The main point of our editorialtoday was to urge the Wichita City Council and Wichita school board to get past the impasse on continued funding for the 22 school resource officers. But some readers reacted strongly to our statement that "taxpayers may be wondering why these two governing bodies seem so proprietary about money that all comes from the same place — taxpayers’ pockets." That point applies to most Wichita residents and, arguably, all Kansas taxpayers. But the readers, among those who live in both the Wichita city limits and the Goddard school district, suggested that Wichita’s USD 259, especially with its recent increase in state funding, should be able to cover half or more of the cost of its own security officers. As for the school board’s insistence on paying half of the cost for just the nine-month school year: "You can’t just pay for something just for when you’re using it, because that’s not the only cost involved," said reader Roy Richter. What do bloggers think?
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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29 Comments
I don’t see the argument for the schools paying for this. Providing police protection where it’s needed and paying the police is the city’s job.
Todd:
Because when the city assigns officers specifically to particular schools as SRO, those officers are unavailable for other general duties. Those other duties are still needed, and the city has to pay to replace those officers. And the primary beneficiary of dedicated SROs are the schools, not the public at large.
It’s only fair for the schools to bear a substantial part of those costs, at least for the time the officers are in the school, i.e. during the school year.
My thoughts on this issue are simple: For the length of the school year, the BOE pays the full costs of SROs; for the rest of the year, those costs are borne by the City. GMC’s post provides the rationale for my thoughts.
Guess it’s a sign of getting old…discussing SRO’s in school. The only time we saw cops when I went to school was when school let out and the town cops set up speed traps to catch the newbie drivers.
But to be fair, I agree with GMC’s assessment as well. 9 months, BOE pays and the remainder the City pays.
All in favor say aye..All opposed say nay..
aye
How do other communities with SROs deal with the cost? Is it borne by the city, the school district, or some combination?
The school district is an overlapping organization. Given it exists inside/over the city foundation there can be two outcomes.1) the city issues some tax anticipation notes2) the School Board an city agree to a 70/30 payment system.3) the school board issues some bonds and increases the number of bake sales to secure the bonds.
Protect the children. Failure to find a solution means our children will pay in the end.
A PDF reference on everything you wanted to know about SRO’s.
http://www.schoolsecurity.org/resources/2001NASROsurvey%20NSSSS.pdf
Here is a cut n’ paste of how it’s broken down of what agency pays what: “…
28 percent of police departments split the cost of SRO programswith their schools
26% fund the program primarily from police department budgets
21% fund it primarily through theschool district budget.
24% fund the programs primarily through grants.”
I live in the City of Wichita. However, I also live in the Goddard school district. Is Wichita going to pay for SROs for the schools the children in my neighborhood attend?
hmmm, my answer to your question is, “No; the Goddard school district should pay for them, at least for the school year”.
Which is why I agree with you and GMC and others above that 259 should pay for theirs.
Another observation on why USD 259 needs to pay full costs of SROs during the school year: It has apparently been deemed that SROs are necessary for student security in the buildings. If students do not feel secure, no formal education will take place. Thus, the cost of security as implemented by use of SROs is properly a cost of education, and should be borne by the schools.
If they would get all the teachers a bat and demand they use it they would not need a SRO or whatever.
My first day of high school changed dramatically after seeing the Football coach dragging the big lineman down the hall by the ear for being in the hall after the bell rang and setting him in the chair.
There were NO MORE people in the hall after that. Sort of a “Book-em Danno” moment.
It seems to me that the tax payers are being “snowed” .First off, student discipline should be up to the schools and the parents.. you should not have high price police officers baby sitting these children,young women and young men.The police officers are being paid by the city via the tax payer for law enforcement. Keep the school districts out of it when it comes to funds.. The city should decide how many(SRO) officers that the districts need through input from the school districts. The city needs to increase their officer rolls if needed. Why have all of the record keeping problems that comes with two separate funding systems (even more if you go with each school district). If the city wants the state to fund the salaries of the SRO, then they should go to the state with a request (just another way to get in the tax payers pockets). I also believe that if the SRO’s are used in the schools, the SRO’s should be assgned from school to school rather then being in the same school all the time. I don’t believe the SRO’s should be on first name basis with the students.
What private company can charge the city or county for the cost of its internal security needs? Does Wal-mart get to slough off on police or sheriff’s department personnel the cost of patroling parking lots? I think USD 259 has had the better part of this deal in the past, and ought to start paying their fair share now that they are receiving additional millions from the state.
I don’t have a problem with different governmental agencies sharing some security costs, and the WPD does gain some benefit from being in close proximity to teenagers. But if USD 259 doesn’t think that a 50/50 cost sharing relationship is fair, then they are myopic and naive.
I’m sure that if the BOE and the Superintendent see this, it will be cited as another reason the district can’t afford to pay for SROs:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/11/15/cityschools.science.ap/index.html
The above is a report from 10 urban districts that volunteered to have 4th graders and 8th graders take a national science assessment; basically, these students underperformed the rest of the country’s schools whose students also took the test. This is a problem, to be sure; Mr. Brooks is quite fond of reminding us that USD 259 is an urban district, so I’m sure he will come up with some plan for intervention and remediation for underperforming students in science that will use up money which otherwise should be used for SROs.
