The Standards have been designed with enough flexibility to meet the unique needs and varied requirements of all schools in the state. Although the Standards are geared to the traditional school day, they are also applicable to school safety for the entire calendar year. Each standard begins with, “The school district should.” The word “should” indicates that each standard is a recommendation, rather than a mandate. Throughout the toolkit, for more information, please refer to the legal citations and/or best practices listed in the gray boxes below each standard. The grey boxes contain links to legal citations and best practices for which the specific standard was based on. The Standards were developed in collaboration with multiple stakeholders from state agencies and school districts across Texas. Each Standard was vetted to ensure:

1. It fell under a law, directive, regulation, or was a proven best practice
2. It was scalable (can be achieved by very small or very large districts, regardless of resources)
3. It met face validity (made logical sense)
4. It was relevant and would stand the test of time