The Pembroke Pines City Commission met late into the night Wednesday to decide whether school resource officers, or SROs, will be in its elementary schools at the start of the school year Monday.
It was decided that the SRO program would stay in place until winter break in the city's elementary schools.
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WATCH HEREThe commission will have further conversations with the superintendent and will take the added time to work out a more permanent solution. The decision basically comes down to funding, as SROs are more expensive than armed guardians.
The vote came after Commissioner Michael Hernandez made a motion to have SROs in the nine Pembroke Pines elementary schools until winter break.
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Several parents, grandparents, school employees, and custodians spoke at Wednesday’s commission meeting. They expressed that they feel more comfortable with school resource officers in their child's school than an armed guardian.
“The guardian program, for what it is, it works for some communities, it doesn't work in Pembroke Pines,” Commissioner Jay Schwartz said.
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Armed guardians have to have hours of training and experience in law enforcement, the military or as a security guard.
Still some parents are not convinced that they're suitable replacements for SROs.
“For the safety of my children I feel more confident with the SROs,” one parent said.
“Having an armed guardian is not the same, it is only a weapon on campus,” another parent said.
Broward County Schools Police made a presentation that would keep two SROs in its high schools, one Broward County Public School police officer in its three middle schools, and a guardian in each of its nine elementary schools with a floating police officer.
In Broward, 55 sites are covered with BCPS armed guardians. That’s 47 elementary schools and eight centers or technical schools.
They are located in:
- Fort Lauderdale
- North Lauderdale
- Deerfield Beach
- Hallandale Beach
- Hollywood
- Pembroke Park
- Lauderhill
- Wilton Manors
- Lauderdale Lakes
- Oakland Park
Because Broward County Public Schools doesn’t have its own police department, it relies on cooperation with local police agencies to provide campus protection.
This has traditionally been a more or less 50-50 arrangement to share the costs, and the district increased the amount it pays police agencies from $64,000 to $113,000 per officer.
But Pembroke Pines says it’s losing more than $2 million with that deal, so the district will provide the cheaper alternative for the elementary and middle schools.
The sheriff’s office trains the guardians and supervises the program.
“A guardian will never substitute the wealth of knowledge and experience that a law enforcement officer has that comes in with all the other skill sets,” Tony said. “But what we’ve given them is the skill set to stop these threats if it arrives on our campus.”
