of the outside of our schools and the inside of our schools,” said Kelley.
School administrators say campuses must build an emergency response plan that actually works during a crisis, which is why they practice it in the summer months before the bell rings in August.
The Texas School Safety Conference is June 22-26 in San Antonio at the Marriott Rivercenter.
Region 16 School Safety Expo brings Amarillo educators, police to share campus plans (KVII)
