What Do Educators Need to Know About Texas House Bill 13?

Welcome to the Secure Ed podcast. I'm Mike Matranga. With Mike Monson. Mike Monson, owner of ASAP Security Services. We're in the ASAP Security Studio. And today, we're gonna talk to you about House Bill team, which is being proposed in this Texas legislature, the eighty eight legislation, which currently comes to a conclusion in about two weeks. And so one of the things that we wanna talk to you today about is, house bill thirteen, which is also known as the Sentinel bill. For those of you that don't know, there's a bill, that is being proposed in the Texas house that would, essentially grant twenty five thousand dollars as a stipend to educators who wanted to carry a weapon on campus. This is a controversial topic that I think that we need to discuss openly and honestly. And without politics, being involved. Mike, you're aware of the Houseville thirteen. Twenty five thousand dollars stipend for Texas educators to carry a weapon. What are your thoughts on that? The intent to try to provide firepower to fight firepower in general is a good idea. Right? However, teachers are not the the right way to do that. Our teachers are already underpaid. Right? And, So the twenty five thousand dollars stipend is attractive to a lot of people. And we may actually have people who have never had firearms before. Maybe the significant other is familiar with firearms. Maybe they've, you know, deer hunted or bird hunted or something like that. And so that, you know, you could just go and get a gun, go to the range, practice, and that all of a sudden now you're you're competent to carry a gun. One of the things that I think really puts this into perspective, for me is the classes that you've how recently, right? Where, it was actually a course that you put together, at a dojo or karate place that had specialists -- Right. -- for weapons retention. Uh-huh. And I think the eye opening, part of that was the people who went there who are proficient with firearms, who carry firearms every single day, how easy it was to take a weapon. From that individual. Right? And these are trained professionals. Yeah. So what you're talking about is a class that we held, the M6 Global and, condition one combat center in the Woodland Texas with, instructors, Matt Smith, who's very well versed in, jujitsu, weapons retention. He helped write some of the curriculum for the United States's army. And then Joe Morris, who's the owner of condition one combat, good friend of ours. We we hold a lot of these trainings through their location, I guess, I should say, because I trust them. I know what what experience that they have. And, yeah, you're right. I mean, A lot of the people that were in these classes, that we held were very proficient with weapons. Some of them carry weapons as a professional on a daily basis. And we were able to see how somebody who who doesn't carry a weapon -- Right. -- every single day was able to take the weapon away -- Correct. -- consistently. Correct. And that's the thing I think that, you know, is interfering with the judgment of some of our legislators is that they think that, you know, just simply by carrying a weapon that that makes someone proficient or going through an eight hour class or even a sixteen hour class if you've got the Guardian program or let's say the Marshall's program, which is, you know, T Cole sponsored. You've got eighty hours. You can add additional hours. You know, what I'll tell you, is that any professional in this space, tactical operations, law enforcement. You know, I'm a former counter assault team member for the presidential detail. It takes a minimum of a hundred hours on an annual basis to become proficient. That's proficiency. That's not necessarily being an expert at anything. And so You tell me where we're gonna have teachers who are already overworked, underpaid, underappreciated, that are, you know, being required to stay over for duty or, you know, work through their lunch period or -- Work days. -- teacher work days. Summer in session. Where are we gonna be able to get them a minimum of a hundred hours to make them proficient in carrying a weapon? I think that A lot of times people who are making these rules, have never been in a life and death situation. Right. And, you know, I I vividly remember being in a couple of situations, where there was cause for me to to draw a firearm, to protect my family. Right? And, after the event was over, you know, we were able to to, get out of harm's way and and, get through that situation. But after that event, you know, the thing that runs through your head is what if what if I had to have done that? What if these types of things and you find yourself, I guess, analyzing the situation, like, every micro detail of what else could you have done, is there some other way? And, you know, the the emotions involved with this the the the the the legality of whether, you know, it's justified or not justified, being able to separate emotion out of the situation that's difficult for our own professionals. Right? I mean, for for train professionals day in and day