By Steven Walker
Orlando Sentinel
ORLANDO — Although they were exempted from Amendment 3, Florida public schools fear they could soon lose their on-campus police officers to the just-passed proposal to slash property taxes, as the local sheriff’s and police departments who provide those officers struggle to balance their shrinking budgets.
Since 2018, Florida has required public school districts to station either a school resource officer or armed security guard on all their campuses. Most districts in Central Florida preferred sworn law enforcement officers, saying they wanted those carrying guns on school grounds to be well trained.
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But the expense of school resource officers — shared by districts and local law enforcement — was already high and the cost-sharing was sometimes contentious. Now, school leaders expect local police agencies slammed by Amendment 3 tax cuts to seek to reduce their contributions, handing school districts a bill many can’t afford.
Orange County Superintendent Maria Vazquez said she expects to see a “drastic increase” in what Orange County Public Schools is asked to pay for each school resource officer, or SRO.
“We have SROs in every one of our schools. With Amendment 3, that is in jeopardy,” Vazquez said, calling them “vital” to school safety.
Florida’s mandate for school-based law enforcement came in the wake of the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018 that left 17 dead. In 2019, the state modified the law to allow teachers to become school guardians, but to qualify they must receive more than 140 hours of firearms training from a Florida sheriff’s office.
The state allocates money for school safety, but several local school districts already pay more for SROs than the stipend is worth. OCPS spends about $17 million more from its own budget for SROs than what the state provides, and district leaders have called it an “underfunded mandate.”
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For each officer, OCPS pays $75,000, which is about 2/3 the total cost, to local municipalities and the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.
Seminole County Public Schools, which contracts for SROs from the county sheriff’s office and six other municipalities, pays about half of the cost of each of its SROs. Robin Dehlinger, the chair of the Seminole County School Board, said the district would need to find $8 million from somewhere in its budget, should law enforcement ask SCPS to bear the full cost.
That could be tough. In the last year, SCPS cut hundreds of academic and administrative positions and slashed spending in order to stave off a $26.4 million budget deficit.
But Seminole County Sheriff Dennis Lemma is not likely to give the school district a pass, given he warned county commissioners in September that he may have to cut 300 officers if Amendment 3 passed.
If SCPS were forced to use armed guardians rather than law enforcement officers to save money, schools would lose “critical” school safety expertise and community engagement, Dehlinger said.
“You cannot replace that. These officers in our schools, they know the kids, they know the families, they’re in the community,” she said.
Districts have already been butting heads with local law enforcement over the cost to keep SROs on campus.
During the 2024-25 school year, OCPS objected when police departments from the cities of Apopka, Ocoee, Winter Garden, Winter Park and the town of Windermere asked for a combined $2 million more to cover rising costs. At the time, the district said it could not afford to pay any more money for SROs.
Ultimately, OCPS and the agencies reached an agreement for the district to pay more. But that deal expires at the end of the current school year.
Even before the Legislature put Amendment 3 on the November ballot, the cities of Ocoee, Apopka and Winter Garden sent a memo to lawmakers sharing their worries. One of their proposed solutions was that the Legislature require school districts to pay the full costs of an on-campus officer.
Some districts, like Lake County Schools, already have chosen to use school guardians instead of law enforcement at select schools. Others, like those in Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties, employ in-house police forces and thus don’t have to worry about the impact of municipal budget cuts.
Tony Montalto, whose daughter Gina was one of the 17 killed in the Parkland massacre, said that while he prefers sworn law enforcement on campuses, guardians can be an affordable alternative.
Montalto is the president of Stand With Parkland, an organization advocating for school safety. He said the state should increase safety funding for districts, but noted that districts can also apply for federal funding to cover where Amendment 3 creates gaps.
Either way, parents should feel secure knowing school districts must still provide protection for students, he said.
“The state law requiring an armed individual on campus is certainly still in effect,” Montalto said.
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