Lockport schools may go without security guards
Lockport NY Sept 9 2020
More than a dozen security guard positions in Lockport City School District will be eliminated in the upcoming school year, according to one current and one former guard, unless the Board of Education takes action at today’s 7 p.m. work session.
Six full-time security guard positions, paying annual salary of $30,000 each, plus seven part-time security positions are slated for removal, according to Dennis Sobieraski.
Security guards had been entering into annual, one-year work agreements with the district in past years. Sobieraski said he considers the jobs officially eliminated for the 2020-2021 school year, and for that reason, the guards haven’t been showing up for work this week.
School board president Karen Young said she could not comment on any personnel issues. However, she did say the board does occasionally cast votes on personnel-related matters at board work sessions, which leaves open the possibility that some action could be taken tonight.
Meanwhile, school security has been noticeably absent throughout the district this week. Sobieraski said he and fellow security guards, all retired Lockport police officers or Niagara County sheriff’s deputies, would have been working Tuesday, when all district teachers were to report for duty.
“Usually, in past years, we’d be in schools today (Tuesday), but we’re not there today, we won’t be there tomorrow (Wednesday) and I highly doubt we’re going to show up Thursday,” Sobieraski said.
Mike Stover, who retired last week as the district’s School Resource Officers, said he has accepted another position within the district this year, as a hall monitor at Emmet Belknap Intermediate School.
Uncertainty over how long schools will remain open and the drastically lower number of students who will be physically inside Lockport schools at one time are among the reasons the district is considering not renewing its contract with the security guards, the guards said.
Meanwhile, Sobieraski said, the security guards have not heard from the district since June.
“We’re not like teachers. We don’t have a union,” Sobieraski said. “We’re just subcontractors who work security. They were supposed to vote on it three weeks ago, but it got postponed.”
The district’s six, full-time security guards were spread out in past school years with one each assigned daily to Lockport High School West, Emmet Belknap and North Park Junior High School and three assigned to Lockport High School. At LHS, one security guard monitored security cameras, one roamed the hallways and one was assigned to the front door. Two part-time security guards arrived in the afternoons (3 to 9 p.m. shifts), with one monitoring security cameras and the other roaming the halls.
Sobieraski said while the district was paying the security guards’ salaries, it did not pay for medical coverage.
“And we all had to qualify and get trained every year — out of pocket — and are responsible for getting our armed guard licenses from New York State,” he said.
“It amazes me that now they’re going to have even more open doors and no security.”
lockport journal
