Dec 23

Written by: Bret Rachlin
12/23/2009 2:22 PM

Budget cuts to the Woodland Joint Unified School District (Woodland, CA) will negatively impact the district’s school security program, as the jobs of several campus safety supervisors and one school resource officer (SRO) will be eliminated (Source: Daily Democrat, December 12, 2009, Woodland district’s budget cuts leave holes in school security).

While the district will leave most of the safety and security duties up to the principals and vice principals, the one remaining SRO will mainly respond to emergencies. This means that the SRO will have little time for early intervention to mitigate or prevent incidents from occurring, as SROs typically work with “parents and students to get to the bottom of problems or address tensions at schools before they escalate into aggression.”

Unfortunately, the article doesn’t mention on what basis the district made the security budget cuts. Obviously, the district needs to eliminate $3 million worth of expenditures, which includes safety and security expenses. However, there is no explanation as to how the district decided on these specific cuts.

Woodland faces a similar challenge that numerous districts across the country deal with currently: how to maintain a safe learning environment with fewer safety and security dollars to spend? Did Woodland conduct a comprehensive security risk assessment to determine the most appropriate areas to cut the budget? If there was an assessment, were there recommendations for implementing technical solutions, such as video surveillance, access control, or visitor management systems that complement the work of school security personnel, so that they can operate more efficiently and effectively?

Clearly, the parents, students and staff of a school district understand the need for budget cuts in today’s challenging economic environment, but they also deserve to know how a district plans to implement a safety and security program that keeps the schools as safe as possible. By communicating its general safety and security plan concerning the budget challenges to the school community, a district demonstrates in a proactive fashion that it understands the safety and security needs and is acting pragmatically to accommodate them, thereby alleviating public concerns.

How does your district communicate its safety and security budget cuts? Does your district make cuts based on the results of a security assessment?

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