A couple more Rio Arriba County Sheriff’s Office Deputies could be back on patrol, after the Española School District’s leadership made it clear they won’t renew the agreement with the Office to provide school resource officers at Española Valley High School and Española Middle School.
Gutierrez told the Board of Education, July 18, the decision to scrap the agreement with the Sheriff’s Office was predicated on input from the two site principals.
“This past year, we had two SRO (school resource officers) from the Sheriff’s department (sic),” she said. “Our secondary principals feel like they would like to forgo that partnership because more often than not, they had to call 911 when services were needed.”
She said, for the most part, the deputies did an excellent job, but sometimes they weren’t around when needed because contrary to the agreement, they were given other assignments outside of, or in addition to, their assigned posts at the two schools.
Deputy Sammy Marquez was stationed at the high school, while Deputy Adrian Martinez was the school resource officer at the middle school.
“I think we had good service with the SRO (School Resource Officer),” she said. “But they were pulled out because of other duties. They had to go to court sometimes in Santa Fe and sometimes in Tierra Amarilla. We don’t have a lot of crime that happens at the high school, but we felt if we were paying for those services, they needed to be present, unless there was some type of emergency they needed to respond to.”
Neither Sheriff James Lujan nor the Office’s Public Information Officer Capt. Randy Sanches could be reached for comment. Rio Arriba County Manager Tomas Campos also couldn’t be reached to explain how losing the $115,000 contract would impact the County’s overall budget.
Both principals have also said during several Board discussions, they didn’t think the resource officers were needed because the students weren’t as rowdy as they were in past years.
Española Middle School Principal Julie Gutierrez attributes not needing a school resource officer to the stability the school has experienced in recent years.
She said her administration has been around for a while, which helped build a culture that makes gangs and other troublemakers feel unwelcome.
“With consistency in administration, we have been able to make the school safer,” she said.
The middle school principal said while the resource officers were super helpful, there were times when they had very little to do because the students behaved so well.
Bobbie Gutierrez said she is exploring several options to provide Districtwide security services, which includes hiring a security coordinator.
In addition to overseeing the District’s security efforts at the secondary schools, the coordinator will work to make sure the elementary schools have a viable emergency plan.
“We needed to put that money into a safety and security coordinator who can work with the security officers and also assist the elementary schools on their safety plan and make sure all the emergency drills are created,” she said. “Even with what we are spending, we would still have enough to add some guards to each of the schools.”
Bobbie Gutierrez and the Board will have to decide if the District will continue to use and build on its five-man security force or hire a contractor to provide those services.
She said either way you look at it, providing adequate school security isn’t cheap.
However, she said providing in-house security can lead to more administrative costs.
“Security is a costly venture either way you look at it,” she said. “There may be increased costs in terms of our insurance premiums if we implement an internal program.”
She said building a budget off of last year’s figures would not be enough because it wouldn’t support the three additional officers the District requires, to meet its security needs.
The District spent $101,000 total, to cover the salaries of all five of its in-house security guards and that figure doesn’t include money for uniforms or any other equipment the guards may need to carry out their duties.
That figure also doesn’t include the approximately $115,000 it paid for the Sheriff’s Office deputies, for a total $216,000 in security costs for the 2016-2017 School Year.
Those costs are far less than the approximately $361,310 and $346,000 the District paid its former security contractor, Española’s ProSec Services, during the 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 School Years, respectively.
Bobbie Gutierrez said the District can either issue a Request for Proposals or choose a contractor from the state’s list of approved vendors.
The overall goal would be to have three additional guards patrolling the hallways of the District’s secondary schools during the upcoming fall semester.
“We currently have five good employees and they are spread too thin,” she said.
Board member Gilbert Serrano wanted to know if members of the District’s current security force would be out of a job if they went with a security contractor.
While Bobbie Gutierrez said she doesn’t have any say over the security contractor’s hiring practices, she believes the company would need local talent to meet their contractual obligations.