out. Right? They are, having that fight for life adrenaline situation and when it's forced justified if it is not. Right? Let me ask you this. And, you know, I've said this a bunch, you know, in the times in my career where I've had to draw my weapon, and I think the same can be said for, you know, military, other law enforcement, civilians that have had to draw their weapons in a real life scenario, what was your body's physiological response to that? How did you respond? Sluggish. Right? That's right. I could put it is that, things that you practiced that were, you know, absolutely perfection and practice. And I say perfection perfection for me. Right. You could always It's all relative. It's all relative. Right. But things that you were able to do over and over again, it, you know, repetitively with with accuracy everything was very sluggish as far as, how how your body operated, how how things work, and you're not only trying to process everything that's going on, but the scene. In my in my own personal situation, it was very, very chaotic. So throwing into it very quickly and knew that our life was in danger. And I I had to do something to protect it and we worked to get ourselves out of that situation. Yeah. And we're able to. And so, you know, thinking about that in a school is is is one thing about being able to handle that. Being able to be put into those situations and training over and over and over again. I mean, you and I talk about already people and schools having emergency plans and them not practicing it enough. Right? Right. This just becomes another one of those things that, okay, I went to the range. I went and I did this, and I put it back in there. And now I've been carrying this in my purse or on my person, and I haven't touched it. And it's full of lint. It isn't properly maintained. It's, isn't oiled. You know, the spring on the, clip is getting wore out because it's been constantly loaded and hasn't ever had It's got geckos down in there because you've had it in your purse Absolutely. It's or it's got lotion on it. Yeah. It's got whatever. Right? And all of these things are real. And, you put it in that situation. It's extremely hard to to think that we're gonna get positive result out of that. Yeah. I I think, you know, I mean, listen, I wanna be clear. In no way are we saying that that it that no teachers or educators should carry a weapon. Correct. Because what we do know is that in some instances, that arm teacher may be your first line of defense. You know, we know that Texas is a massive state. You know, we've been in districts in far west Texas. Or even in East Texas, that or Central Texas just in in general. Even in in major rural area I mean, major, metropolitan areas as you stretch further and further out. Right. From the city's epicenter, the response time is -- Yep. -- is crazy. I mean, we were at a a commercial facility. Oh, yeah. And the best possible response time was what? Twenty Twenty and twenty seven minutes. Yeah. And And that was gonna be a single officer. Right. And in that situation, that was a really port important facility. And to think that that's the kind of response, That's why it's so important to have you and I come in and look at how the protective facility is every single facility is different. It's different. Right. There's no blanket approach, and I think that's that's kinda what our legislature whether it be state or or at the federal level is attempting to do is let's create a blanket approach, and I I do believe there should be some things that are standard you know, camera systems, access control, mass notification, behavioral threat analysis, whatnot, but when Well, they're they're standards for fire alarm. They're standards for Canada Solutions. They're standards for critical infrastructure. Right? Why do we have standards for all of these things, but we don't have them? For security. You know, I both know we sat with a a US congressman's chief of staff here just a couple weeks ago -- Right. -- walked out of that very frustrated, because it appears that the the federal government, doesn't want to have a basic standard for schools just like they did for fire alarms in schools and for other buildings. I would take it a step further than that. It's not the risk and the liability. Right? Then when it flows down to the state, the state, has a whole bunch of entities and people who basically are hands off. And so we have legislators who are out actually trying to pass laws with good intent. I I honestly believe that I think that there are some some really good legislation that's out there. I think that there's a bunch of nonsense. I mean, when you look at the amount of education related bills, that are actually being considered have been discussed time, effort, energy for people writing it, focus has been applied to it. Absolutely nonsense. We have so much other things that need to be done. And we're worried about hurting somebody's feeling or celebrating some type of event or some type of person with a ear in this, and let's give them a a statewide day. And how many of those bills did we What was the what was the