The American-Statesman, KVUETV and journalist Tony Plohetski received the prestigious Alfred I. du-Pont-Columbia University Award on Thursday in New York for their groundbreaking coverage of the Uvalde school shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers. The award honors excellence in broadcast and digital journalism and is considered by some in the media industry as the broadcast equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize, which also is administered by Columbia University. Along with the George Foster Peabody Awards, the duPont award ranks among the most prestigious honors in electronic media. It is the first time both news outlets have received the honor, which was established in 1942. The award focused on the partnership between the Statesman and KVUE to jointly publish and air a 77-minute video from inside Robb Elementary that revealed one of the most strikingly flawed law enforcement responses in American history. view article arw

The Lockhart Independent School District has changed the notification protocol of its crisis response strategy following what it calls a “gap in the notification procedure” relating to threats made to Lockhart High School Thursday. Lockhart High School was temporarily locked down Thursday afternoon due to reports of a threat, which the Lockhart Police Department ultimately deemed noncredible. view article arw

AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 25, 2024 /PRNewswire-HISPANIC PR WIRE/ -- CENTEGIX®, the leader in incident response solutions, released today its report on Texas school safety, providing an important new resource for lawmakers, school officials and parents. Created following the passage of critical school safety legislation in 2023 – including Alyssa's Law – the report offers key insights and statistics on trends impacting school safety, including most frequent incident locations, the different types of emergencies reported on campuses and adoption rates among staff. view article arw

PONTIAC, Mich. (AP) — A school shooting that killed four students in Michigan could have been prevented if the mother of the armed teen had removed him after seeing his violent drawings that same day, a prosecutor told jurors Thursday in an uncommon trial about parental responsibility. Jennifer Crumbley is charged with involuntary manslaughter in the Nov. 30, 2021, attack at Oxford High School. Prosecutors say she and husband James Crumbley were grossly negligent and that their son's actions were foreseeable.  Jennifer Crumbley was aware of Ethan Crumbley's deteriorating mental health and social isolation and knew that a gun drawn on a math assignment resembled the one that he had used with her at a shooting range, assistant prosecutor Marc Keast said. view article arw

PONTIAC, Mich. (AP) — A school shooting that killed four students in Michigan could have been prevented if the mother of the armed teen had removed him after seeing his violent drawings that same day, a prosecutor told jurors Thursday in an uncommon trial about parental responsibility. Jennifer Crumbley is charged with involuntary manslaughter in the Nov. 30, 2021, attack at Oxford High School. Prosecutors say she and husband James Crumbley were grossly negligent and that their son's actions were foreseeable.  Jennifer Crumbley was aware of Ethan Crumbley's deteriorating mental health and social isolation and knew that a gun drawn on a math assignment resembled the one that he had used with her at a shooting range, assistant prosecutor Marc Keast said. view article arw

WICHITA FALLS (KFDX/KJTL) — Amid multiple school district closures, Texoma is experiencing unusually high numbers for cold and flu season, and part of this is due to how quickly illnesses are spreading. Amy Fagan, The Wichita Falls Wichita County Public Health District Director of Health, said simple things like washing hands frequently and sanitizing common spaces will be a step forward in ensuring this spike dies down. view article arw

An Humble ISD substitute teacher is out of a job after she allegedly washed a student's mouth out with soap. This happened on Tuesday at the Cambridge School, which caters to students with special education needs. The student's mother, LaShae Celestine, feels the school wasn't immediately transparent about the situation. view article arw

Gatesville ISD recently took to Facebook to warn their community that two pills were found on their high school campus that could have traces of fentanyl. The statement to the Gatesville ISD community on Facebook said, “The preliminary results from the field kit indicated the pills could very well contain fentanyl. Campus administration began reviewing security video footage but are unable to tell where the pills originated from. As an extra precaution, we had the sheriff’s drug dog come and walk around the campus but found no other issues.” view article arw

Merkel ISD is shutting down due to an increased number of illnesses. All campuses will be closed Wednesday, January 24 and Thursday, January 25 in an attempt to combat the sickness. Busses will still run as scheduled Tuesday, January 23, classes will be dismissed as normal, and evening ballgames will still take place. view article arw

An investigation is now underway after a Humble Independent School District substitute teacher allegedly assaulted a 13-year-old student with Down Syndrome on Tuesday. Humble ISD tells KPRC 2 Corley Peel that the substitute teacher has been terminated. According to a statement sent to the mother from HISD’s Cambridge School Director Leslie Johnson, the incident took place around 9:45 a.m. when the child was working with the substitute teacher. view article arw

