ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – The Orange County School Board will begin meetings with five cities in January regarding school resource officer contracts.
On Tuesday though, the school board discussed whether they should consider replacing some SROs with school guardians instead.
The school district is trying to work out a contract to keep SROs at 30 schools in those five cities: Apopka, Ocoee, Winter Garden, Winter Park and Windermere.
The district said they have offered a 20% increase in SRO salaries, with pay starting at $72,000 in 2024-2025 and rising to $75,000 by the 2026 to 2027 school year. The district says it doesn’t have the money to pay more.
The cities say they want the schools to be safe, but they also want police officers to be fairly compensated, according to statements News 6 obtained from the five cities.
“I feel that the safest learning environment is one in which a school resource officer is on our campus,” said Angie Gallo, OCPS school board member.
Gallo said at some campuses, OCPS may have to turn to guardians, who are limited in their ability to intervene.
“They’d have to sit there and watch (if a fight broke out),” Gallo said. “Their job is very specific in that they are only there to protect the school. In the case of an intruder, everything else that law enforcement does, our campuses, SROs, and guardians can’t do. If a student brings drugs or a weapon to school, they don’t have arrest authority. They can’t take the drugs or take the gun.”
[RELATED: What is Florida’s school guardian program?]
Laura Buck says her 9-year-old twins are in the third grade and even they realize school is not always a safe place. She told News 6 that she worries about their protection and has become an advocate for a group called Mom’s Demand Action.
“It’s just a little disheartening to see that students' security could be negotiated based upon a monetary value so I am concerned about our area and if that becomes enacted,” Buck said.
According to the Florida Sheriff’s Association, the role of SRO includes law enforcement, crime prevention, crisis intervention and even student counseling.
At the OCPS workshop Tuesday, Gallo asked the crowd, “Is anyone else sick to their stomach that we have to have this conversation?”
The Guardian Program trains individuals to provide campus security instead of SROs, but they can’t do things like make arrests.
Some in the meeting said it would not be fair that some schools had SROs and others did not.
School Board Chair Teresa Jacobs said she feared that students and teachers would try to transfer out of schools that don’t have SROs. She requested an analysis to see if they could distribute the funds to cover all 213 schools.
“I think we need to re-think what we are expecting out of each jurisdiction, kind of like how we have done with Lynx, where we divide up the cost of funding Links based on the ridership in each jurisdiction,” Jacobs said.
For the 2024-25 school year, the district has a three-year agreement with the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, Orlando Police Department, Maitland Police Department, and Eatonville Police Department to handle SROs in those areas.
The district says it also has to be prepared for a guardian program as it takes about six months to get up and running.
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