one we reviewed the other day that was statewide day for something. There was a bunch of there was, like, counselor day, and there was, SRO day, and there was administrator day. And that all feels good. It But at the end of the day, what is that? It's not solving anything. Well, we have so much more business to do than doing that. Right? Like, kids are dying. Teachers are getting shot. But are underpaid under under But our page representatives are are focusing on that. Even saying that there is some decent legislation out there. There are things that they're talking about. But are they getting the priority over this such and such day? I I don't I don't see it. Well, I think the problem is is that, you know, we've got legislators that are you know, focused on political agenda and promoting political party, over protecting people. And when I talk about protecting people, I'm saying everybody, all people, you know, were texans, were Americans, But I think that the way we view people is not the same that they view people. And a lot of these people will say that no, we represent everyone, but when you look at their legislative efforts, they're representing their party and their base. And so one of the ones in particular is this house bill thirteen that we're talking about you know, teachers carrying weapons, the sentinel program, twenty five thousand dollars as a stipend to encourage teachers to wanna carry a weapon to me, that's an insult, the teachers. If we have twenty five thousand dollars to pay teachers to carry a weapon, we have twenty five thousand dollars to invest into things like behavioral health, mental health counseling, increased teacher pay. That would that would, really boast, you know, morale. My wife's been a an educator for twenty four years now. You know, she's got a master's degree, principal certification, all over special education certifications. She teaches dyslexia, she makes sixty four thousand dollars a year. And some people will say, well, yeah, you know, that she gets three months off in the summer. Right. But at the end of the day, she's educating America's kids. Right? And so, you know, we wanna get serious about this. Let's stop looking at political narratives pushing, you know, things like this sentinel program and house bill thirteen. You know, it's all you have to do is get just dig down into the details. If you look at it, those that are pushing things like carrying weapons, teachers carrying weapons, they're always Republicans. Well, you know, Republicans have a history with the NRA promoting the second amendment. I wanna be clear. I am a avid second amendment -- Absolutely. -- person. Alright? I support the second amendment amendment wholeheartedly But what I do know is that we have to be responsible. Part of being, a gun owner, is that we're responsible gun owners. Absolutely. And we have to understand that we do have a crisis in America when it comes to guns. I get this question all the time. Do we have a mental health problem or a gun problem in Texas or in the United States? Right. And you know what my answer is? We have both. We have both because we have people that don't wanna accept the fact that we are living in a sick society that we are growing more violent every day. That these things that we're seeing on a more frequent base are not going to be receding. In fact, I think there's gonna be more volume of these attacks in our shopping malls, in our grocery stores, in our schools, in our places of business, our places of worship. And so Well, but, you know, I think it the elephant in the room that we haven't even discussed about yet is, not just weapons retention, but actually, keeping track of the weapon. Right? We've already seen in Texas, super intentional. Just a couple days. You get they're, like, couple weeks ago. Right? They left his gun in the bathroom. Right? It was found by a student. This is somebody who, was familiar with weapons had the approval and all the necessary things to carry a weapon on campus. But this isn't actually unique to individuals. I mean, professionals have done this. Right? It it is something that you have to be hyper aware of Now we throw that into a teacher and a teacher, you know, can't necessarily carry, with the clothing that they're wearing. Right? Or their profession, whatever it may be, may be very active, and weapon falls out. Right? Or, you know, they think that, they're gonna be able to keep it in a purse or a bag or in their desk. Right? Those types of things, you know, become a problem. Right? Because now we've already seen where, just a couple weeks ago, we had a, assistant principal here at, Houston School, that was trying to break up a fight in the entire, grade grade level was in, I think, it was a ninth grade glass. Oh. Stumped her. Right? That she was trying to do her right the right thing and separate the kids. And instead of kids trying to help her or whatever, the entire crowd started attacking her. Mhmm. And stomped her to the point that she had was in critical condition and had to be taken away to a hospital. And was that put a weapon in that scenario. Yeah. Now we have a