Following the Kosciusko County Council’s unanimous approval on Thursday, the Commissioners on Tuesday unanimously approved the hiring of two school resource officers from the sheriff’s office for Tippecanoe Valley and Warsaw schools.
The council will have to approve an additional appropriation for the two SROs at the council’s September meeting.
Sheriff Jim Smith began the request Tuesday for the SROs with remarks similar to what he said to the council on Thursday.
He said this past spring/early summer, he was approached by Tippecanoe Valley School Corporation Superintendent Blaine Conley about adding a SRO to the Valley school district. When Smith met with Conley, he said he was very candid with him that while he would like to put an officer in every school, he didn’t have the manpower to do so at that time. Conley was aware that staffing could be an issue and he had some monetary avenues he could pull from to financially assist the KCSO with assigning an additional deputy to Tippecanoe Valley Middle School, Mentone and Akron elementaries specifically.
Shortly after Smith met with Conley, he also met with Warsaw Community School Corporation Superintendent Dr. David Hoffert and they had a similar conversation. Warsaw wanted to add an SRO to its school district for the three elementary schools that are in the KCSO jurisdiction - Leesburg, Madison and Claypool. Like Conley, Hoffert alluded that there would be some additional funds on the school district’s end to partner with the KCSO for the SRO.
“After many meetings, discussions and research, the agreement was made between the KCSO and the two school districts to create a partnership that would entail a four-year term MOU contract for an 80/20 split, a responsibility of the cost for each SRO. This will leave the county to only fund 20% for each SRO,” Smith said. “What this could mean for us is an appropriation for funds to hire two deputies to backfill the two deputies that we would promote within our ranks currently at the sheriff’s office for the SRO positions, and as we move forward we would adjust the budget for these increases.”
He said they’ve analyzed the total costs associated with making the increases, and after looking at the wage, retirement, benefits, insurance and the cost of a patrol vehicle - along with outfitting the vehicle - they estimated 80% portion that each school corporation would be responsible for is $110,081.97 per year. The 20% portion the county would be responsible for would be $27,521.46 per year for each deputy.
“I feel it’s important to note that outside the 180 days of school, these deputies will get assigned a patrol and our special traffic details,” Smith said. This would actually benefit the county because the KCSO’s busiest time is when the kids are out of school. “I couldn’t be more excited about the potential opportunity to continue these partnerships with the school districts in our community, and the chance to advance our department’s ability to be a positive influence and have great impacts on these kiddos as they go to school every day while keeping them as safe as possible,” Smith stated.
Smith said the MOU they would like to enter, which county attorney Ed Ormsby has reviewed, would be effective Oct. 1.
Hoffert said, “Safety and security looks a lot different inside of schools than it looked just 20 years ago, 10 years ago, even five years ago. Currently, at Warsaw Community Schools we have four full-time SROs and we have many rotating officers that go throughout our schools on a daily basis.”
He said the response time is probably the biggest concern WCS has, and that’s why they pinpointed Leesburg, Madison and Claypool elementary schools as they are the hardest for officers to get to.
“We realized that we needed a little bit more coverage,” Hoffert said.
Working with Smith, KCSO Chief Deputy Chris McKeand and Sgt. Doug Light is how WCS came up with a plan to “maybe bring down some of our rotating officers and create some full time. We also believe that will provide a relationship inside of our schools. We see that as being a very positive relationship, and our police officers can get to know our students,” Hoffert said.
Conley also said response time is a huge issue at Tippecanoe Valley. They do have one SRO at the high school, but there are times he is off campus and TVSC would like to have that police coverage across the school corporation, especially the main campus that includes the high school, middle school and administration building.
“This opportunity also will provide the DARE program coming back to Tippecanoe Valley after several years. We would like to institute that back at our elementary schools. We see that as being a huge benefit,” Conley said.
Commissioner Bob Conley made a motion to approve the contracts with the school corporations for the SROs, with Commissioner Cary Groninger seconded it. It was approved 3-0.