I really think the answer to this, among other problems with the schools, could be better addressed by setting the bar high, having the same expectations for all students, differential pay scales for teachers (who are competent) in areas such as math and science where there is a large shortage, etc., which I contend would be money better spent than on “intervention and remediation” programs which, as far as I can tell, are of limited success. See state assessment score article in today’s WE. Many of the schools which are doing poorly have been intervening and remediating for years.
Vaughn:
As an ex school teacher, I have no doubt that expectations drive results. Expect high standards, and you’ll largely get high results. Expect mediocrity, and that’s what you get. We too easily accept mediocrity.
More dollars won’t solve the problem. We’ll just get more of what we do now.
I’d oppose teachers being paid according to what they teach; it implies that some subjects are more “needed” or “important” than others. I understand the market rationale. I could support some sort of merit pay, however, combined with the usual pay scale based upon years and education. The trick is to come up with a merit system that is fair and objectively measurable, as much as possible, and not use merit pay as simply a way to reward or punish certain staff.
can the cops hire security gaurds for 10 bucks an hour with no benifits. it worked when i went to north. as a matter of fact the fat ass security guard is still there.
The district should foot the bill for 9 months. Then assign the officers traffic duty on the I-35 during the summer to nab all those out-of-state tourists who speed through our territory. Officers could issue them citations and hand out free passes to Cowtown, the Zoo and Exploration Place, sort of a stick and carrot approach.
Did anyone read this caller to today’s Opinion Line?
“My husband is a Wichita police officer who works as a school resource officer. The school district should pay the entire cost. He has better things he could be doing instead of baby-sitting your spoiled, undisciplined brats.”
IF that man feels as his wife does we DON’T need him in any of our schools! It doesn’t matter who pays the bills!
If I recall the statistics correctly, USD 259 has some 8,000 staff members and 49,000 students in the schools on a daily basis. This adds up to about 57,000 Wichita citizens.
The mission of the Wichita Police Department is “To provide professional and ethical public safety services in partnership with citizens to identify, prevent and solve problems of crime and fear of crime, social disorder and neighborhood decay thereby improving quality of life in our community.”
The Wichita Police Department has about two employees, both commissioned and civilian employees, per 1,000 population of Wichita. So the way, I see it, the Wichita Police Department is obligated and staffed up to provide 110 officers/civilians divided by three (three shifts per day) to protect the 55,000 USD 259 employees who are at work during the day, equals about 36 officers. Or consider East High School with about 2,500 students/staff, the Police Department should furnish about 15 officers.
My figures are a little hurried, but it seems to me the Police Department has an obligation to provide adequate safety services in selected schools.
Obviously the money comes from the same taxpayers but through different channels to get there, either directly through the City or channeled throught the State of Kansas to USD 259. I would say it would be generous of the school system to chip in to an activity which the Police Department is obligated by its own Mission Statement to provide.
But seriously, it is sad that the school environment has deteriorated so badly in the past three decades that SROs are needed. Maybe we need more vocational-training alternatives for teenagers who don’t want to be in regular school.
Perhaps we need to think about a three extended-period course model, for students who want to go to college, but either aren’t making it to college, or are dropping out. Extended-time subject study would enable kids to get something useful out of academic courses. In the college realm, for example, faculty are increasingly concerned about students’ lack of critical thinking skills, and study skills, much more than they are worred about students’ lack of specific subject-content knowledge.
I think that note-taking should be taught, and graded, in traditional academic courses. This skill is one of the secrets to academic success in college and beyond. It changes classroom attendance from a passive to an active experience.
I favor merit-based pay. In our economy the old industries use seniority-based pay scales. These are going overseas. It’s not just a blue-collar issue. Take a young engineer who is offered jobs in the Old Economy. He/she will start at $40,000, and be gradually promoted to higher levels of responsibility and pay. But consider the Silicon Valley model of starting salaries that are relatively “lower”, in terms of cost of living being much higher, combined with stock options. In the latter situation, the new economy companies differentially attract higher talent and get much greater work outputs from their employees.
The industrial revolution was premised on using low individual-worker outputs to generate high aggregate outputs and revenues by sheer mass numbers of workers. The postindustrial economy operates on a paradigm of high individual-worker outputs. Our schools, with occasional exceptions, haven’t caught on to this. They are a quintessential industrial age institution.
Why should we pay very knowledgeable math and science teachers more money than language arts and social studies teachers? For a number of reasons. Math and science major students study much more than their humanities/social science counterparts. They graduate with much more work-experience under their belts. I’m sorry if some people don’t believe this, but go to any dorm today and see who’s got the stereo blaring, and who’s partying mid-week. It ain’t the math and science students, folks.