weapon. She's a she's a gun carrier. Right. What happens then? That's a that's my point, right, is you know, it's not just weapons retention. It's this mob mentality that that's out there as well. And now now there's a gun in that situation. We already have you know, adrenaline and and emotion super high because of fights going on. And currently, there's no weapon in this scenario, and now you've entered a weapon. So let's let's just put a couple things into perspective that probably our legislators, legislators are not thinking about. The same scenario, she's got a gun. Let's replace that with an SRO. SRO is a licensed law enforcement officer who has the right and authorization to defend themselves. If they're being stomped by fifteen people that he or she has a right to use deadly force, if they feel it's necessary. Right? If there's gonna be, you know, loss of life or limb. Right? Essentially, you know, significant bodily injury. Which, let's be clear. That could have happened in this scenario. Well, but does the same thing apply to these teachers, these sentinels? Do they have the ability to defend themselves in the event that they are attacked? Because The intent of the bill is that they defend others. How many times have we sat with a school and had the conversation about insurance and liability. Like, if we would do this, could what is the liability on this? Can we get in assurance for it. What if this person who's carrying a weapon, you know, does end up taking a life or or not. And, you know, as we have seen from Uvalde, right, the families from Uvalde suit everybody. Like, I'm I mean, the the down to well, I agree to disagree on some of that. Right? So the the manufacturers of a door in a door frame. Yeah. Maybe not that. But a general contractor. Think about those responsible. The company who put the door in the, you know, on and on and on and on every single solitary person and and and the reality is is I think there's just lawyers. Right? They they wanna get everybody they could possibly get in a room and see how much money they could get out of the out of the whole scenario, which which is also wrong. Right? Hold the people accountable who need to be held accountable. You know, the Blake lawsuits across the board, I I don't I don't necessarily agree with that. Right? But I it's a legal strategy, and I I understand it. It's just not necessarily No. I I I understand the legal strategy, but, I mean, we know that there people that were involved there that had or were designated to be in charge and have the had the authority to make certain decisions that were not made Those people absolutely should be held responsible. One hundred percent agree. One hundred percent agree. And I wanna be clear on that. I do I do agree on that. And, you know, even, you know, the the processes and and making sure that things were inspected. Right? We talked about compliance and And, you know, you and I have created a tool specifically to give transparency to compliance so that we can't ever have someone why I didn't know. For the whole state. Right. And yet, it seems like it's an uphill battle for us to get it accepted. So Well, this is We'll see a circle's back full circle back to the legislators. Right? The legislator starts off. They have, you know, good intent, and they pass along that maybe, you know, resolves an issue. And then that is then handed down to some type of administrative body and the administrative body similar to the schools who are concerned about liability, put their hands up and go, no, no, no, no, we don't wanna do this. Well, perfect example is after Yvaldi, you know, in my testimony, director McGraw, with the Texas Department of Public Safety, a TEA Commissioner and the Texas, School Safety Center, director Martinez Prether. You know, it was discovered in that, testimony that only, you know, a little less than two hundred schools out of almost twelve hundred had completed their mandated audits that was passed in two thousand nineteen. This was in two thousand twenty two. Right. When you valet happened, and and you know, the majority of the Senate, none of them really knew that that that they had that low of a compliance rating And so, which is what generated us to create this software and this tool that would do that. Every one of these bills, when we're when they have to go forward, there has to be Man, I hate I hate to say this, but similar to a child, right, you're you're teaching them, and you must do this, or there's a consequence. Right. When you pass legislations and you have agencies that wanna be hands off, right, and there's zero consequence. If you were running a major school district, what what reason would you comply? There's there's no there's no consequence. Exactly. Consequence. Right. Right. Okay. Yes. Well, we've had some flat out tell us that. Right. We're not gonna comply because what are they gonna do? Exactly. You know? I mean, that's what some of them had literally said that to us. I I I under some percent agree, and, that's the problem, right, is that when we see, situation after situation for non compliance, and it's because there's no