By David L. Snelling
In the aftermath of the Majorie Stoneman Douglas High School shooting massacre in 2018 that took the lives of 17 students and faculty members and seriously wounded 17 others, state lawmakers in Tallahassee have passed several laws pressuring public school districts to have at least one resource officer at each of their schools to prevent another tragedy.
Despite assistance with state funding, some school districts are struggling to find money for resource officers and even asked residents through a ballot to support an increase in property taxes so they could hire more law enforcement officers to protect the schools.
But Broward County, the place of the Parkland shooting, seems to be complying with state laws and the School Board has even gone further by voting to pay an additional $40,000 a year for each school resource officer.
The nine-member board recently approved a new contract that includes the hefty pay hike for the school resource officers.
As of Mar 22, 2023, the average annual pay for a School Resource Officer in Florida is $32,622 a year, according to ZipRecruiter.
A resource officer in Broward County currently earns an average of $61,000 a year.
Broward County currently has about 271,517 students and 327 schools and education centers.
The vote for the pay raise comes after union representatives said officers were underpaid protecting students in Broward County, which is the sixth largest school district in the nation.
Resource officers in larger school districts such as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago earn more than twice as much as their peers in South Florida.
A resource officer in New York earns an average of $107,159 a year.
The new three-year agreement with Broward County calls for the school district to reimburse local law enforcement agencies at the rate of $103,000 per officer, starting next school year.
“Let me just remind this board that it’s the school district’s responsibility to provide a safe schools officer,” said Hollywood Police Chief Chris O’Brien during a Broward School Board meeting. “Municipalities are happy to be a partner in this. But we just want to be reimbursed a fair share.”
Board members hope the increased reimbursement rate will help mend relationships with local officers and agencies like the Broward Sheriff’s Office and the cities of Coral Springs, Miramar, Davie and others.
Some officers felt the school district was taking advantage of them with the low paying salaries.
“If we have people that don’t come home, it doesn’t matter what else we do. So it’s imperative that we figure this out,” said School Board Member Debbi Hixon. “It is not just the money, it’s the disrespect that they feel in the process of the negotiations that they’ve had. So we need to rectify that.”
Students and parents feel safe with a resource officer at each school, however, several incidents where students brought guns to schools this school year and school shootings in Tennessee and Texas raised the specter of the Parkland shooting tragedy.
An 18-year-old student at Everglades High School in Miramar was arrested in January after bringing a stun gun to school, according to police, and a father was taken into custody last month when his son accidentally brought his gun to school at Park Lakes Elementary, causing a lockdown and parents frantically picking their kids up from school early.
The father told police he accidentally put the gun in the wrong big bag.
Last month, in Tennessee, two school resource officers were called heroes after they shot and killed an active shooter at a Catholic school who killed six people including three kids.
The officers stopped the alleged shooter before causing any more deaths.
However, school resource officers in Uvalde, Texas, where an alleged shooter killed 19 children and at least two adults at an elementary school last year, were panned for not acting quickly to take down the suspect.
David L. Snelling is a Miami native who has been covering federal, state and local politics, sports and human interest stories for 25 years. He has worked for the Miami Herald, United Press International, the Miami Laker and the Islander News, and was recognized for his work for covering the 2000 Presidential election.
