Jackson County School District look to start their own police force
JACKSON COUNTY, Fla June 3 2018 Officials with the Jackson County School District and the Sheriff’s office had hoped to put a school resource officer on every campus.
Right now there are only SROs in the middle and high schools.
“Especially on the Sheriff’s part, the Marianna Police Department’s part and other law enforcement agencies,” Larry Moore, Superintendent of Jackson County Schools said. “It makes it hard to add additional officers through those agencies because of their limited funding.”
The school district has received state funding to pay for law enforcement to be on each campus for the 190 days teachers and students are at school.
The funding for the other 175 days would need to come from the county, but the money just isn’t there.
“The second option that’s allowed for in the new statute is for districts to establish their own police department,” Moore said.
If the school district does decide to establish its own police force, the empty positions could be filled by retired law enforcement.
Those individuals must be certified law enforcement officers with the correct credentials.
“We currently have SROs and we want to continue those and we feel like we’ll be able to,” Moore said. “The county commissioners have indicated that they would support that.”
For now, it’s a race against the clock.
Teachers return August 6 and the first day of school is August 13.
The Jackson County School Board will discuss the possibility of a school board police department at a special meeting Thursday, June 7 at 4:30 p.m.
WJHG/WECP