consequence. Maybe that needs to change. Well, I think it absolutely needs to change, and I do think that there's going there's some good you know, progress moving forward after that testimony because people were embarrassed that day. And, you know, to, to doctor, Well, what let's let's be serious. What what what consequences have been applied? Okay. Now we have a tool. Well, no one lost their job. We have We have that that are going in there, but the state still doesn't know today at the click the button who is compliant. In in defense to the Texas school safety center. They are not a regulatory agency. A hundred percent. I understand. So, you know, my argument, even in two thousand eighteen, two thousand nineteen, when I helped contribute to the testimonies that led to that bill, was that that should have never fallen under the Texas School Safety Center's responsibility to force compliance anyway. They're not a regulatory agency. And so I agree with, with doctor Martinez Prather. I agree with her one hundred percent. And Nothing has changed. At some point, at some point, somebody -- I agree. -- has to do something. I agree. They have to take responsibility for the legislation. They have to enforce it. They have to put a process in. It it it has to get there. And we're now what arguably almost the four years. We're four years after -- Four years after Santa Fe. -- well, after SB. Five years after Santa Fe tomorrow, four years after SB eleventh's passage. Right. One year after Yvalde, and not much has changed. Not much has changed. Not much has changed at all. There are what hundreds? Let's just say hundreds of education related legislation. Yeah. And we're focused on, you know, hey, we're gonna celebrate groundskeeper day. I don't get it, man. Or, hey, let's go give fifty million dollars for shields. It it's gotta change. Right? And I think that it's going to take parents involvement, getting involved at school, going to the capital, going and talking to your legislator, and saying, we gotta do more. Right? We've seen recently, just just the other day in Allen. Right? And it was not just unique Allen, but there was a national or statewide walkout day of students who were talking about security. And, somehow, it's it's shocking to me that the students are more vocal and more engaged than the parents. Yeah. How can this be? Well, I mean, being a former school board member. I mean, I, you know, I was executive director of security at Texas City. We led a great program. Texas ranked nationally ranked, then I became a school board member. Very seldom would we have parents come and ask about the security protocols and procedures that we had in place? We would have infractions daily and weekly. No one came except for one individual who is a consistent warrior who continues to fight for the safety and security of those kids. At Texas City ISD. I mean, perfect example. We had a student stabbed two months ago on our campus seven times on video, and we had a long conversation and a and an open meeting about that. And we have a security director that referred to this child's wounds as Pokes, when she sustained stabs to seven parts of her body, seven different areas of her body. And receive stitches in every single one of those. And so what's that? Do you think if that was his child, they would be considered Well, he doesn't have children. So but no. They wouldn't be considered pokes. There we go. And so I was enraged at that, which which is what led me to leave I didn't wanna be a part of that. I resigned for multiple reasons, but that's one of the reasons why I resigned. Is if we didn't have a security director that understood On video, we watched the child get stabbed seven times and then minimized her injuries. I have the problem with that. The the problem is is that This is just one scenario that, again, what's gonna change? Nothing changes. Right? It goes back in there. And This is why parents have to get involved. And in its whether, the other thing I think that is prolonging this, right, as far as you know, why there's not so much, things in the center. You and I have a unique visibility. Right? So so many times we go into whatever organization, and it's not just related to schools. But in order to help them secure their facility, they essentially need to their purse out on the desk. Right? Like, we had to get in the weeds. We gotta figure out what problems that they are aware of that they have. And then we will go in and also identify all the problems that they're not aware of what they have. And then being able to put together a plan on how to fix those. A roadmap of how to get there within their budgets, whatever that may be. Mhmm. How to utilize the planning process how to utilize the actual, memorandum of understandings, how to get other agencies involved, how to involve technology, to detect and document. And so we have a unique level of visibility where we've seen a lot of stuff. Right? We've seen, lots of schools, really fantastic ones that have their stuff really together and well documented. And we've seen the opposite side where things are just total chaos. I mean, and