More police officers to be stationed at Marion County schools

File photo: School Resource Officer Amy Walker of the Ocala Police Department, left, talks with Principal Ryan Bennett, at Eighth Street Elementary School in Ocala, Fla. on Thursday, May 26, 2022. [Bruce Ackerman/Ocala Gazette] 2022.

Marion County will now see additional School Resource Officers stationed at three schools to increase surveillance and safety for students.

The Ocala Police Department amended its contract with the school district on Sept. 3 to station two SROs at Marion Technical Institute, two SROs at Vanguard High School and three SROs at West Port High School.

Previously, MTI had one, Vanguard High had one and West Port High had two. The amendment will cost the district an additional $253,099, with the yearly salary of each SRO being $84,366. In total, the district will pay OPD $1,687,330 for the 2024-25 school year for 20 officers.

The district also has contracts with the Marion County Sheriff’s Office and Belleview Police Department to station law enforcement at every school in the district. The contract for the 40 SROs from MCSO costs $3 million per year, with the yearly salary of each SRO now being $75,000.

The move, first approved by the Marion County School Board on Aug. 27, comes soon after a fight among five students at West Port left Principal Ginger Cruze injured after attempting to intervene.

Adrielys Diaz, a West Port student who serves as a student representative on the school board, addressed the board about this incident and others safety concerns at the school.

“We recently had a fight where it escalated to injuring an administrator. And this is something that should never have happened to begin with,” Diaz said. “This fight had just escalated completely out of control, and I do believe that having an additional SRO, especially for my campus, is a way better thing to have.”

Diaz gave the estimate that there are about 700 students in each grade at the high school.

“It is a lot of students, and there is not enough security to rationalize the amount of students that we have compared to SROs and to administrators,” Diaz said. “There’s too many of us and not as enough protection.”

In addition to the additional SROs added to schools, all officers went through a crisis intervention training after an audit found the district was not in compliance, said School Safety Director Dennis McFatten.

“We worked with the College of Central Florida, (Marion County) Sheriff’s Office, OPD and Belleview Police Department to get all of those officers in a training class at CF,” said McFatten. “It was a three-day class that was mandated, and we were able to get every SRO that had not received the training trained over the summer.”

Diaz said she hopes the addition of an SRO will make her and her fellow West Port students feel safer.

“Unfortunately, the world we live in is a very dangerous place,” she said. “I believe that having an additional SRO would be able to help us on campus.”