Cutting The School Resource Officers
What we don't understand about the announced potential cuts of four school resource officers by Sheriff Rick Roth's office is where the School District Administration was when all of this was happening. We don't believe for a Conch minute that the School District was unaware of the potential for cuts. The School District has a liaison with the Sheriff's Office. It is reasonable to assume the School Superintendent knew what was going on. If school officials were co concerned about the potential cuts why weren't they revving up the parents before now?
We wonder whether this situation is not another one of those forget-about-it-until-it-happens situations that has continued to plague this school district's operation. Maybe the School Superintendent is confident that the positions will in fact not be cut or will be restored in the end. We don't know.
What we do know is that the Sheriff's Office doesn't just willy-nilly make cuts. Position cuts are a matter of the tough choices that have to be made among scarce resources. Does one increase this response team or that response team? Does one devote more resources to the schools or to the road? Does one put more resources into crime prevention or to apprehension? Ideally, the Sheriff's Office would like to have the resources to put more of them toward every one of these activities. But the resources just aren't there. So the Office has to make some hard choices about where to put the resources it does have. At the end of the day, it all comes down to money.
The County Commission or the School District (or both) could allocate more money for the school resource officers. Of course, it is still the Sheriff's call whether to assign the officers to that duty, but there is no reason to believe the Sheriff would not do so. Alternatively, the Sheriff could "find" additional money or back away from the potential cuts. However, that seems unlikely at this point in time.
Now if the Sheriff is about to fight with the County Commission over his budget, it is a well known budgetary strategy to cut cows that seem sacred to politicians to increase the likelihood that money for those cows will be added to the budget without reductions being made to other priority items. Do school resource officers fall within this category of sacred cows? Probably not, but the announced potential for cuts may generate enough calls to Commissioners and School District politicians to save some of the resource officer positions or give the sheriff some budgetary wiggle room.
The potential cuts may have one salutary effect. They may force the School District to focus more closely on its own goals and priorities and develop back up plans for situations like the potential loss of the four resource officers. If the School District has a Plan B the District has not announced it. That is not surprising since to do so might lessen the chances of insuring the survival of the resource officer positions. What worries us is that there may be no Plan B on the drawing board.
We wonder whether this situation is not another one of those forget-about-it-until-it-happens situations that has continued to plague this school district's operation. Maybe the School Superintendent is confident that the positions will in fact not be cut or will be restored in the end. We don't know.
What we do know is that the Sheriff's Office doesn't just willy-nilly make cuts. Position cuts are a matter of the tough choices that have to be made among scarce resources. Does one increase this response team or that response team? Does one devote more resources to the schools or to the road? Does one put more resources into crime prevention or to apprehension? Ideally, the Sheriff's Office would like to have the resources to put more of them toward every one of these activities. But the resources just aren't there. So the Office has to make some hard choices about where to put the resources it does have. At the end of the day, it all comes down to money.
The County Commission or the School District (or both) could allocate more money for the school resource officers. Of course, it is still the Sheriff's call whether to assign the officers to that duty, but there is no reason to believe the Sheriff would not do so. Alternatively, the Sheriff could "find" additional money or back away from the potential cuts. However, that seems unlikely at this point in time.
Now if the Sheriff is about to fight with the County Commission over his budget, it is a well known budgetary strategy to cut cows that seem sacred to politicians to increase the likelihood that money for those cows will be added to the budget without reductions being made to other priority items. Do school resource officers fall within this category of sacred cows? Probably not, but the announced potential for cuts may generate enough calls to Commissioners and School District politicians to save some of the resource officer positions or give the sheriff some budgetary wiggle room.
The potential cuts may have one salutary effect. They may force the School District to focus more closely on its own goals and priorities and develop back up plans for situations like the potential loss of the four resource officers. If the School District has a Plan B the District has not announced it. That is not surprising since to do so might lessen the chances of insuring the survival of the resource officer positions. What worries us is that there may be no Plan B on the drawing board.
posted by Conchette at 8:45 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home