so what is surprising to me is I believe that there is an absolute change in media coverage. I already schools don't report incidents. Mhmm. And there are so many guns, so many knives, weapons, fights altercations, stabbings, things that happen on a school campus that it's swept under the rug that nobody knows about. And our legislators, I would argue all the way up to TEA, Texas school safety center legislators, don't really have a full picture of what the schools are actually dealing with because it's not reported. Yeah. And, you know, it there's there's a very, very strong metric of things that get measured get improved. And things that don't get measured will never improve. And so we have all these people hands off going, I don't want the liability to know the information. But we're never going to fix this until we, make it to where it's it's not an offense to report the issue. When we when we penalize them. And I I know this is because I'm double talk here, and I said earlier that there had to be some consequences. Yeah. But reporting is not one of them. Right? They need to be able to report. So we have visibility of who needs the resources. The problem is it's not at the it's a that's not at the state level. That's at the federal level. You know, because, you and I both know we've been in districts and and having assessed, multiple behaviors and kids that were on this pathway to violence, the reporting is not as accurate as it should be. And the reason why it's not as accurate as it should be is because you know, if you report accurately, you get deemed an unsafe school by the federal government, which affects your funding, which affects your socioeconomic status. You get, you know, deemed that unsafe school. Who's gonna wanna move to your neighborhood? Who's gonna want to move to your community? Right? And so it's a self inflicted wound. For one of our shows, there's a slew of websites out there that that rank schools. Mhmm. Right? Independent companies that look at, you know, what's the socioeconomic status of the school. And what is their test scores? What is their a criminal rate? Is there a safe school? Are they a blue ribbon school? Are they -- Right. -- whatever? And then basically rate them nationally on what this number is. And so I feel like schools are also concerned about, this information getting out. But somehow some way, even if it's going to a specific entity, right, and that this is not unique. Other organizations have this. Right? And and Campus industry. Well, like, no, like, almost like, an inspector general, right? Like somebody who's gonna be able to to be the authoritative power over that. Wait. Did you say inspector general? You did. You did. Oh, I think I said this in, somewhere between June of two thousand eighteen and December of two thousand eighteen. That there should be a governing body that would oversee this similar to an inspector general yet it's five years later. We celebrate the five year anniversary of Santa Fe tomorrow. I wouldn't say celebrate, but, yes, it was the five anniversary. Correct. We're not celebrating. We mourn. Right. So that's the proper term. But, we have the five year anniversary approaching tomorrow, and yet it doesn't seem like much has happened. We've had bills passed, but there's no compliance. No one has lost their job. No one has been held accountable. And we just continue to keep kicking the can down the road. We have had government entities tell us that we don't wanna see the data. It makes us liable. And that's a shame. And the problem is is that the parents don't understand this. The parents are not, actively engaged and I always promote, you know, go speak to your, representative, speak to, you know, at the state level, at the federal level, But more importantly, before you do that, speak at the local level. Go directly to your school board and hold them accountable. Ask them what their processes are. They come in forms. Yeah. Become informed. You may not they and they don't have to share with you the plan for operational security reasons. Correct. But you have a right as a taxpayer and as a parent to go advocate for your kid. If you know something's going on, whether it be bullying, you know, vaping at a high rate, which is what we're seeing now. Weapons being brought on campus, fights, gang activity, go ask them, what they are doing, hold them accountable, make them uphold their oath to you, the taxpayer, the voter, And so, you know, when we start getting parents more involved, I think we're gonna start seeing a little bit of the tide changing because you know, one of the things that motivates, politicians is voters. You get a group of really pissed off voters in this space I think that you're gonna start seeing some serious change. Hopefully. I hope so. It it needs to happen. Right? I mean, it has to. You know, what's interesting about all of this is that, some of the things that we have seen the positive, responses of of the anonymous reporting and how many schools still don't have anonymous reporting -- Yeah. -- and how it's not required. Right? Right. And I think if people measured that and that