School Superintendent Jeff Edison says school resource officers focus on security. Part V Conclusion – Series discussing Baker Acts in Levy County Public Schools & State Mandates
By Terry Witt- Spotlight Senior Reporter
In the recent past, Levy County school resource officers were viewed as Officer Friendly. They would talk to kids and sometimes put on educational demonstrations.
Their new role is security, according to Superintendent Jeff Edison.
“They’re about, is the threat real,” Edison said. “That is what they have to determine. They are not to sit there and be a (mental health) clinician. Is the threat real?”
Edison was responding to questions about why increasing numbers of Levy County students are being identified as potential threats to themselves or others and Baker Acted.
In Levy County, school resource officers have final authority to determine whether a child should be Baker Acted and then sent to a Crisis Stabilization Unit for evaluation by mental health professionals.
When the student is in the custody of the sheriff’s office for a Baker Act, the school district loses control of the student at that point. When the student returns to school, they come back under the authority of the district.
Elementary School Drop-Offs
Fear is motivating changes in school security.
Edison said the number of parents who drive their children to elementary schools and drop them off at the front door has increased significantly.
“If you go to any of our schools you’ll notice an issue with dropping off kids. Why is that? All our elementary schools were built in the ‘90s. Why is this an issue now and it never used to be?” Edison said. “Why are mammas and daddies dropping them off instead of putting them on a bus? They’re not sending them to the bus stop. They’re not walking home. My mamma used to drive a bus. She’d open the door and the kids would walk a mile to their house, but that’s not happening now.”
Edison said the number one function of school resource officers now is security. School staff members send students to the school resource officer when they believe the student is a threat to themselves or others. They won’t send anyone to the resource officer other than students who pose security risks to the school.
“If you remember back to Officer Friendly, school resource officers are not Officer Friendly anymore. I’m just talking about their role and function. Their number one function is school security,” Edison said. “You can’t take security off their radar. That has to be their primary focus and so we have to make sure when we bring something to them it’s legitimate and it’s not just wasting their time. They can’t sit in and be Officer Friendly to a student. It’s about, is this student a legitimate concern to the safety of and welfare of himself and others.”
Staff Involvement
School officials told Spotlight there is a process in most Baker Act cases where school staff members identify a student who might have a behavior issue that needs to be reviewed. Often the teacher will contact the school counselor and an administrator to talk about the student and the student may or may not be present. If it’s just a behavior issue they will try to counsel the student, give them time to calm down, or deal with the problem without involving the school resource officer.
In cases where there appears to be a mental health issue, a mental health assessment team consisting of the school counselor, an administrator, the teacher, and with older students, perhaps the student themselves, will meet to talk about what’s going on. When a decision is made to send the student to the school resource officer, school staff members believe a mental health issue is involved in the behavior problems and the officer must use his training to determine if the student should be Baker Acted and transported in a patrol car to a Crisis Stabilization Unit for a mental health evaluation by a licensed clinician, school officials said.
The school resource officer can get primarily and directly involved with Baker Acting a student if there is imminent danger of the student hurting themselves or someone else. In those cases, there is no effort by a mental assessment team to discuss the situation first. The school resource officer is immediately notified and takes whatever action is deemed appropriate to take control of the situation and prevent the student from harming themselves or others.
11 Baker Acts at CES
When asked why 11 Baker Acts occurred at Chiefland Elementary School during 2018-19, one school official said “a lot of the little ones come to school with a lot of things on their shoulders and they don’t know how to turn it off.”
Edison said the average person has no idea how many Levy County school children receive no food at home on weekends. The school district has a backpack program to send food home on weekends. One Levy County school has 139 kids who receive food backpacks for the weekend.
School officials say it’s often not what happens at school but rather what happened the night before that affects the behavior of students. Kids see their siblings or parents arrested, which is traumatic for the kids. Classroom teachers know their kids well and when they see behavior indicating a child might have experienced trauma, they don’t ignore it. Sometimes it’s often just having a conversation with the child.
This is Not Mayberry
Edison said social media plays a big part in the behavior issues the district sees in students. Students spend a great deal of time communicating on social media, but he said the loss of the family unit has also been damaging.
“The family as it was in the past, it doesn’t exist,” Edison said. “This is not Mayberry anymore. So the supports that children have are not there like they used to be, so therefore the school is the entity that is having to intervene in more and more things that traditionally, when I went to school, they didn’t do. We are providing more social services than we did 10 years ago because that’s the way. If there’s a societal need, that’s where they push it to.”
They’re Unicorns
Edison said he has a comfort level with everything the school district is doing, but he said he can’t place a psychologist in every county school for diagnosing mental illness. He said finding a psychologist to work for a $50,000 salary in Levy County public schools when they know they can make $130,000 in the private sector is like searching for a unicorn. They don’t exist.
“Do we have the resources we need? Absolutely not. Do we have the trained people that we need? Absolutely not. First off, they don’t exist. They’re unicorns because the supply is not equal to the demand statewide. That’s my point,” Edison said.
Edison said the school district recently lost a nurse. The sheriff’s office is also looking for a nurse, but nurses are hard to find.
“How come we are having problems finding nurses? It’s because we can’t compete with salaries they make at Shands or Florida. We can’t compete,” he said.
Bullying Scholarships
School districts face many challenges that never existed in the past. Bullying has become a big issue. In the past, the word bullying was rarely used, Edison said. Kids settled things between themselves.
“But now, when kid calls another kid a name or they say they don’t want to be a kid’s friend; now everybody is saying that’s bullying,” he said.
Bullying isn’t considered a mental health issue, but anytime a student alleges being bullied, a full blown investigation must be conducted under the requirements of state law. Any child that alleges being bullied is eligible to apply for a Florida Hope Scholarship.
The Hope Scholarship Program provides public school students who are subjected to an incident of violence or bullying at school to apply for a scholarship to private school rather than remain in an unsafe school environment, according to the Florida Department of Revenue.
“You can make it up. It doesn’t have to be true. We have to investigate and we have to determine if it’s true or not, if it’s valid or unsubstantiated, but that word has been much more frequent and has been more frequently used in life and kids have used it. It has become a catch phrase. I’m being bullied; even though you say I don’t want to be your friend or I want to sit with her at a lunch table instead of you; kids are calling that bullying now days,” Edison said.
Higher Awareness
But Baker Acting a student is quite different.
Edison said there has been a learning curve when it comes to Baker Acting students.
“One of my things, when you’re talking about Baker Acting, I think it is much more of an awareness of the situation. I agree the Parkland murders are a great motivator (for Baker Acts). Yes it is. It’s something, once we understand more and become educated ourselves more about what is going on; as we train ourselves more, what is a threat to harm themselves or others,” Edison said.
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Part V Conclusion – Series discussing Baker Acts in Levy County Public Schools & State Mandates
Posted September 1, 2019
