Broward County Schools made a proposal to create a police force for the school, but some city leaders were not on board with the idea.
It was the school board that told the superintendent to come up with a plan to create their own police force, but when he presented it, not many were behind it.
The county school board voted unanimously not to move forward with creating its own police department, at least for now.
“I’m not on board with this at all. Education, teacher retention, infrastructure. Those are the things the school board should be focusing on,” said Parkland Mayor Rich Walker. “Policing is not something that the school board should be doing.”
The superintendents proposal to create the district’s own police force would come out to about $2 million more in keeping the current school resource officer program for the next four years.
And while there was support for the idea long term, community leaders want more discussions.
“We are not here to police students, we are her to teach them. Safety is a core necessary element of making sure they have a safe environment to learn, but that’s for someone else to handle.” said Walker.
The superintendent said the board was looking at various options for policing, not just safety.
“We’re safe. This wasn’t about not being safe, it was about having more opportunities to train our individual force and our department. If they bring it up again, that’s great, we’ll go at it,” said Broward County Public Schools superintendent, Dr. Peter Licata.
The school board mentioned about possibly bringing up the issue back up in April, but even that was rejected by members.
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