The Nashville school shooting is hitting close to home for families that send their children to private schools in central Texas. The emotions of yet another tragic mass school shooting is being felt hundreds of miles away from Nashville.
“It’s a little scary. I know when I first heard, my first words to myself were not again," said Kirby Hall School Executive Director Helen Roberts. “We’ve always been careful with security with children. You always have to be with or without the shootings. With the shootings, you become a little more attuned to everything."
Roberts keeps her panic button wrapped around her wrist with the help of security cameras, locked doors, and safety drills.
“We have what’s called stranger danger drills and when we have that drill the alarm goes off and they know what to do. They lock the door down in the classroom, they stay away from the door, they don’t make any noise," Roberts said.
Kirby Hall is a small private school with only 100 students. Roberts said the students are instructed to never open any of the doors for anybody. The school only has two entrances, the front door, and the back door. It's one of those schools where everybody knows everybody so if a person doesn't belong, someone will that person is out of place.
“We know everybody. We know every parent, every grandparent, every child," she said.
The Texas Education Agency made upgrades to school safety standards at public schools after the Uvalde mass school shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers in May 2022, but private schools don't follow the same guidelines that have been put in place.
“There are 920 private accredited nonprofit schools in the state, and they have school boards that look at each individual campus to see what the best practice would be to secure that particular campus," said Texas Private Schools Association Executive Director Laura Colangelo.
Private schools are tuition-based which means the schools pay for everything including safety upgrades.
“Of these kinds of instances only 6% of them happen on a private school campus so it is less likely for it to happen in a private school, but we have known from the beginning we are not immune from this sort of tragedy," Colangelo said.
Colangelo told CBS Austin when a school is accredited, a team comes on campus and will look at all parts of the school. Safety and security are one of the standards they’re looking for, so they spend about 3-4 days on campus to check on the safety measures.
Mental health concerns are also top of mind as Nashville police say the 28-year-old shooter had a mental health disorder.
“Whatever her reasons were, why do you shoot a child?” Roberts said.
Kirby Hall just hired a new school counselor to make sure the students' emotional well-being is taken care of.
“Because we’re so small, we have a closer relationship with the children. The teachers know right away if the child’s acting a little different or if a child’s having an emotional issue," Roberts said.