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A principal walks next to an automatic lock outside a new security vestibule that has been added at Albright Middle School, shown Tuesday Aug. 14, 2018 in Houston. The vestibule lets staff to interact with visitors before allowing them access to the building and also has a 911 call button.

Cypress Park High School has a secure vestibule and other features designed with safety and security in mind.

After last week’s shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, parents, pundits and politicians all began demanding that school buildings in Texas and everywhere be made safer.

And no wonder, given the maddening news that the shooter was able to enter the building with his small arsenal from a back door that did not lock when a teacher slammed it shut moments earlier. Even in a divided America, one thing we all can agree on is that when an elementary school’s back door is shut it ought to automatically lock.

And yet, just how to improve security at schools beyond that no-brainer remains just as tough today as it was before the 18-year-old gunman killed 19 students and two teachers May 24. It’s a task made all the trickier thanks to how much trouble the Texas Department of Public Safety has had in getting the basic facts straight about what happened and when.

Those and other details will matter as we all try to find ways to make schools safer without making students feel as if they’re being taught inside of prisons.

We look with caution, for example, at Sen. Ted Cruz’s call for schools to adopt protocols used at federal courthouses.

“Schools likewise should have a single point of entry,” Cruz said during his floor speech at the NRA convention in Houston, “Fire exits should only open out. At that single point of entry, we should have multiple armed police officers, or, if need be, military veterans trained to provide security and keep our children safe.”

Of course we want to keep the bad guys out — and some of what Cruz and others have called for makes perfect sense, though he was wrong to dismiss common-sense gun reforms. Fire exits should open only from the inside out. Visitors should be required to enter using a single entrance. Doors, obviously, should lock.

A lot of these kinds of changes are already standard for newer schools in Texas.

Nowadays schools are typically built with a glass vestibule monitored by an administrator who must buzz in visitors. During pick-up and drop-off times, designated teachers or security open additional doors, which remain locked to the outside the rest of the day. In case of a fire or other emergency, the doors open from inside and set off an alarm.

Many Texas districts have begun retrofitting older buildings, but it’s expensive. To cite just one example: Waller ISD estimated the cost of two vestibules at $345,000.

The Legislature needs to prioritize funding for the kinds of improvements that should be made — not just to new school designs but at older schools, too.

After the 2018 shooting at Santa Fe High School, the Legislature allotted $100 million to the hardening of schools — less than an average of $12,500 for each of more than 8,000 campuses in the state — a worthwhile but insufficient investment. The Uvalde school district received $69,000 for its campuses and had spent $48,000 on physical security according to a May 2 report.

Lawmakers should also add teeth to a law passed after the Santa Fe shooting that requires every school to have disaster plans that include active-shooter policies. Many districts still lack such plans.

Even so, it’s just as essential for lawmakers to recognize the limits of these improvements. Active-shooting policy? The Uvalde school district had one that was in compliance, according to the director of the Texas School Safety Center.

The district’s plan calls for patrols of secondary schools, perimeter fencing, social media monitoring and locked classroom doors. In July 2020, law enforcement officers from five agencies trained for active shooters at a Uvalde school and on Dec. 17, 2021, the school police chief received an eight-hour active shooter training.

And after all that budgeting and planning and training, and after the teacher slammed the door behind her, the shooter still got in.

That’s why it is so essential that the response to Uvalde takes an all-of-the-above approach. Yes, we need better training and better security at schools, but we also need gun safety reforms and more mental health resources.

We also need to understand that some changes, no matter how reasonable they seem after a tragedy like the one in Uvalde, would only make conditions worse.

Cruz’s vision of arming a squad of security guards at the entrance of every school in the nation is not practical. Research suggests it might well do more harm than good as well.

To understand why, take a walk to the elementary school in your neighborhood. Hopefully, what you see are children playing outside during recess. You’ll see campuses with multiple buildings, ranging from “portable” classrooms to gymnasiums and field houses — all with exterior doors. If you can get a pass to go inside, you’ll see children coming in and out of classrooms to use the bathroom leaving the classroom doors unlocked behind them. At the beginning and end of the day, you’ll see different grades entering or exiting — hundreds of kids and parents navigating jammed streets with harried teachers directing traffic.

The sight should warm your heart. What other than children playing represents the freedom we cherish — to connect with one another, move under the sun and enjoy our lives.

What’s needed most is both momentum for changes proven to work and wariness of changes that would practically militarize our schools.

“Yes, we can take certain steps to harden our facilities but do we really want to make every facility so hard they no longer resemble the institutions they were,” Daniel Kornberg, a founding principal of HarrisonKornberg Architects, told us.

The heartache over Uvalde won’t end soon, if ever. Nor will the outrage over its door that didn’t lock. Cruz and others are right to demand changes, but not with proposals that come at the expense of our children’s well-being. And we’re all counting on our leaders to have the wisdom to know the difference.

The Editorial Board is made up of opinion journalists with wide-ranging expertise whose consensus opinions and endorsements represent the voice of the institution - defined as the board members, their editor and the publisher. The board is separate from the newsroom and other sections of the paper.

By Robert Downen and John Tedesco