As the budget planning for the city of Copperas Cove and the Copperas Cove ISD begins soon, both entities will be looking at additional police officers.
The reason: The school district is requesting three additional school resource officers — one for each junior high and one to roam between all the schools.
Currently, the school district reimburses the city for the salary of two full-time school resource officers at Copperas Cove High School.
“We just think it’s important to increase that presence here as a deterrent,” said Joe Burns, superintendent of Copperas Cove ISD. “It’s a different world today than it was 20 years ago.”
The school district and the police department have been in the process of drafting a revised contract that would account for the new officers, but nothing has been solidified yet.
As part of the contract, much like it does now, the school district would reimburse the city for a majority of the new resource officers’ salaries for when school is in session, while the city would be responsible for the rest, Police Chief Eddie Wilson explained during the Feb. 21 city council meeting.
“The three SROs that they would like to see added, they would be covered for a period of 39 weeks (by the school district), so it would be up to the city to cover the expense of having those officers on staff,” Wilson said, further explaining they would have to be three new positions dedicated to that duty.
“There’s no way that we could absorb that by sending three of our current officers into that program,” he said. “We would have to hire additional officers to serve in that school resource position.”
Wilson said he was not at the council meeting seeking approval of the agreement but merely for the council’s awareness and to receive suggested amendments or changes.
City Manager Ryan Haverlah confirmed Wednesday that the applicable expenses for the officers would be included in the city’s budget planning process for the Fiscal Year 2024 budget.
Burns also confirmed the school district will do the same.
While Burns admitted the ideal thing to do would be to have a school resource officer at every one of the district’s 11 campuses, he said budget concerns hold it back from doing so.
“I think that would be an ideal thing to do,” he said. “The challenge is how do you pay for it. Because right now, for two officers, we pay more than $150,000 a year just for two officers.”
In the meantime, the district has invested in security upgrades for all campuses by having single points of entry and secure vestibules that prevent access to the rest of the building.
(1) comment
I believe it would be a great investment for our student's safety all all schools to install a magnetron. I think they could catch someone carrying any weapons into the school and take action immediately.
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