Cops stepping in after unpaid school security guards walk off the job
Trenton NJ November 21 2018
Days after a contract mix-up left kids in Trenton’s public schools without the protection of security guards, Mayor Reed Gusciora held a press conference Tuesday saying school safety is a paramount concern for the city. He stopped short, however, of calling for the district’s superintendent to resign — a demand some community members made at a heated school board meeting Monday night.
The city’s police officers will patrol Trenton’s 21 schools for the time being, Gusciora announced at the event Tuesday.
The school’s security guards are employed by Patriot Security Group, which was awarded a $2.5 million dollar contract by the Board of Education in August, according to meeting minutes. That company has been entangled in a legal battle with another one, Motivated Security Services, over the legitimacy of the contract it was awarded.
The back-and-forth legal battle resulted in the board being restrained from making payments to the Patriot Security Group, and as a result Patriot was unable to pay its employees, according to court documents.
As a result, security guards walked off the job last Thursday. The gap in security coverage meant schools were left without in-house security for a few hours until Trenton police officers arrived.
In a Friday press release, Gusciora said he was “disappointed” that he was not made aware that there were problems with the school security guard contracts sooner, and that his administration was not given the opportunity to work with the school board “to rectify the situation before it became problematic.”
As of Friday, at least 21 Trenton police officers were pulled from their normal duties and placed at each of the 21 schools within the district. The cost of covering those officers’ shifts was not immediately clear, but Gusciora said the school district will have to pay for the officers placed in school buildings.
The security transition has not been an entirely smooth one.
Six district elementary schools were without security again Tuesday morning, after Gusciora said district officials told the city those schools would be covered by security guards. After receiving calls from parents and school staff, the city dispatched police officers to the schools, he said.
In a video recording of Monday’s night’s board of education meeting, President of the Trenton Education Association Twanda Taylor called out Superintendent Fred McDowell and school board president Gene Bouie to step down amid earlier chants of “move Fred, get out the way,” from members of the public.
“It is time for the district to be liberated, clean it up,” she shouted into the microphone at the standing-room only meeting.
At-large city councilman Jerell Blakeley also called for McDowell to resign, and said that the security guards that worked in the district schools were victims of legal mess.
“This is not the best we can do. This drama is something that is untenable, is unacceptable,” Blakeley said.
The superintendent’s office did not return NJ Advance Media’s request for comment on the matter. A message for the security company was not immediately returned.
The mayor Tuesday called for better communication between the city and the school board, and on the superintendent and board to create a plan of action, which would include giving the city advance notice of any future problem with third party security firms.
nj.com