Who does summer work in their field? Let’s see, I worked in a crops research lab after freshman year (did a lot of grunt work, figured out how to do it efficiently and get 8 hours of assigned work done in 5, and then was sent to the electron microscopy lab as a reward), a medical lab after sophomore year, and a molecular bio lab after junior year.
I studied 35 hours a week–after spending 20 hours in classes.
If I had chosen a science teaching career, would these experiences have been credited, e.g. by giving me an experience bonus? No. Would I have been able to alternatively teach only 3 classes a day, at the conventional salary, but teach three classes in an outstanding manner? No.
How could I maximize my income in the school system? By going into administration.
If you examine the university system, science and engineering profs in leading research universities earn $200,000+ incomes doing consulting work, serving on advisory boards, and receiving patent royalties for inventions.
Knowledge in math and science pays well. Our schools need to “get” this.
GMC, I have tried to come up with ideas on how to measure “merit” which rewards the better teachers on a fair basis. Every time I think I have something, on further reflection I acknowledge that an unscrupulous administrator could turn it into a reward for those who “play nice” and punishment for those who don’t.
Notwithstanding the emphasis on assessments in NCLB, I don’t think student performance on those provide any real measure of quality of instruction. It would be easy to say that if a certain teacher’s students outperforms the expected on certain assessments, e.g., reading at a higher grade level than those students of a different teacher, the first teacher should be rewarded. This, of course, ignores the other variables in the classes tested.
I believe that among the most important teachers in the system are those in the first three grades. If students do not leave grade 3 with the basics, e.g., able to read, write, and do basic arithmetic, these students are, IMHO, doomed. However, these are also the students whose abilities, I am told, are most difficult to assess. But, there are many elementary ed majors who are not comfortable with mathematics, from my observation; and should we leave the basic instruction in a subject so fundamental to future success to those uncomfortable with it?
I guess the best way to encapsulate my many ideas on the subject is to say the entire methodology of education needs to be examined, and a “fair” method of compensating teachers arrived at, or we are doomed to fall further behind in education of our children.
I do believe the school district can/should pay for SRO’s. I believe that yes some of the issues we have today start at home, but they finish at school. Children are being picked on and bullied everyday, and teachers and school officials let them get away with this, then it becomes a issues like what we see today when we need the SRO’s in schools to protect. I believe schools are a scary place and feel sorry for kids these days. I think this is why we see home schooling more and more, and I worry and wonder if some of the parents that are home schooling have what it takes to teach their own children. Did the parents make the grades, understand and learn it all, or even graduate? As far as ways the school USD259 can pay for this. Well I believe they can raise money. Take for instance Wilbur Middle school is letting a church use their building on Sunday’s. If they are using it free it should be rented.(I did not think we were to mix church and school?) I totally do not agree with this, but it is being done, so take that money and other monies that they are making and fund these SRO’s.
Diane, not to mention the real probability of gang intrusions, etc., during the day, and other bad things that were not an issue ~40 years ago when I was in high school.
When I was a kid, the teachers were only mildly annoyed when we showed up smelling like weed.
MOST of the kids that I’m talking about made good grades, did not disrupt class, and were almost never violent or out of control.
And they were always first in line for lunch.
My, how things have changed.Now if ya’ show up smelling funny, you’re too immoral to be in the chess club!
Ok, i have been reading this and of course have to stick my two cents in…
I agree with heartlander’s numbers. there is a significant number of students/staff that “need to be protected”. BUT, i also think that because of the fact that there are people in Wichita who live in other school districts who are already paying for SRO’s for those districts. Why should they pay for SRO’s out of their Wichita tax dollars for the Wichita School district?
I think it should be paid for by the school district 100%. Also, why do they need Police officers? Why not private security? (i can understand some of the answers like no respect, etc…) But seriously?
Private security can be armed, private security can carry cuffs, private security can tackle suspects with the rest of them, and they are half the cost…
just a thought…. Make the school district ensure the entire cost of any security or officers when on school property.
People who live in Wichita but in the Maize school district should pay for Wichita school district’s police officers when they are already paying for their own…
As I understand it, Wichita’s USD 259 achool district, and presumably other area school districts, furnishes its own uniformed safety officers to many schools IN ADDITION to the SRO officers provided by the Wichita Police Department.
A difference is USD 259 safety officers do not carry guns or tasers nor have the power of arrest. These additional security features are provided by the commissioned police officers. Sometimes three USD 259 officers are provided for each commissioned Wichita police officer.
Every day, USD 259 schools and support buildings house some 8,000 teachers and support staff PLUS some 48,000 students. These people add up to some 16% of the entire Wichita population.
Clearly school populations need and deserve safe working conditions just as the regular population outside the schools. Therefore it appears to me the City of Wichita should pay for all commissioned SRO officers who are needed in the school system.
My point is why should someone who lives in Goddard or Maize or Valley Center schools pay for Wichita SRO’s?
They should. The school district should pay the FULL cost. Now, I do think they city should assist slightly in the costs because they do employ 16% of the city by giving discounts or grants or what ever.
The other thing is the district can apply for federal grants and funding for security funding…