The fourth special session of the 88th Texas Legislature is set to end on Wednesday, December 6, and while there has been no more movement on increasing the basic allotment, action was taken on Friday by the Senate to pass a school safety bill. 

The House had previously sent the Senate HB 2, its own school safety bill which would have re-imagined how funding for school safety works in the state, replacing the current annual school safety allotment with a school safety grant program that would designate up to $1.1 billion toward school safety funding. HB 2 would allocate school safety funds based more on campus size than per-student or per-campus allotments and provide more flexibility on the technologies that could be purchased. 

Instead of considering HB 2, the Senate voted unanimously to pass its own bill, SB 5. The Senate's version designates $400 million to double the allotments that were SB 30 and HB 3 in the Regular Session. It would increase district's school safety allotment from $10 per student in average daily attendance to $20, and from $15,000 per campus to $30,000. It would also allocate another $400 million in grant funding to assist with hardening school facilities. 

As of Monday morning, SB 5 had yet to be scheduled for consideration by the House.