As the Wichita school district and city of Wichita try to settle their differences over how to pay for 22 school resource officers in middle and high schools, here’s something to ponder out of Riley County, which is having a similar debate. According to the Manhattan Mercury, Riley County Police Department Director Mike Watson — the former Wichita police chief who pitched the SRO program to the Wichita district a decade ago — proposes that the three school districts in Riley County that use SROs start paying 25 percent of the cost of the officers. The city of Wichita wants the Wichita district to pay at least half.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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8 Comments
Rhonda – why is that a problem? The SRO’s were a pilot program to see how they would work and they were given money to test it. This saved the schools and cities a lot of money to get the program fine tuned and the time to decide if it was a good program.
Now that the pilot money is gone it is time to decide if the schools really want the program or not? If they do then paying half is a lot better than paying 100% of it. The city is being more than fair.
It appears that the schools cannot control their students and they want a police officer on site and that is fine but they should pay for it.
It’s a sad fact that schools require police officer presence in our schools.
That shouldn’t even be a thought, but the way the ghetto and deviant culture has swept through our youth, police are needed to keep the peace.
Only in public schools!
And Joe! Unless one can afford to pay the taxes that support public schools and private school tuition at the same time, one’s children are required by law to attend these schools! Where they require police protection!
Most organizations now days have mission statements which defines their purpose for existence.
I suspect it’s the mission of the City of Wichita’s Police Department to provide a safe and secure environment for Wichita’s citizens including school age young people.
It’s the mission of the schools to provide an education to approximately 49,000 students of all shapes and sizes, a staggering mission in itself, along with busing some, feeding many, and providing salaries/benefits to some 8,000 district employees.
Among other things, these figures show that almost 20% of the City of Wichita’s entire population is in the schools during each school day.
Police departments usually estimate manpower needs based on some number, say two officers per thousand population.
So the way I figure this, the Wichita police department should furnish 114 officers divided by two (for a 12 hour day) or 57 officers to the school system before the school district puts up a penny.
And if more officers are needed by the schools, figure the fair charge based on the officers’ actual salary not bloated up with pro-rata costs of police cars, police dogs, police horses, horse and dog food, rent for the police department in City Hall, etc.
Virtually the same public is paying the taxes to support these costs in either case. Its basically the old shell game … just which shell is the pea under?
Another alternative is for USD 259 to form a highly trained in-school security force to actually do this work. This might actually be preferable in order to train the security force specifically how to work in the schools. I hope we don’t get to this because the SRO’s (city police officers in the schools) I have known, have been a huge plus to the schools they serve.
Wink – The money comes from different sources. So it does make a difference.
Schools are responsible for the safety of the children. If they need law enforcement then hire them. It’s that simple.
The sad fact is that schools don’t need on site police officers. Are the police so overworked that they cant respond to the few situations that might arise. Several Million dollars also seems high for 22 part time officers with summers weekends and holidays off. Why do Rural and suburban schools need SRO I know the Goddard, Andover, etc aren’t overworked.
I guess it kinda scares me that Manhattan schools need SROs, too.The only time you saw police at Manhattan High was when we played Junction City.Mama always made me pack her Mace for that game.
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