The Harlingen Consolidated Independent School District told the Facilities and Safety Committee it has nearly completed a TEA-funded emergency communications project that installs bidirectional amplifiers (BDAs) to reduce law-enforcement radio dead spots in school buildings and is planning a separate districtwide radio-communication network.

"We finished pretty much all all the schools except for 4 with the equipment," said Oscar Tapia, who presented the grant-funded projects to the committee. He said the BDA installations are tied into fire-alarm monitoring so staff are alerted when a system needs servicing, and the project is roughly 85–90 percent complete.

Tapia said the district is in the design phase of a radio-infrastructure project that would allow district safety staff and guardians to communicate across campus sites without dead spots. "That's about a million dollar budget with the research we've done," he said, adding the district is seeking an open‑protocol solution to avoid sole-source vendor lock-in.

Tapia told trustees they would likely see the radio project advertised for procurement in the coming months after engineering specifications are finalized. No formal procurement decisions were made at the committee meeting.

The committee also heard that other TEA- and TRE-funded safety and facility upgrades remain in progress, and staff gave a broader construction progress update at the same session.