The list of local school districts canceling classes continues to grow after officials with the Electra Independent School District announced on Thursday afternoon they would be the seventh local district to close for illnesses. view article arw

Instead of wearing the Edgewood ISD badge, the district’s police chief said Officer Tina Egleston is in the hospital under a medically induced coma. “They’ve had to drill a hole in her head to relieve the swelling,” Edgewood ISD police chief Jesse Quiroga said. Quiroga said Egleston was the woman critically injured in a crash on I-35 on Saturday. She was on break from working off-duty at the Frost Bank Center. view article arw

he parents of Ethan Crumbley, the teenager who in 2021 opened fire at his high school in Oxford, Michigan, are going on trial for manslaughter in cases that will test the limits of who is responsible for a mass shooting. James and Jennifer Crumbley have pleaded not guilty to four charges of involuntary manslaughter for their alleged roles in their son’s rampage, which left four students dead and seven others wounded. They face up to 15 years in prison. They are standing trial separately. Opening statements in Jennifer Crumbley’s trial began Thursday, and James Crumbley’s trial is tentatively scheduled to start March 5. view article arw

A school in Sioux City, Iowa, has told parents that it is now arming teachers so they can actively respond to a gunman in the event of a school shooting. In a letter from Siouxland Christian School, published in full by local news channel KTIV on January 6, superintendent Lindsay Laurich said armed staff "are trained to go directly to the threat" and would "allow teachers and students to get to safe positions and will provide an active response until law enforcement is able to arrive." It came just days after a deadly shooting elsewhere in the state. Two people-including the principal-were killed and six others injured after gunfire broke out at Perry High School. Authorities identified 17-year-old student Dylan Butler as the shooter, who also died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot. Read more at: https://www.star-telegram.com/news/nation-world/national/article284667751.html#storylink=cpy view article arw

Another Texoma school district is closing its campuses due to “an excessive number of staff and students” with illnesses, marking the fourth local district to announce a closure due to sickness this week. view article arw

Officials with the Olney Independent School District and Garner Independent School District are taking precautions to ensure students and staff remain healthy. Olney ISD announced on Facebook it will cancel classes as the district is impacted by an outbreak of illnesses. Schools will be closed on Jan. 23 and 24 while maintenance staff sanitizes all its facilities. view article arw

An investigation is underway into a deadly shooting yesterday near 15th and Ave. U Police say one person died, but no names have been released and no arrest have been made in the case Details here: 1 person dies in central Lubbock shooting Teen arrested after threatening shooting A 13-year-old girl is facing charges in connection with a school shooting threat in Tahoka Police say she left a threatening note at the elementary school prompting the district to cancel class Full story here: 13-year-old girl arrested, charged with making threat against Tahoka Elementary School Opening statements begin today in the involuntary manslaughter of Jennifer Crumbley She is the first parent in America to be tried in connection with a deadly school shooting carried out by her son view article arw

A meeting for the Fort Worth ISD’s School Health Advisory council Monday took a turn when “some attendees during the online meeting displayed inappropriate content on their screens instead of identifying themselves or using a blank screen, according to the district. The district says the hacking incident, described as pornographic, that interrupted the Zoom meeting on Jan. 22 around 5:50 p.m., is being investigated. view article arw

Authorities said they are searching for the suspect who shot at a Spring ISD employee near an elementary school Tuesday morning. According to the Harris County Sheriff's Office, deputies responded to a call for service in the 16000 block of Sugar Pine Drive near Major Elementary School. view article arw

Fort Worth ISD students are a step closer to again being taught sex education in school classrooms. Yet, before the board-appointed School Health Advisory Council voted to recommend a sex education curriculum called Choosing the Best to parents and Fort Worth ISD board members, the Zoom meeting was interrupted by porn. view article arw

Texas teen fertility rates in 2022 increased for the first time in 15 years — after the state implemented its sixweek abortion ban a year earlier — and overall fertility rates increased by 2%, according a recently published report by the University of Houston Institute for Research on Women, Gender & Sexuality.  The year-over-year increase in 2022 was most pronounced among Hispanic women ages 25-44, whose fertility rate jumped 8%.  This highlights potential differences in access to contraception and out-of-state abortion care, said Elizabeth Gregory, director of the institute doing the study and a UH English professor.  “We may be seeing the effect of older Hispanic women who might previously have sought abortions — perhaps because they already had children and were already struggling to support their family financially,” she wrote. view article arw

