By Terry Witt – Special to Spotlight
SBLC Reg. Meeting Feb 27, 2018
In the aftermath of the mass murder of students and faculty at a Broward County high school on Feb. 14, big changes are expected in school safety for Levy County public schools in the near future, but the details are unclear at this point.
The Florida Legislature will decide in the final two weeks of its session whether to approve Gov. Rick Scott’s proposal to set aside an additional $500 million for improving school safety statewide.
Levy County’s share of the funding will hinge on the generosity of the legislature and how the money is distributed.
The Levy County School Board will meet in a closed door executive session Wednesday to discuss its school safety plans.
When board members met Tuesday for their regular bimonthly session, they were tightlipped on exactly what would be talked about in the executive session tonight other than to say Sheriff Bobby McCallum would be present to offer his insights.
The Levy County School District Safety Plan is considered confidential under state law. The board isn’t allowed to discuss details of how public schools in Levy County will be protected.
The meeting comes days after School Board member Brad Etheridge returned from a round table discussion in Tallahassee with the governor and school officials from around the state.
Etheridge and other Levy County School Board members are encouraging Levy County residents to contact their state legislators in the next two weeks to lobby for adequate school safety funding.
“Weigh in, weigh in,” said Etheridge.
Etheridge said the meeting he attended at the Florida Department of Education building in Tallahassee was emotional and led to a broad discussion of ideas on how to make public schools safer for students.
Later in the week the governor made his pitch for a half billion dollars of funding to harden schools with fencing, metal detectors and other hardware by July 1 and to pay for more guidance counselors and school resource officers.
“There are some things in there from a small district’s perspective we have to be concerned with,” Etheridge said. “There’s no doubt these are going to be mandates and where we have mandates they have to be funded.”
From a small district perspective, Etheridge said the concern is whether the mandates would be passed on to county school districts rather than being funded by the Florida Legislature.
Participants at the Tallahassee meeting agreed more guidance counselors must be hired to detect and address mental health problems before those issues lead to school violence. Etheridge said they agreed a minimum of one guidance counselor per 500 students was needed.
He said it was also understood that a distinction must be made between guidance counselors trained to address mental health issues and curriculum counselors who serve an entirely different purpose. It was agreed there would be no crossover of duties by curriculum counselors and guidance counselors.
The governor’s plan for school safety calls for one school resource officer per 1,000 students. That would leave many Levy County schools without a school resource officer. The county has 5,500 students. The cost of training and equipping each officer would be $80,000. Sheriff Bobby McCallum has recommended adding nine officers for Levy County schools. Currently the county has six school resource officers serving 12 schools.
“With all that said, I think we will see some major changes to school safety. I think we’re going to see that fairly quickly,” Etheridge said. “Whether everyone agrees with how we do that, I don’t know if that matters. First of all we’re going to see hardening.”
