‘We have to take care of our kids’
Schools, cities still working out how to implement security law
A new Florida law says every public school must have police or armed guards when the semester begins this week. But some schools and cities in South Florida and beyond still are working out the cost and logistics of meeting that requirement.
All campuses in the state will be covered for safety when they reopen this month, but many districts are attempting to find enough applicants and money for the program, according to a survey by The Associated Press of Florida’s 67 countywide school districts.
Florida is the first state to require police or armed guards at all public schools. Broward County’s biggest city, Fort Lauderdale, says it will leave the extra expense and staffing up to the school district.
The city will keep the same number of school resource officers— that’s eight — stationed in the same schools as last year, city spokesman Chaz Adams said in an email. The schools without school resource officers, primarily elementary schools, will be staffed by a guardian hired by the Broward County School Board, he said.
The cost of adding armed personnel to elementary schools could hit taxpayers or drain reserves.
However, Fort Lauderdale Vice Mayor Ben Sorensen said the plan is “still under negotiation.”
Six of Florida’s 10 largest districts are hiring armed guardians, including 55 by Broward County. Broward is starting its school year Wednesday.
“When the kids show up on the first day of school, there will be either a guardian or a Broward sheriff’s deputy in each and every school,” Broward Sheriff Scott Israel said recently. City police will be used in other parts of the county.
Broward cities have historically paid for most of the security personnel at middle and high schools within their borders. They pay a little more than $100,000 of the $152,000 cost of each armed police officer or sheriff’s deputy. The school district pays the rest. Armed guards cost less. Leaders in other cities also are grumbling at the impact the state’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act will have on city budgets. Lauderdale Lakes passed a resolution in June urging Broward Schools to fund the entire cost of the armed officer.
“We’re all for safety,” said Vice Mayor Beverly Williams. “But we’re all thinking the School Board could fund it as opposed to asking the cities to do it.”
The city has since made an effort to apply for safety grants to help defray the new cost.
In Oakland Park, city
leaders say they’ll accept this new cost. “At this point, we have to take care of our kids,” said Mayor Tim Lonergan. He does hope, however, that some of the cost gets spread around.
“We need to figure out the solution with our partners,” he said. “But for now, we’re going to make sure we have things covered.”
In districts that won’t have full staffing in place when classes start, local law enforcement agencies are filling gaps by taking officers off the street or paying overtime.
That’s happening in Palm Beach County, which begins its school year today. The district budgeted $9 million to add 75 officers to its 160-member in-house police department, and is asking voters to raise taxes to pay for them. But it isn’t getting enough applicants— Florida has several thousand police and deputy vacancies, and not just for schools.
“There simply are not enough officers to go around,” said Kathy Burstein, Palm Beach schools’ spokeswoman. The district, which has nearly 200,000 students at 170 campuses, will not be arming staff or hiring civilian guards.
Still, “having a police officer in every school is going to send a pretty big message,” said Frank Kitzerow, the chief of the School District Police Department.
In Miramar, there’s been a police officer at every school for more than a decade. New this year, a dedicated officer will be at each location of the city’s charter school. Before this year, one officer had split their time among the three campuses.
“This isn’t something that’s new to us,” said Tania Rues, Miramar’s police spokeswoman. “We’ve been at the forefront of this.”
Miami-Dade County schools plan to have an armed police officer at every school when classes start there on Aug. 20. That county has more than 100 officers committed to the effort, and the district plans to add more.
In Deerfield Beach, the city expects its shareof security
costs is equal to about an extra 8 cents on its tax rate. The act requires four new armed personnel added to the current five officers for which the city was already paying most of the cost of pay and benefits.
“The city of Deerfield Beach has always stepped up,” Deerfield Beach Mayor Bill Ganz said. “Yet this is a failure of the School Board. They have the ability to tax every single property owner in the county and yet we’re paying a portion of the cost that municipalities without schools within their borders don’t pay.”
The school district’s tax bill is where is where the security cost should be, said Ganz.
The legislation makes it clear that putting armed personnel in every school is the responsibility of the state’s school districts.
Broward School Board member Rosalind Osgood said the district is struggling under the weight of the demand to arm the elementary and middle schools that didn’t have armed security personnel last year.
There had been some doubt that enough trained personnel is available to meet the requirement. But those fears were put to rest Wednesday when Daniel Gohl, Broward County public schools chief academic officer, said enough security has been found.
Who will pay for it is still a question, though.
Broward voters on Aug. 28 will be asked to approve $93 million more in school spending, in part to fund the new security requirement. The district is requesting an additional 50 cents for every $1,000 in assessed property value. For a homeowner with a $225,000 home and a standard homestead exemption, that would be about an extra $100 a year.
Information from The Associated Press was used for this report, to which Sun Sentinel staff writers Stephen Hobbs and Scott Travis contributed.