The implementation of a School Marshal Program at district elementary schools for the 2025-26 school year was approved at Monday’s Frisco ISD Board of Trustees meeting. 

The addition of the School Marshal Program will supplement the current use of School Resource Officers, and will help provide elementary schools with full-time safety personnel.

“We want Frisco ISD families to know that we are committed to doing everything we can to keep students and staff safe,” Superintendent Dr. Mike Waldrip said in a district news release. “The addition of experienced, well-trained school marshals is one of many steps we’re taking to ensure our campuses remain secure and focused on learning.”

Scheduled to be phased in during the course of the next two school years, the district has a goal of full staffing within the School Marshal Program by the end of 2026-27. However, while state law provides certain requirements, FISD plans to only hire experienced, highly trained former law enforcement officers as school marshals for the explicit purpose of school safety. 

The school marshal program was created nearly a decade ago by Texas Lawmakers and allows trained educators to carry weapons inside schools to ideally cut down response time.

“Whoever is serving as the school marshal acts immediately,” state Rep. Jason Villalba, R-Dallas said. “The whole point of this is to reduce response times from minutes down to seconds.”