Some schools might lack full-time law enforcement

Demings: Orange couldn’t hire enough deputies; funding insufficient for mandate

Some school campuses in unincorporated Orange County may not have law-enforcement officers present during the entire school day when the 2018-19 school year begins Monday, despite a new state law requiring every public school have security personnel.

Sheriff Jerry Demings said Thursday his agency couldn’t hire enough deputies during the five months since the law was passed to guarantee one full-time deputy in every one of the 117 campuses in his jurisdiction. He also said the additional funding that was given to districts — $97.5 million statewide — was not sufficient.

The Orange school district has said it will spend an additional $11.6 million this year to improve security on campuses, including paying for an additional 104 officers.

A new law, passed in the wake of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 17 students and employees dead, requires school districts and law-enforcement agencies to “establish or assign” one or more safe-school officers at each campus. To meet this requirement, districts can allow some school personnel to carry firearms on campus or hire additional non-law-enforcement employees to serve in this role.

Orange has chosen not to do this, instead deciding to staff schools with officers through contracts with local law-enforcement agencies and the use of the district’s in-house police force. The

school district and Sheriff ’s Office are still working out details of an agreement.

School district attorney Woody Rodriguez said he doesn't think the law demands a one-to-one ratio of officers to school campuses from the first bell until dismissal.

“’You shall assign an officer to each school’ does not mean having an officer present every minute of the day,” he said.

A spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Education declined to say whether a single officer could be assigned to more than one school. In a letter to school districts dated March 23, Gov. Rick Scott wrote that he expected “at least one school safety officer at each school at the beginning of the 2018-2019 school year.”

And in May, Demings wrote in memo to Orange County commissioners that the law “requires the presence of at least one School Safety Officer at each public school campus during school hours.”

As in the past, Orange leaders said, each high school will have two lawenforcement officers and each middle school will have one. And the rest of the county’s schools will have more officers on campus than before.

“The ratios that we have today are much improved,” Rodriguez said.

In the May memo, Demings wrote that he needed an additional 66 deputies, plus five or six supervisors to comply with the new mandate.

Because of the time needed to hire and train new deputies, he wrote, he expected to fulfill the requirement during the 2018-2019 school year mostly by paying existing deputies overtime at an expected cost of $6.8 million.

Though Demings said his agency would be “covering” every school, he would not specify to the Sentinel how deputies will be allocated to the schools in his jurisdiction, citing concerns about security.

“It does us no good to talk specifically about how they will be assigned,” said Demings, who is campaigning for Orange County mayor in the Aug. 28 primary.

But other Orange County agencies did.

The Orlando Police Department will assign an officer to every city campus, as will seven other smaller law-enforcement agencies that have public schools in their jurisdictions.

In Orlando, that’s a huge jump from last year, when a single officer was assigned to four elementary campuses.

“Now each elementary school will have one officer all the time,” spokeswoman Michelle Guido wrote in an email.

Other agencies also said each school will have its own officer.

The only exceptions: Two pairs of schools located directly next to each other — SunRidge Elementary and SunRidge Middle in Winter Garden, as well as Ocoee Elementary and Ocoee Middle — will share.

In Seminole County, each of the traditional public school campuses will have its own law-enforcement officer, as they have had in the two previous school years.

The officers arrive before the school day starts and stay after the dismissal bell rings, often working at after-school and weekend extracurricular activities.

The Lake County school district has agreements with the Sheriff’s Office and nine municipalities.

In three cities — Eustis, Lady Lake and Umatilla — trained administrators or employees hired specifically to be safety guardians will serve in this role.

“In no instance do we have one officer or hired safety guardian assigned to multiple campuses,” spokeswoman Sherri Owens wrote in an email.