Politics & Government

Montgomery County Council Mulls Restoring School Resource Officer Funds

The fate of the School Resource Officer program could be known this week.

Montgomery County Council has agreed to add funding for the School Resource Officer program to its growing budget reconciliation list.

Councilman Craig Rice presented the proposal during the council’s work session Tuesday. The funding would appear as three $500,000 installments while a task force examines the program’s future.

Adding the program to the budget reconciliation list is an attempt to save it. The budget proposed by County Executive Isiah Leggett’s would have eliminated funding for the SRO program.

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“It would be a mistake for us to remove SROs from our schools,” Rice said during Tuesday’s meeting.

Rice cited incidents at high schools in Montgomery County and neighboring Frederick County, Md., as examples of why School Resource Officers were needed. In March, a student brought a handgun to a Frederick, Md., school as an act of retaliation. In December, an SRO officer stopped students who had brought a stun gun to a Montgomery County school.

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"If the relationships hadn’t been there in Frederick County, God forbid someone would have gotten shot this past March," Rice said. "If weren’t for the relationships with the students this past December in a Montgomery County school, there might have been a major incident involving a stun gun."

Council members agreed that school safety was important, but there were concerns over cost and whether implementing the program is a decision that would be more appropriate for the Montgomery County Public Schools System.

“We as a council do not make decisions for the board of education,” said Council President Valerie Ervin. “Even if we fund it, they have to implement it.”

The school board hasn’t included the program in its budget, several council members noted.

“If they’re not interested, then I don’t know that I’m interested,” said Councilman Marc Elrich, who said he did not support adding the SRO funding to the reconciliation list.

During the meeting, councilwoman Nancy Navarro asked Montgomery County Police Chief J. Thomas Manger if keeping police officers in the schools would siphon police officers away from high-crime areas in the east part of the county, known as the Ida sector.

Manger said that the department could “manage through” staffing problems, which would be temporary.

“I don’t want to say that just because we can’t fully staff the Ida sector, that’s a reason not to fund the SROs,” Manger said.

A budget reconciliation list can be thought of as a wish list for changes the council would like to make to Leggett’s proposed budget. Items on the list would become part of the budget if something else could be cut in order to fund it.

The fate of the SRO program could be known this week.

The Montgomery County Council is expected to reach a tentative budget agreement Thursday, May 19, and is expected to formally adopt a final budget May 26.


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