Mental health, safety investments promised after Uvalde shooting show little headway
In the weeks and months after the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, last May that left 19 children and two teachers dead, Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas’ state leadership promised change — more than $500 million worth of it.
A year later, the state still hasn’t disbursed more than $100 million, or a fifth, of that money. And only a small fraction of it has been put to use, an analysis of state funds by the Austin American-Statesman, part of the Paste BN Network, found.
In a series of announcements Abbott made between June and October, he promised to transfer money to a dozen state agencies and tasked them with providing support to the Uvalde community, and improving mental health access and school security across the state.
“The state of Texas is acting swiftly,” Abbott said in June 2022 in the first of those announcements.
But most Texas school districts and law enforcement agencies still don’t have the essential safety equipment they need. Many police officers across the state still haven’t received specialized training and only a fraction of the mental health funds promised after the Uvalde massacre have gone toward supporting Texas communities, according to data collected by the Statesman.
"Our whole system is flawed and broken," Sen. Roland Gutierrez, D-San Antonio, whose district includes Uvalde, said after reviewing the American-Statesman's findings. "The way that these expenditures have failed to be executed is just an example (of) state agency directors' and this governor's lack of urgency."
While some delays in disbursing and spending money tied with the hiring, vetting and training of new personnel are inevitable, budget and government spending experts the American-Statesman interviewed said other lags are out of the norm and should have been predicted and avoided.
For example, state lawmakers could have sped up bureaucratic processes by waiving procurement requirements for some purchases, said Bill Spelman, a professor emeritus of public affairs at the University of Texas who served on the Austin City Council for seven years. But that would entail some risk, “and government bureaucrats are highly risk averse.”
“Getting the money out is the political gain. Getting it spent quickly is really somebody else’s issue,” Spelman said.
The Uvalde community did receive some state funding promptly, including a payment of about $100,000 to provide gas cards, hotel stays, and rent and mortgage assistance to residents.
David Lakey, the UT System chief medical officer, said that, in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, government agencies and organizations provided support to the community without asking for additional state money.
But Gutierrez, the area's senator, said that was far from enough.
"That presence lasted all of 10 days," he said. Uvalde's "children are simply not the same. In the first few days of that horrible tragedy, I talked to parents (with) kids who couldn't talk. They simply couldn't speak.
"What happened in Uvalde required an immediate and urgent and continued presence."
Safety equipment
Schools and law enforcement agencies have used only about 4% of the money that Abbott said is vital to ensure student safety across Texas.
A month after the Uvalde massacre, Abbott committed $50 million toward purchasing bullet-resistant shields for law enforcement departments and schools.
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The Governor’s Office Trusteed Program — charged with awarding the money for shields — has distributed most of it, about $44.2 million, according to Renae Eze, a spokesperson for the governor. But the 553 jurisdictions that received the money have used only about $4.6 million for purchases, the equivalent of about 1,200 shields, the American-Statesman's analysis found.
Eze said the data include only purchases reported to the governor’s office, which might not reflect the actual total.
Spelman, however, said the amount reported to date seems low. Purchase orders for equipment such as shields might involve contracted work, which can take time. But the governor’s office released its first funding announcement in August, giving law enforcement departments and schools more than nine months to apply for funding and get that work done.
Gutierrez said the delays suggest the money was not needed.
"There was plenty of shields in that room ... the radios didn't work," he said of the Robb Elementary shooting. The state needs "to do more than just throw money where it's not necessary."
Gutierrez characterized the grant for shields as a "political stunt by the governor and lieutenant governor," who have ignored his requests for $50 million to improve radio communications in Uvalde.
Much of the equipment promised to schools after the shooting also hasn’t made it to campuses yet.
As of this month, school districts across the state have spent just $2.5 million of the $17.1 million allocated to purchase silent panic alert technology, according to Jacob Kobersky, a Texas Education Agency spokesperson.
About 25% of the $400 million in grants promised for upgrades to school doors, windows, fencing, communication and safety protocols has not been disbursed. Texas schools have used about $10.8 million of the money, Kobersky said.
There could be several factors affecting delays in spending, such as school and construction schedules, Spelman said. Lags in disbursement, on the other hand, are probably caused by state agencies' abundance of caution as they're being scrutinized in the Uvalde shooting's aftermath.
“Everybody has a sense of urgency. Everybody wants (this) to happen right now,” Spelman said. “On the other hand, because this is urgent, because everybody's watching, you've also got people in the government who want to be sure every i is dotted, every t is crossed.”
Kobersky said the TEA approves grants on a rolling basis and has not received enough applications to exhaust the allotted money.
