The talk among the sheriff’s deputies is the Escambia County School District may not have enough campus security guards to protect all the district’s public schools. Less than a third of the those who have applied for the job have been cleared to do the work, sources have shared with Inweekly.
Last May, the Escambia County School Board approved Superintendent Malcolm Thomas’ recommendation to participate in the Coach Aaron Feis Guardian Program, which allows school districts to cooperate with law enforcement agencies to assign one or more safe-school officers at each school facility by the start of the 2018-19 school year.
“Let’s be clear of what we’re talking about here, what we’re talking about is hiring our own campus safety officers,” Thomas told the school board.
Thomas said he would create a hybrid of sworn law enforcement officers and campus safety officers (CSO’s) to supplant schools currently without school resource officers. He told the PNJ that he had a hundred applicants.
Deputies are saying the district doesn’t have enough CSO’s hired and the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office has a shortage of patrol deputies.
School starts August 12.