COMAL COUNTY, Texas – After a deadly shooting inside a Comal ISD high school left a teacher wounded and a student dead, one parent says their search for answers about school safety has been met with a price tag he can’t afford.
Oscar Sanchez’s two daughters attend Hill County College Preparatory High School.
He dropped them off at the school on March 30.
“Everything seemed normal. There was nothing unusual,” Sanchez said.
Soon after, he learned that the campus had been placed on lockdown.
“I called the district,” Sanchez said. “They never told me there was someone who got shot.”
Investigators said a student brought a gun to Hill Country College Preparatory High School, shot a teacher and then died by suicide. Comal ISD and the Comal County Sheriff’s Office have refused to identify either person.
A ruling from the Texas Attorney General’s Office said Comal County can withhold records about the shooter because he is a juvenile offender.
Sanchez chose to keep his daughters home from school for several days, concerned about their well-being and safety.
Costly records
Sanchez filed a public information request with Comal ISD in April, asking for records about incidents that triggered the district’s Standard Response Protocols over the past five years, including lockdowns, holds and evacuations.
“I want to know basically how often our kids are being placed in unsafe situations and how the district handles those,” Sanchez said.
According to records obtained by KSAT Investigates, Comal ISD’s attorneys estimated it would cost about $600,000 to search emails responsive to Sanchez’s original request, citing the need to review millions of emails. The district also estimated an additional $9,600 to produce security incident data.
Sanchez twice narrowed the scope of his request, but records show the district’s attorneys still estimated that the records would cost about $130,000.
“I don’t have that money just lying down to provide that,” Sanchez said. “To me, it feels like it’s a tactic that they’re using to scare me off and kind of push me out of this request,” he said.
‘Sounds unusually high’
KSAT Investigates shared Sanchez’s cost estimate letters with Kelley Shannon, executive director of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas.
“We shouldn’t be getting hit with huge bills for information,” Shannon said.
While Sanchez’s request is broad, Shannon said the estimate stood out because of its size.
“The thing that stands out about this particular case is the cost estimate numbers are really high,” Shannon said. “Sounds unusually high.”
KSAT Investigates reviewed every public records cost estimate Comal ISD issued between April 2025 and May 2026. We compared them with Judson ISD, which serves a similarly sized student population.
The review found:
- Comal ISD issued eight cost estimates totaling more than $188,000
- Judson ISD issued 49 cost estimates totaling about $17,800
“Well, that sounds really out of whack,” said Shannon.
Earlier this month, KSAT Investigates requested an interview with Comal ISD Superintendent John Chapman to discuss the district’s response to the shooting and what changes have been made to improve school safety.
The district declined to make Chapman available.
Chief Communications Officer Christina Eckert provided the following statement to KSAT Investigates:
“The safety and security of our students and staff continues to be a top priority in Comal ISD. That includes a layered security approach, deterring threats through mental health support and behavioral threat assessment teams, and focusing on prevention through dedicated law enforcement partnerships, upgraded silent panic alert technology, enhanced video surveillance and emergency communication systems.”
Comal ISD has also formed a Safety and Security Task Force selected to represent our community’s experience, expertise, and perspective. This task force is actively meeting throughout the summer and into the fall, examining safety and security practices and developing recommendations for our state-mandated Safety and Security Committee.
We have communicated with our families directly and consistently throughout this process: through the superintendent, campus leadership, and district communications to families and staff. Direct communication with our community will continue to be our practice and our priority.
Regarding the investigation into the March 30 incident: Comal ISD is not the lead agency on this investigation and does not have investigative information to share. That investigation is being conducted by the Comal County Sheriff’s Office. Questions about the status of the investigation and its findings should be directed to their office."
“I don’t want the district to brush this off and say, ‘Okay, let’s move on from this tragic event,’” Sanchez told KSAT Investigates. “They need to reassure us as parents that our children will be safe.”
As of now, Sanchez said he doesn’t have that reassurance.
“At this point in time, I don’t have a response from my children to say, ‘You’re going to be safe,’” he said. “I don’t know. That’s why, as a parent, it’s very frustrating not knowing if my kids are going to be safe.”
Sanchez has filed a complaint with the Texas Attorney General’s Office about the cost estimate. He has still not gotten those records.
Read more reporting on the KSAT Investigates page.