Midlothian ISD was one of six Dallas-area school districts with 6A and 5A football programs to report a change in stadium security policy as a direct result of Uvalde. “It just made everybody double back and refocus on the importance of not leaving anything to chance.”
“It made everyone go back to the drawing board in terms of just assessing everything that we do,” Grand Prairie ISD athletic director Troy Mathieu said. In the wake of Uvalde, school administrators around the state are continuing to re-evaluate their in-school and extracurricular security policies and institute new ones - doing whatever they can to control the uncontrollable. We thought that with the Uvalde situation, this was a good time to go ahead and. “Some of our area schools that we go to, like Dallas and Lancaster, already have one. “It is something that we talked about for years,” York said. While it already had at least six security guards at every football game, it added a clear bag policy for all sporting events at the high school and middle school levels. With football games returning as one of the first mass gatherings of the school year, Midlothian ISD wanted to bolster its security policies. “We live with that now on a daily basis,” he said.Ī recent shooting at a Dallas-area youth football game has also heightened awareness and prompted changes in leagues searching for ways to curb violence in sporting events. The threat of gun violence has loomed over school communities around the nation for decades now, but when the 19 Robb Elementary School students - and two teachers - were murdered in Uvalde at the end of the last school year, Dallas-area school leaders like York felt that terrifying threat was closer than ever.
DALLAS - As Midlothian ISD began gearing up for the start of the school year and high school football season, athletic director Todd York decided it was time for a change.