The Española School Board has increased spending on security services beyond the $500,000 mark for this school year after it voted to expand the scope of its contract with ProSec, a firm owned by Rio Arriba County Commission Chairman Elias Coriz.
The District’s contract with ProSec grew to $535,942 after the Board voted Feb. 4 to have ProSec guards continue to conduct “roving patrols” on evenings, holidays and weekends until the end of the school year and add three security guards and a camera-monitoring employee.
The decision came a day after a School Board election in which Coco Archuleta coasted into Board President Joe Romero’s seat and Board Vice President Floyd Archuleta kept his seat without opposition, and smack in the middle of discussions in the legislature to cut school districts’ budgets.
A bill that was passed Feb. 2 in the senate would trim $238,994 from the District’s budget for this school year, and another bill being discussed in legislative committees would cut a similar amount from next year’s budget. The combined cuts add up roughly to the new price tag on ProSec’s contract.
Board members nonetheless defended ProSec’s raise.
“It seems like a lot of the break-ins and vandalism have subsided,” Romero said. “We had been getting hit pretty hard there for a while. That, in and of itself, makes the investment well worth it in my view.”
Despite the stepped-up security, discipline has deteriorated in the District’s two secondary schools over the course of the school year, according to statistics provided by ProSec. Also last fall, vandals caused more than $500,000 worth of damage to the old Sombrillo Elementary.
Superintendent David Cockerham and Business Manager Charlene Sanchez had objected in May 2008 when the Board contracted those same services from June 2008 to mid-December, bloating the contract from $344,489 to $470,623. Administrators said at the time the District could not afford the additional expense.
And Cockerham kept mum on the new services this time around.
“I don’t have any comment,” Cockerham said after the meeting, then added pointedly. “This is the Board’s financial decision to make.”
Board member Leonard Valerio said the District can afford the services.
“(Cockerham) can’t pull that on us,” Valerio said. “I know for a fact that we have more than a million in surplus funds.”
Valerio added the stepped-up security is necessary to protect expensive equipment in the District’s technology center, which was recently opened at Española Valley High School.