St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman and Police Chief Anthony Holloway joined together in an afternoon press conference Tuesday regarding school safety and the new mandate requiring school resource officers.
Switching gears, Mayor Kriseman decided the city will not put the 25 officers needed in elementary schools, following Governor’s Scott mandate of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act.
Kriseman said their budget can’t afford it.
He said patrols will stay on the streets and can respond to schools if needed.
“Now I truly feel bad for the school district. They’ve been put in a really bad place. Rick Scott signed a bad bill that didn’t include the necessary funding,” said Kriseman.
The funding would have cost the city and police department millions.
“The standard contract is $58,000, but with pension and everything included is $100,000, so that means the city would have to take care of $42,000. So if you add that up, the start up cost would be over $3 million,” said Chief Anthony Holloway.
Kriseman is flipping the cost and responsibility back on Pinellas County Schools.
“We learned one, more and more cities and jurisdictions were using security guards and two, the Pinellas County school system wasn’t fully accessing all the financial tools available to them,” said Kriseman.
The city will cover the cost for three additional high school SROs.
One will be at St. Pete High School, another at Northeast High School. The third will be a floater.
Chief Holloway said it’ll cost the city roughly $126,000 for those officers.
In a response from Governor Rick Scott’s office:
“There is absolutely no reason as to why the Pinellas County School District should not put officers in every school. The Mayor should focus on working with the Pinellas County School District and local leaders on ways to prioritize school safety instead of criticizing an important law and hundreds of millions of dollars in state funding.”– McKinley Lewis, Office of Governor Rick Scott
The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, which incorporated input from law enforcement, mental health experts, victim’s families and educators, provides more than $344 million to increase the safety and security of Florida’s schools. This major legislation was passed overwhelmingly with a bipartisan majority of the Florida Legislature, and communities across the state are finding the best way to increase safety in their schools.
