As Texas school districts prepare to welcome kids back for class, some parents may be scrambling to find a backpack that meets new safety standards.<\/p>\n
In a push to make schools safer, San Antonio\u2019s Harlandale Independent School District\u00a0will now require all students to bring a clear or mesh backpack to school.\u00a0In\u00a0Bexar County, Southside and\u00a0South San Antonio\u00a0ISDs also require clear bags for all grade levels<\/a>. San Antonio\u00a0ISD requires the policy at select campuses, including\u00a0Jefferson, Lanier and Burbank<\/a> high schools.<\/p>\n While many districts across the state already mandated clear backpacks following the\u00a0Uvalde shooting, others are still rolling out updated policies.\u00a0Harlandale\u2019s policy is new, and Edinburg CISD, located in South Texas, will for the first time require middle and high school students to use clear backpacks.<\/p>\n \u201cThe new policy is intended to strengthen existing safety measures while helping maintain a safe and positive learning environment for students and staff across our campuses,\u201d Harlandale officials wrote to announce the change.<\/p>\n Most policies still allow students to carry small opaque pouches inside their clear backpacks to hold personal items like cellphones, keys or hygiene products.<\/p>\n Besides adopting clear backpack policies, districts often roll out other safety interventions like increasing the police presence on campus, adding metal detectors or launching anonymous reporting tools.<\/p>\n A 2025 study\u00a0from the University of Southern California\u2019s Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Threats and Emergencies found students and staff view clear backpack policies as invasive and that the policies often create feelings of surveillance instead of safety. Two-thirds of the students surveyed by USC felt the bags were an invasion of privacy.\u00a0<\/p>\n Have a question about schools? Submit it below, and one of our education reporters will get back to you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Texas school districts prepare to welcome kids back for class, some parents may be scrambling to find…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402442,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-402441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}