McAllen – The McAllen Independent School District is working to create a safer learning environment for their students.

At a town hall meeting, parents told the district their concerns about safety measures following last week's school shooting in Florida and threats that circulated on social media.

The McAllen ISD superintendent said town hall meetings allow the district to better understand the concerns of parents which can help the district better protect students.

Alejandro Arias has two children attending McAllen ISD schools. He explained his son received a threat to his life from a fellow student last week. It was a scary time for his family.

He decided to attend McAllen ISD's town hall meeting to see what might be done to better protect students.

“Practical things that we can do, all can pitch in to basically help and try to make the best for our kids,” Arias said.

McAllen ISD Superintendent Dr. Jose Gonzalez says, moving forward, threats of any kind won’t be tolerated.

“Any time you make a threat whether it be in person or on social media, McAllen ISD is going to take that threat very seriously and we are going to look at our student code of conduct and our penal code and we are going to be very aggressive in targeting these matters,” Gonzalez explained.

In Tuesday night’s town hall meeting, many parents shared concerns. Other had a few recommendations for the district. Gonzalez says their words didn’t fall on deaf ears.

“So we are going to get together tomorrow with the district emergency management team. We are going to decipher all of these questions. We are going to look at all these concerns and all these ideas to see what we can do to implement immediately,” Gonzalez told CHANNEL 5 NEWS.

Gonzalez added that parents play a role in school safety as well. He said creating an open dialogue with children about issues they’re experiencing in or outside of school is priceless.

Arias said the meeting calmed many of his fears. He looks forward to attending more school district town halls. He encourages any parents who weren’t able to attend the town hall to contact the district to share your concerns and recommendations as well.

The town hall meeting streamed on the district's Facebook account. You can watch most of the meeting below.