Mental health
Uvalde alone needs a one-time investment of $40 million and nearly $120 million in annual funding to provide critical and urgent mental health care to its community, according to a report by the Hill Country Mental Health & Developmental Disabilities Center published in December.
The report was one of five mental health initiatives Abbott promised to fund after the Uvalde shooting. In total, the governor allocated $18 million to those efforts, which include counseling and trauma-informed care for the students and faculty members affected by the May 24, 2022, massacre, and mental health services for other Texas communities.
Only about $1.5 million of the money has been spent to date.
Lakey, who chairs the Texas Child Mental Health Care Consortium, which received a portion of the money, said some of the spending lag is by design.
The Uvalde shooting was “an awful, awful event and (state agencies) are trying to be prudent and make sure the needs of Uvalde are understood and … safeguards are used when money gets put in,” he said.
The Uvalde school district has spent about a fourth of the $1.25 million allotted to it for mental health services.
The district has filled most of the budgeted personnel positions, hiring at least six counselors and therapists, one nurse and other administrative staffers, data provided by the governor’s office show. But since some of those hires are recent, related payroll expenses haven't made much of a dent in the funding yet.
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The district has exceeded most target metrics it set after the shooting, according to data provided by the governor's office. About 2,250 survivors of last year's shooting have received mental health services, for a total of about 5,500 counseling hours, the data show.
The district did not respond to Statesman requests for comment.
Lakey said delays are also due to workforce shortages and administrative procedures.
The consortium Lakey chairs received $5.8 million to expand a program that offers virtual mental and behavioral health counseling to school districts. The money brought the program’s total budget for fiscal years 2022 and 2023 to about $60 million, of which the consortium has spent about $32 million.
The budget is meant to expand the program, which is currently active in about half of Texas’ school districts, to every school in the state by the end of the fiscal year. But Lakey said there will probably be leftover money.
“The challenge is hiring people,” he said. It’s not “a bureaucratic issue of getting the dollars out. It is the practicalities (of) coming out of the pandemic in a health professional shortage state.”
The Health and Human Services Commission, which disbursed more than $5.6 million to local mental and behavioral health authorities to fund 10 new specialty care and therapy programs across Texas, is coming up against similar challenges.
Most of the health authorities contracted by the commission are still working through administrative and regulatory hurdles and are not serving clients yet, said Tiffany Young, an agency spokesperson.
Most contracts were finalized in December, but Young said it typically takes about six months for these kinds of programs, which require a highly specialized and in-demand workforce, to become operational.
Training
Some funding recipients, such as Texas State University, said they are on track to meet the goals set by Abbott and the Legislature after the Uvalde massacre.
Texas State received $14 million last year to boost rapid response training and evaluate safety on school campuses. The institution has completed about 1,100 classes and 6,500 safety audits, spending $8 million, according to Jayme Blaschke, a university spokesperson.
In a written statement, Blaschke said that, although invoices for additional investments haven’t been processed yet, the remaining $6 million in state funding has already been committed.
The Texas Department of Public Safety is also on track to exhaust the $5 million issued last year to expand the gathering, analysis and sharing of threat-related information in programs known as “fusion centers.” The DPS has spent $4.4 million of the money, according to spokesperson Ericka Miller.
Local law enforcement agencies, however, appear not to have taken advantage of other state money made available after the Uvalde shooting, such as a $3 million grant meant to offset travel expenses associated with Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training, also known as ALERRT.
The governor’s office, which oversees the grant, has awarded about $22,000 from that fund, said Eze, the governor’s spokesperson. An additional $240,000 in requested grants is under review.
Eze said the grant application process can be lengthy, causing some delays. The governor’s office has received 24 applications since August. While about a third of them — submitted by six municipal police departments, one sheriff’s department and one school district — passed the office’s review, 16 have been stuck in the process for up to nine months.
Those applications were released back to the applicants to provide additional information, causing delays, according to the governor’s office.
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Spelman said that should have been avoided. It is the granting agency’s responsibility to minimize delays by providing clear instructions to applicants, he said.
The governor’s office “probably stumbled a bit in providing the announcement information,” which might also be why the agency received very few applications for this grant, leaving about $2.7 million uncommitted, Spelman said.
In a written comment, Eze said a small number of agencies applied for the grant because "many of these (ALERRT) classes are held locally, removing the need for travel costs."
Gutierrez said the delays show a widespread lack of priorities.
"There just isn't a real urgency," he said.
"It's not enough to say that the bureaucracy has failed, that things are still in motion in the grant process and so on, and (that) the bureaucracy takes time for the wheels to turn. ... You really have to dig deep into what's happening in (our) communities as you make your decisions. And then you have to execute those decisions, and you have to execute them quickly."