OAKLAND COUNTY, Mich. (WEYI) — Jennifer Crumbley, the mother of the Michigan school shooter who took the lives of four Oxford High School students and injured several others, is set for trial. Jury selection for Jennifer Crumbley's trial is set to begin Tuesday. She, and the father of the shooter, James Crumbley, are both facing four counts of involuntary manslaughter. Prosecutors are alleging that the pair did not give their son the help he needed. view article arw

A special grand jury has been convened in Uvalde, Texas, to determine if law enforcement officers will be charged with crimes in connection with their response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022.  The convening of the grand jury was reported by the Uvalde Leader-News one day after the US Department of Justice (DOJ) released its Critical Incident Review of the school shooting in which 19 students and two adults were killed and 17 others were injured. view article arw

The move is designed to reduce some of the rotating overtime shifts expected of agency caseworkers at group homes and motels, which have been criticized as dangerous for the children who live there. view article arw

A scathing federal report on the Uvalde mass shooting released Thursday highlighted the miscommunication and lack of action between the hundreds of officers who showed up to Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022. The Justice Department’s report also came with plenty of recommendations to improve schools safety and active shooter protocols in the state. Texas lawmakers last year passed House Bill 3 to address many of those issues, but failed to include more mental health screenings as recommended by the report. view article arw

Officials with the Olney Independent School District have announced classes will be canceled as the district is impacted by an outbreak of annual illnesses. According to an email sent on behalf of Dr. Greg Roach, Olney ISD Superintendent, to the KFDX and KJTL newsroom on Monday night, January 22, 2024, classes at all Olney ISD campuses will be canceled on Tuesday, January 23, and Wednesday, January 24. view article arw

Students at three schools in the Gadsden Independent School district dealt with discolored water Monday. The Superintendent of the district Travis Dempsey said his office was notified of the discoloration at 8:30 a.m. “We've quickly reported it and then got portable water out to those campuses,” Dempsey said. view article arw

ROCKLIN — Technology is being displayed in Placer County that could potentially stop a school shooter. Community members got a glimpse of the latest security technology available to stop an active shooter on school campuses. "We use machine learning just like a lot of technology today," said Spade Security Services President Pranil Shankar. Spade Security celebrated its grand opening in Rocklin Friday afternoon by conducting a simulated armed gunman attack. view article arw

ROCKLIN — Technology is being displayed in Placer County that could potentially stop a school shooter. Community members got a glimpse of the latest security technology available to stop an active shooter on school campuses. "We use machine learning just like a lot of technology today," said Spade Security Services President Pranil Shankar. Spade Security celebrated its grand opening in Rocklin Friday afternoon by conducting a simulated armed gunman attack. view article arw

Yolanda Seaton, 55, has been facing one of the more serious complications: blindness. Seaton — born and raised in this small city 100 miles southeast of Dallas — was first diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes about a decade ago. Months later, she dropped her employer-provided health insurance because she could not afford it on her low pay.  For about a year, she skipped the doctor’s office altogether. “I don’t believe in just showing up [to see a doctor], at the mercy of running up a bill,” she said. “I just tried to do what I could with what I knew.” Then a co-worker told her about Bethesda Health Clinic in Tyler, which provides low-cost or free care to uninsured, working adults in East Texas.  At the clinic, Seaton got regular checkups, diabetes education and free insulin. She managed her blood-sugar levels better with daily testing, medicine and diet changes. But the disease eventually wore down the vessels in her eyes — which happens to about a third of Americans with diabetes. Her vision started to blur; without treatment, she could go blind. view article arw

El Paso County Commissioners Court will be meeting to discuss a new amendment to enhance school safety for Tornillo Independent School District. Tornillo ISD is offering to continue to pay El Paso County to provide two school resource officers from the El Paso County Sheriff's Office. view article arw

A student at a Leander ISD elementary school discovered a firearm and a knife inside their backpack on Wednesday morning and self-reported the weapons to administrators, according to the Austin Police Department. It happened at Grandview Hills Elementary in the 2000 block of Vista Parke Drive. view article arw

The Killeen City Council will discuss Tuesday limiting vape shops from being located near schools at its workshop meeting. According to the presentation attached to the agenda, city staff identified at least five vape shops within 1,000 feet from a school. These include places such as the Chill Zone on Florence Road, Vapor Maven on East Elms Road, The Vape Shop on Stan Schlueter Loop, Chill Zone 3 on W.S. Young Drive and Killeen Smoke and Vape on 1104 Old FM 440 Road. view article arw