was public information of how that was done, you and I are both fathers of daughters. Mhmm. And, something unique about daughters specifically. It's not unique, totally unique to them, but something that I've noticed the difference between having a son and a daughter is that they know all the business that goes on on that campus. Absolutely. They know who's connected to who who's dating who, who, whatever. They they know what's going on. Right? And they have a a higher level of of information gathering and awareness than I would say traditionally boys do. Right? Right. And, you know, I think that, after seeing the positive results, and and and I hate to say the words near misses, but how many times that anonymous reporting led to an arrest -- Mhmm. -- and or someone getting admitted to get the mental health, work that they need. And and and it's one of those things that we talk with other agencies whose job is to do this. And you know, like, office of emergency management people. Right? They never get the due when everything goes great. Right? Yeah. Like, hey, We just hosted this major event, and all these people came to town and went to this event, and nothing happened. Yeah. Emergency staff was there. Everything was prepared. There was a couple of little things the public didn't even aware of it. Right. Office of Emergency Management never gets any notice of that. The police department doesn't get anything in there, but the moment that anything goes wrong -- They're only measured by their failures. -- their failures. And that's the same in the schools. Right? And so just firsthand seeing the power of that. You know? There's some great things that happen on on every campus in America every single day, man. Absolutely. You know, And I think, you know, if you'd have asked me three years ago what the biggest hurdle was, I would say that it would be, you know, administrators not wanting to do some of these things. You know, now that I'm on this side, I honestly feel bad for our educational administrators. I do too. You know, they're being you know, shovel fed a bunch of nonsense, with no real direction. Right? And And that's why I always tell people is, listen, let us come in m six global ASAP, security services Let us take that burden off of your shoulders. How many times have we sat there and the people around the table are just this huge sigh of relief. Yeah. And I'm so thankful that y'all are here. I'm so thankful, whatever. And when we're able to, you know, put together plans and implement technology and we train on it. And and and and you can just see everybody in the room get excited. Right. Because they they know they know what to do -- Uh-huh. -- in the event of an emergency. They have quick reference to it. Technology's telling them to do that. Their their building is telling them something's not wrong not not right. You know, something that's in there and being able to effectively communicate that on something that was trained and planned Right. And was it is, done by a professional. Even going deeper than that. I mean, you know, one of the most important components to all of this is the behavioral threat assessment. Right? I've told people this a hundred times, and I'll continue to say it. The foundation of every security plan. It doesn't matter if it's protecting the president of the United States or if it's protecting America's kids Those that want to attack us are always signaling some type of behavior that leads us to believe that they wanna do this harm. You know, if you look at the the most recent publication from the United States Secret Service that was published in January, we just had another one that came out yesterday, the bystander a it's a supplement to the report that came out in two thousand eight that said that at least one means of communication and all of these incidents had occurred before these people took action. Right? And so looking back at the January twenty twenty three release, They investigated a hundred and seventy three cases from two thousand sixteen until, twenty twenty two. And there was a hundred and eighty attackers in those hundred and seventy three instances and one hundred percent of all those attackers they all exhibited the same signs and symptoms. And so, you know, imagine the power that we could have by just simply having a process of identifying these kids based upon their patterns of behaviors not only kids, but even adults because we know that you're more likely to have, you know, an active shooter or a workplace violence incident than you are an attack on a school. On a school, you're more likely to have a suicidal kid than you are a homicidal kid. And so you talk about, you know, are we ever measured? I can tell you at Texas City, we had a pretty good process, and we knew which kids were the ones that we needed to watch, not punitively, but from, you know, just a general overview and curiosity of you know, they're exhibiting signs and symptoms of pre attack behavior, whether it be themself or on someone else. And I can tell you we were in the double digits of kids that we made contact with that wanted to hurt themselves, and