Fair, 52°
Weather sponsored by:

BCC offers to fund School Resource Officers

Debra W. Buehn
Posted 4/25/18

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

Log in

Don't have an ID?


Print subscribers

If you're a print subscriber, but do not yet have an online account, click here to create one.

Non-subscribers

Click here to see your options for subscribing.

Single day pass

You also have the option of purchasing 24 hours of access, for $1.00. Click here to purchase a single day pass.

BCC offers to fund School Resource Officers


Posted

GREEN COVE SPRINGS – Framing it as their “best offer,” Clay County Commissioners Tuesday approved some $2.1 million to protect students by helping put School Resource Officers in every public school.

The funding is in answer to fulfilling a recent state-mandate to provide armed officers or some sort of guardian in every public school to protect against deadly shootings like the recent situation that occurred in Parkland. The county commission and school board met in a workshop session April 18 to discuss how to fund the mandate without arriving at a consensus. Tuesday’s action by the county commission was its answer to the situation.

“I feel like the school board wants to know our best offer and so to me this is our best offer,” said Commissioner Diane Hutchings. “Let’s go ahead and put it out there and maybe that will give them what they need to move forward and let’s get this solved.”

Agreeing it was the commission’s “best offer,” Chairman Gavin Rollins said, “This isn’t easy. It’s not like we have this money sitting there to give out.” But he added, the safety of the county’s children was a “priority.”

“We have an ethical and moral responsibility for the safety of our community and we all take that very seriously,” Rollins said.

The county commissioners’ “offer” came in the form of two separate votes and two separate sources of funding.

Commissioners first unanimously approved a one-time allocation of $1.8 million from the county’s capital improvement plan that would provide for vehicles and related equipment that the sheriff’s department would need to provide for deputies serving as resource officers to kick off the program.

The second vote was for providing $300,000 from the county’s fine and forfeiture fund to the sheriff’s department for operational purposes needed to provide for fulfillment of the mandate. That vote was 4-1, with Commissioner Gayward Hendry dissenting, saying he would like to see more of a decision from the school board as to how it was going to respond to the mandate.

All funding is contingent on the school board’s action at its meeting next week on whether the sheriff will be hiring more officers, said Stephanie Kopelousos, county manager.

The $2.1 million brings the county’s contribution to nearly 50 percent for the start-up costs estimated for the Clay County Sheriff’s Office to provide for 44 school resource officers – one in each of the county’s public schools and two charter schools. (The county currently funds 62 percent of the SROs already operating at the high schools in the county and Bannerman Learning Center.) Hutchings serves as board president of St. Johns Classical Academy charter school where her daughter, Clay County School Board member Ashley Gilhousen sends two of her children.

The county already has $883,000 in its current budget for the school district. That leaves the school board with about $575,000 to come up with to fulfill the sheriff’s department estimate of $4.5 million to start up the SRO program for this fiscal year, which for the sheriff’s department ends Sept. 30, said Commissioner Mike Cella.

It was Cella who proposed adding the $300,000 to the pot for this year’s start-up costs.

To start the program up, many new deputies, in addition to those already working as SROs, would have to be hired to place a resource officer in every school, said Sheriff Darryl Daniels. In actuality, he said, they should already have been hired to meet the state’s deadline of starting the mandate at the beginning of the 2018-2019 school year.

The state did provide well over $1 million in funding for the program but left the mandate unfunded from there, which leaves a huge gap for the estimated costs for the next fiscal year of about $5.6 million.

According to a press release issued right after the April 24 county commission meeting, the county will keep on with efforts to find a solution to the situation in the future.

“The BCC will continue to collaborate with the Clay County Sheriff’s Office and the Clay County School District to find a funding solution for implementing this state mandate long term,” it was said in the release.

At Tuesday’s meeting, the idea that safety in the schools is a priority came from many sources.

Daniels said people were on the same page when it came to the “mission.”

“The mission is to keep the children of Clay County, the teachers and administration in these schools safe. All the county commissioners are on that page, all the school board members are on that page and the Clay County Sheriff’s Office is definitely on that page. How we get there is what we’ve been debating for weeks,” Daniels said.

Rollins said the school safety was “very personal” to all of the county commissioners. He himself is a special needs teacher in the county, Cella substitutes, Hayward has a master’s degree in educational leadership, Hutchings runs a school and has grandchildren in the schools, and Wayne Bolla once served on the school board.

“We all care deeply about student safety and it’s very personal for all of us,” he said. He added in the county’s press release, “The BCC is taking a stand today and showing the safety of our children is vital. We agreed to delay the county’s priorities of certain road improvement projects, facility improvements and staff benefits to make it possible for the school district to meet this mandate immediately.”

Bolla said he absolutely agreed “protecting our kids” is “something we need to do.” But he added he would like to see more of a plan from the school board.

“The school board has got to step up and suggest that there be the one mill increase if that’s what it’s going to take, and then the citizens of Clay County will decide one way or the other whether there will be or not,” he said.

The board is expected to continue discussing the proposed one mill property tax increase at its May 3 meeting. The issue would be on the Aug. 28 primary election ballot.