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City schools finalizing plans for armed guards
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| By: Theron Fly |
March 20, 2013 |
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Senatobia Municipal School District is moving forward with its plans to add School Resource Officers in each of its school buildings.
During a recent meeting of the district's school board, Superintendent Jay Foster said that his administrative team has been gathering information regarding what adding the SRO's to the schools would require.
Foster estimates that the addition cost for adding the officers will be $166,274. After the initial cost, the yearly cost for the officers would be $115,000.
Foster said that the next thing he plans to do is sit down with city officials to iron out the details and have the district and the city's attorneys get together to draw up an official agreement.
To this point, nothing official has been put in place between Senatobia and the school district.
"We need to try to move forward because the police department needs to start looking at who the actual officers would be," Foster said. "According to the SRO policy, it has to be someone with three years of experience. So they need to go ahead and start looking for those people, because whoever they move out of their existing staff into our SRO positions are people they will need to find replacements for before those people go off."
Foster said that he didn't think the cost would exceed his estimate. If anything, he said, the cost may come in lower. Another possibility to help alleviate some of the cost is through state funding that Foster said the district is working on securing.
In addition to a School Resource Officer, the Senatobia Elementary School, Senatobia Middle School and Senatobia Jr./Sr. High School campuses would each need a vehicle for the officer as well, Foster said.
Foster said he is looking into buying one new vehicle, a Chevrolet Tahoe, that would be placed at the high school and the other schools would receive patrol cars from the Senatobia Police Department's existing fleet.
According to Foster, Senatobia Police Department suggested that the district purchase the Tahoe and Foster said that the vehicle would be the district's to use at its discretion and he'd like to see it used as the school's traveling car, accompanying teams to their away games.
Board President Brant Kairit said that the Tahoe offers greater visibility at the high school, as it would sit higher off of the road than a patrol car.
"It would be more visible, which is kind of what we're looking for: a deterrent," Kairit said.
SPD said that most law enforcement agencies are going toward Sports Utility Vehicles, according to Foster.
The school district would also be responsible for 75 percent of the cost of the patrol cars it would be acquiring from the city's fleet. The police department would then need to replace those cars as well.
"There are things that we still have to work out. We're not entering into a final agreement," Foster said. "We just need to try to move forward so that we can come back with a precise agreement."
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©The Democrat 2013
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Jason Skidmore |
Mar, 26 2013 |
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Certainly hope these officers will never be required to draw arms, but I am proud that my hometown is so pro-active in the continuing search for means to keep our children safe from the terror of people who have no regard for human life. Well done, Senatobia...
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