we were able to get them the help that they need. Do you think that the general public in Texas City knows that? They absolutely don't. Let me put you in the hot seat for a moment, though. Okay. Uh-oh. So That was that was when you were safety and security director. Correct. And so many times we have seen gone into an organization where there might be some framework or there may have been plans that were there. And at some point, there was some type of foundational knowledge. It has not been updated. It might be a decade old. Oh, yeah. And and it it doesn't take into to consideration today's current threats or how the landscape had changed around the facility or whatever. Because that person left. Right? And so these were things that you were doing. And now that you're not in that position, Do you think that those same things are happening? Do they still have those those knowledge? Is that outreach happening. I can one hundred percent say I don't believe so. Okay. But that's that's part of this process. Right? And I think that's where we have to get engaged with the organizations and not individuals. Right. Right. Because it's life. People come and go. They just do. And so it's one of those things that it's gotta be repeatable. It's gotta be a training. There should be a training program in there to train new people. Right. And, you know, as we look at all of our services in there and we do these trainings, you know, part of this is is recording the making them available online, so that if a new person comes in based off of whatever their job description is, they can get that training. That they know the process and putting those together and documenting that. And, I I think that's a critical piece because you know, we're we're in different times. You know, the -- Right. -- the world where you used to go to work and, you know, have, work till retirement in the same job. Yeah. Those days are over. Yeah. And so there there is just a natural churn. Mhmm. Post COVID. It's just a accelerated that. Right? We had all the people who have silently quitted and, you know, all of these different phenomenons that have happened over and over again. And so as we look at just the churn of employment in these critical roles, I think that that the training component of this is as equally as important as the planning and implementation process. And being able to repetitively train. Well, consistently staying on top of the processes that we knew were working is important. But the problem is we have this this turnover, you have different ideas and different philosophies, but, you know, we go it goes back to creating a standard. The standard is, and that for decades now, we've known that behavioral threat assessment and identification of people who wanna do harm through patterns of behavior is key. And so therefore, I don't understand why that ever changed. You know? I'm not saying that we did it a hundred percent right every time, but what we were doing was effective. Why it's not being done at the same scale or the same way, I don't know. I have no idea. So So going back to h each house bill thirteen. That's what we're talking about that we started with. And the behavioral health side. How much focus is on going into the mental health of these teachers that are carrying it. I mean, look, teachers are dealing with more than they have. Oh, yeah. Right? Oh, yeah. The overall just you know, disrespect, the stress, they're dealing with students. They may have been teaching, you know, fifth grade math, and now, you know, kids are so far behind, and they didn't get the third grade, fundamentals. And now they're coming to fifth grade. Yeah. This teacher's teaching something that they've known in and out, and now they're having to make adjustments because of the fall off of the, fundamentals, you know, especially due to COVID. Right? And so there's just this tremendous amount of stress, I feel. Like, you can you can just feel it. Right? Just in general, people are willing to snap there. And so now you're motivated by money, this twenty five thousand dollar stipend. How how much effort and energy and and who's gonna be the regulatory body that's going to do the mental fitness evaluation. We have everybody else who's gonna turn around. They haven't even I don't wanna be I don't wanna need any liability. They haven't even They haven't even figured out a smooth process to get compliance for the SB eleven component that was passed four years ago. So I don't understand why we continue to push more legislation that's gonna require more processes that we can't even we can't even do the simple stuff. Let well, right? Or let's work on fixing what's already been passed. Yeah. Right? Let's let's spend some time on that. Well, let's, let's, let's conclude. I appreciate it. And we'll, we'll fix, we'll come back and Parents get involved. Yeah. You got a good network. It comes back to you. It's a Parents PTAs, other organizations, get involved. Absolutely. Start pushing them to, you know, to do the right thing. If they need guidance, reach out to us, is global and ASAP Security Services. Alright? Thanks. Thanks.