Wake schools want state money for visitor ID system, not more officers. Some disagree.
The Wake County school system’s decision to apply for a state grant to buy a visitor check-in system for schools instead of adding police officers to elementary schools is being questioned.
Republican state Rep. Erin Paré and several GOP school board candidates have accused the school district of failing to protect students by asking for $600,000 for a visitor ID system instead of requesting money to add more school resource officers.
Republicans are hoping to use school safety as an issue in this fall’s election, when all nine school board seats are on the ballot.
“I’m sick and tired of anti-law enforcement attitudes from Wake County Democrats,” Paré, who is running for re-election, posted Monday on Facebook. “Kids, teachers, and families value their SROs, and we need them to keep our schools safe.
“If the WCPSS school board won’t do its job to secure southern Wake schools, I will work through the General Assembly to make sure our schools and law enforcement have the resources they need to keep schools safe and successful.”
But Wake says the money will make schools safer by replacing the different school visitor management systems with one system. Wake says the grant money will allow the district to install kiosks at the entrances of all 198 schools that will produce visitor badges and electronically check visitors against known sexual predator and offender databases.
“Standardized implementation of a visitor management system is one of the highest priority recommendations of the School Safety Advocacy Council’s comprehensive security assessment,” Alyson Tuck, a school district spokeswoman, said in an email. “Visitor management system implementation will improve security at every school in our district.”
State funding for SROs
State lawmakers increased school safety funding in this year’s budget, particularly to get more officers into elementary schools and middle schools following the mass shooting in May at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
Few elementary schools in North Carolina have a school resource officer assigned to them.
Wake uses a combination of local, state and federal money to pay different law enforcement agencies to provide a school resource officer for every high school and middle school. Some towns have officers rotate among the elementary schools in their community.
In a July 13 letter to Wake Superintendent Cathy Moore, Paré said Fuquay-Varina Police Chief Brandon Medina told her the town was in need of more school resource officers “to provide additional security measures at public elementary schools.”
Paré told Moore that Fuquay-Varina might be eligible for the SRO funding but that the request had to come from the district. She copied school board chairwoman Lindsay Mahaffey and board member Monika Johnson-Hostler on the letter, asking them to support the grant request.
Paré took to social media this week to complain that the application deadline had passed.
“Not only did they NOT apply for these funds, they instead applied for $600k in funding for name tag printers for school visitors,” Paré wrote. “$600,000. One additional SRO for Fuquay would cost a fraction of that.”
Paré’s message has been echoed by school board candidates who complained on social media and at this week’s board meeting.
“Why did you ignore protecting our kids?” school board candidate Becky Lew-Hobbs said during public comments on Tuesday. “Are you following a directive from the NCAE (North Carolina Association of Educators)? And I”m shocked that you ignored a representative.”
School board candidate Monica Ruiz told the board it was setting a bad example by not seeking more funding for school resource officers.
“We can no longer be reactionary or continue the do-nothing approach to school safety,” Ruiz said. “We have to be innovative and be on the offense. This is just another example that we need new leadership in the Wake County school board.”
Did town ask for officers?
In response to the complaints, Mahaffey asked Moore to address the speakers. Moore responded that the district heard from no municipalities about any requests for school resource officers.
In a Twitter post, Ruiz cited the letter from Paré to accuse Moore of lying. But Tuck said Moore was correct in her statement.
“No local law enforcement agency has requested funding from WCPSS for additional SROs,” Tuck said. “We maintain an open line of communication with all of our local law enforcement agencies and have not received requests from any of them to pursue grant funding for elementary school SROs.”
During Tuesday’s public comments, former Wake County teacher Janet Peterson said that the district could be left with regret and grief that could be avoided if every elementary school had a resource officer.
“Elementary schools, with all those children, all those students, are vulnerable,” Peterson said. “It is your duty to ensure their safety.”
But other speakers argued that more police could make schools less safe, particularly for students of color and special-needs students.
“I want all of our kids to be safe,” said Renee Sekel, a parent. “I’m just not even a tiny bit convinced that adding more cops to our schools is the answer.”
Jennifer Job, the parent of a kindergarten student, told the board that officers don’t change the fact that schools are safe places.
“I want to praise the board for making the right decision about not increasing the number of SROS and not making my child go to school, walk through a metal detector and walk into a place where she feels like she’s under surveillance and being watched to commit a crime on a regular basis,” Job said.
