The School Board for the Pulaski County Special School District on Tuesday approved job cuts in the administration of its safety and security department as part of an overall plan to save $446,716 in support staff costs in the 2018-19 school year.
The safety and security plan replaces the director and two coordinator jobs with two safety facilitators, reducing the salary and benefits cost of the department's administration from $324,012 a year to $182,297.
The School Board has now cut about $1.2 million in both licensed and support staff jobs for the coming year, Chief Financial Officer Denise Palmer said. That is expected to ease the district's anticipated draw from its reserve funds to meet expenses in the 2018-19 school year.
As its stands, the district will have to pull $6 million from its $17.2 million in savings next year, but the $129 million annual budget is not due to the state Department of Education until September, leaving time to make additional financial changes, Palmer said. Routinely drawing on savings to meet annual costs can put a district in jeopardy of the state Department of Education taking control.
Paul Brewer, the district's executive director of human resources, told the board that the 26 school security officers who are assigned to specific schools will be supervised by their school principals rather than by the safety department director.
The new safety facilitators will be responsible for managing the day-to-day security operations of the district as well as making recommendations on security plans and plan adjustments, conducting school safety audits, preparing budgets, serving as liaisons to local law enforcement agencies, and overseeing the district's illicit drug and alcohol testing program.
The School Board approved the safety and security department reorganization at a meeting in which Maj. Carl Minden of the Pulaski County sheriff's office spoke at the board's invitation on the possibility of providing, or at least sharing in the costs of adding, school resource officers -- armed sheriff's deputies -- to as many as nine schools that are within the jurisdiction of the sheriff's office.
The district already has school resource officers from local police departments at some Sherwood and Maumelle area schools. Sheriff's deputies, however, were pulled from school resource officer responsibilities several years ago as the result of budget cuts in Pulaski County government, Minden said.
"We're hoping that by the start of the school year to have something in place," Minden said about the campus-based officers, noting that sheriff's office representatives have conferred with Barry Hyde, the county judge of Pulaski County, about the desire and need for resource officers and the potential costs for assigning officers to at least some campuses.
"There will be dedicated deputies. We just can't say they will be full time at Mills High," said Minden, who added, "There is no downside to having a school resource officer."
Metro on 05/09/2018