Denying they oppose protection of students on school grounds, the Volusia County Council has unanimously rejected a request from the School Board to share the cost of putting law-enforcement officers at seven middle schools.
“There’s nobody up here that is against school safety,” County Chair Jeff Brower told Volusia School District administrators who had come to present their request. “That’s your responsibility.”
With a unanimous vote, the council Nov. 7 turned down the School Board’s call for partial funding to station deputies at the middle schools. The hard-line negative response was based on the timing of the request, coming well after the county’s Fiscal Year 2023-2024 began Oct. 1. The School District, which is an agency of the state government, sets July 1 as the beginning of its fiscal year, and the new academic year — when schools opened for classes — began in mid-August.
“How did we get here? Why are we at the 13th hour?” Council Member Troy Kent asked. “At the 13th hour, in November, we’re being asked.”
“The request came in mid-October,” County Manager George Recktenwald said.
The middle schools at which the deputies would be assigned are Deltona, Galaxy, Heritage, Holly Hill, Creekside, Silver Sands and Southwestern.
Each of the schools now has a guardian, an armed staffer to provide or augment on-campus security, but the School Board had asked for a uniformed deputy to be on hand, as well as a guardian during the school day. Guardians do not have arrest powers, but deputies do.
“Our guardians can’t put hands on [people],” Council Member Don Dempsey said.
The cost of assigning a deputy at each of the seven middle schools and having a sergeant over them is $762,000. The School District’s share of the expense is 55 percent, or about $419,000, while the county’s share would be 45 percent, or about $343,000.
Patty Corr, the School District’s assistant superintendent of student services, highlighted the need for deputies, noting the schools are logging “more and more serious incidents at a younger age.”
Those incidents, she said, involve drugs, alcohol, weapons and physical assaults. Such incidents are few when a deputy or uniformed police officer is present to deter bad behavior.
“We’re required by law to have an armed guardian or a law-enforcement officer,” Corr said. “They’re assigned to that school and are part of the community. … The guardians are employed by us. … Deputies are employed by the Sheriff’s Office.”
Corr brought with her a PowerPoint that noted River Springs Middle School, located in Orange City, experienced a sharp drop in serious incidents because of the presence of a police officer at the school. In the first quarter of the 2022-23 academic year, River Springs recorded 288 serious acts. For the first quarter of the 2023-24 academic year, however, there were “only 33.”
When a serious incident occurs or there is a threat at a school without an armed adult on duty, school personnel call for emergency help and wait until a police officer or a deputy on patrol responds to the scene.
Brower acknowledged the need for beefed-up school security, contrasting nowadays with past times when he was a student.
“It’s a different time when the problems were chewing gum and smoking in the boys’ room. We have a wide-open Southern border, and we don’t know who’s coming. We have wars, and I don’t want to see Jewish students hurt. … I look at this and see this is your jurisdiction,” Brower said.
The County Council’s decision to pass up funding also stemmed from the awareness of the School District’s budget and its fund balance. Referring to the School District’s budget, Kent said the agency has money in reserves to cover the expense.
“This falls on the Volusia County Schools,” Kent continued. “They can pay the difference of $327,000 [actually almost $343,000], when they are sitting on reserves of almost $27 million.”
Council Member David Santiago added to the rebuke of the School District.
“I think it should be a unanimous vote to deny,” he said, before turning to Corr and Deputy Superintendent Rachel Hazel. “Make sure you have your house in order before you come to us.”
Kent moved to deny the School District’s request for county cash to pay for more deputies as school-resource officers. Council Member Jake Johansson seconded, and the vote was 7-0.
Stung by the County Council’s rebuff of its request, the School District later issued a statement decrying the rejection.
“We are disappointed in the council’s decision not to support this request that was made in conjunction with the Sheriff’s Office,” the statement reads in part.
The statement noted that the seven middle schools previously had deputies on campus before the pandemic.
“The safety and security of our students and staff is, and always will be, the top priority of Volusia County Schools, the Volusia County School Board, Superintendent Dr. [Carmen] Balgobin, and all Volusia County Schools staff members,” the statement concludes.
The County Council pushed back hard, and rightfully so, against members of the school system’s administration who came before them asking for county tax dollars to help pay for additional school resource officers (deputy sheriffs) for Creekside Middle School in Port Orange, Deltona Middle School, Galaxy Middle School in Deltona, Heritage Middle School in Deltona, Holly Hill Middle School, and Silver Sands Middle School in Port Orange, all within city boundaries, and Southwestern Middle School, in the county.
Here are just a few of the issues members of the County Council brought up:
The request is coming in for this budget year that started Oct. 1, thus the County Council would have to make budget adjustments to accommodate the $342,905.11 requested. Florida law puts the responsibility of school safety on the school boards in the state, and the Volusia County School Board’s budget exceeds the County of Volusia’s general fund budget.
Additionally, the City of Daytona Beach provides nine officers in schools, with a 50/50 split for funding between the school system and the city.
The City of DeLand provides two officers in schools, with a 50/50 split.
The City of New Smyrna Beach has one officer in a school, with a 50/50 split.
The City of Orange City has one officer in a school, with a 50/50 split.
The City of Ormond Beach has one officer in a school, with a 50/50 split.
South Daytona has one officer in a school, with a 50/50 split, and here, the School Board is asking the County Council to use county tax dollars to fund deputies in six schools that are located in cities at a 55-percent School Board/45-percent county split. This is not fair to those who pay taxes to the county’s general fund and pay taxes to the School Board. That would be two different taxes on the ad valorem tax bill and an additional half-cent sales tax on most things we purchase. I should also note, members of the school system told the County Council it was important to have the extra deputies yet when asked what they would do if they didn’t get extra funds from the County they said they would just leave things as they are.
And it is not fair to those taxpayers in the cities that also help provide school resource officers in their cities. If this proposal were approved, people in those cities would have been forced to help fund school security in other cities that refuse to help fund school resource officers in their locale.
Additionally, as was brought to you by County Council Member Troy Kent, the Sheriff’s Office, in most cases, is charging almost twice the hourly rate for a deputy as the cities are charging the school system for an officer. And know this, there are already armed school guardians in all of the schools mentioned.
Our County Council hit it out of the park this time with their pushback against the School Board’s request, a School Board that just keeps wastefully spending and dipping into our pockets anyway they can find.
Again — great job on this one, Volusia County Council, and thank you, Council Member Kent, for taking the School Board’s staff to task over this and looking out for the taxpayers.
To watch the entire discussion the County Council had, visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4ScykXWybk and go to the 2:24:45 point in the video.