School week starts with additional resource officers at Manatee schools

The school week got started in Manatee County on Monday with additional school resource officers throughout the district.

The Manatee County School District approved $597,800 last week to fund the addition of 35 more law enforcement officers to be posted at schools for the remainder of the academic year. The addition allowed for each elementary school in the district to have its own school resource officer and each high school to have two officers.

Schools officials and law enforcement reported no issues with the change on Monday.

“Today was a relatively quiet day. The students were prepared that Monday would be the first day that our schools would have law enforcement officers on all of our campuses,” Superintendent Diana Greene said Monday. “Based on the information we’ve received, everything went really well.”

Just after 10 a.m., Deputy Kenny Cristello could be seen walking around the perimeter of Robert H. Prine Elementary School, 3801 Southern Pkwy., Bradenton.

“I’m just walking around, making sure everything is still locked up the way it’s supposed to be,” Cristello said.

The increased law enforcement on school campuses came after about a dozen threats of violence plagued Manatee County schools in the wake of the Valentine’s Day mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Broward County during which an expelled student killed 17 students and teachers.

“This is a traumatic time in our history as public schools,” Greene said. “What happened in Broward County was the worst school shooting at a high school, and I’m sure it’s going to take a lot of time for our students to process that, a lot of time for our teachers, staff and administrators to continue to process and ensure that we keep our students safe.”

Safety and security will be the priority for the the rest of the school year for those added officers.

“We will continue to have those conversation with our administrators,” Greene said. “We are continuing to provide training to them and they will continue to work with their teachers and staff , and teachers and staff will continue to work with students.”

The Manatee County Sheriff’s Office and Bradenton and Palmetto police departments are providing the school resource officers as off-duty details for the remainder of the school year. Each department will later be looking to get permanent funding to hire additional officers to fill those roles for the 2018-19 school year.

Greene says her desire is for the future costs of additional resource officers to be split between the school district and law enforcement agencies providing the officers, as has been done for those officers who were already in place. The school district had already begun taking steps to request the additional funding for more resource officers, when the Stoneman Douglas shooting occurred.

“But lack of additional funds will not prevent the additional officers to be permanent,” Greene said. “If this becomes a priority of our school board, we are at a point that we are financially solvent that we can look internally to make the decision to what we feel would be best at our schools.”

The Florida Legislature was considering a measure that would require one resource officer per 1,000 students in a school, which would require Manatee high schools to have a second officer as has already been implemented, the superintendent explained.

But even before the Stoneman Douglas shooting thrust the school safety and gun control debate back into the national spotlight, changes to harden security at Manatee County district schools were already underway.

“There’s still more for the school district to do,” Greene said. “We had already started the process of installing a panic button, buzzer system.”

Just last week, a panic button and security system was added to six schools in the county. The buzzer system makes it so office staff have to buzz anyone into the school, after seeing them either through a window or camera. If concerns arise, however, the panic button can instead be hit to alert law enforcement and trigger alerts to teachers and staff.

An upgrade to the district’s security camera system has also been underway to include high-definition cameras. Most schools already operate with a single point of entry.

Already, middle and high schools have begun to see random backpack checks with metal-detecting wands.

“I think that would be a step first before we starting looking at walk-through metal detectors, but it is a decision the board will have to make and we will continue having those conversations,” Greene said.

Whether officers will be allowed to carry their rifles on campus, as the Broward County sheriff has already implemented, will be part of future discussions, Greene said, to determine if the school board feels it’s appropriate for Manatee County schools.

This story was originally published March 5, 2018 at 12:26 PM with the headline "School week starts with additional resource officers at Manatee schools."