Bill would allow Alabama nonpublic schools to employ school resource officers

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by Jemma Stephenson, Alabama Reflector
August 26, 2024

(Alabama)- An Alabama state senator has filed a bill that would allow law enforcement to contract with non-public schools to provide school resource officers (SROs).

SB 4, sponsored by Sen. Chris Elliott, R-Josephine, would authorize a sheriff and county commission, or chief of police and city council, to provide SROs to those schools so long as SROs are available to all public schools in the county or municipality.

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Elliott said in a phone interview Friday that after the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, mayors and law enforcement in Baldwin County, where his district is located, got together to find a way to place an SRO in every school.

“They are trained specifically as school resource officers and do great work interacting with kids, families, teachers, administrators, etc., and so I want to expand that and make sure we have school resource officers all over the state,” he said. “But it’s hard to overlook the large number of private schools that we have in the state, and those kids really ought to have the benefit of the same protection.”

Elliott said Baldwin County Sheriff Huey Hoss Mack had brought the bill to Elliott.

Mack said in an interview Friday that there are 17 private school campuses in Baldwin County, and that his department receives requests for SROs from those schools.

Elliott said that there is an Attorney General opinion “floating around” that says that SROs aren’t allowed to contract with nonpublic schools. The senator said law enforcement can do side jobs but can’t be assigned full time.

Photo byPixaboy

In 2022, the Attorney General’s Office wrote that a private school in DeKalb County could not contract for security with the local sheriff’s department, saying there was no specific authorization for that in state law.

“Although the DeKalb County Sheriff may not contract with a private religious school to partially fund and place a school resource officer at the school, individual deputy sheriffs may lawfully be hired by the school during their off-duty hours to provide this service,” the opinion said.

Elliott said that schools would be required to pay the total cost of the contract for the law enforcement officer and also carry insurance to cover the activities of that law enforcement officer.

“So that that’s not something that’s necessarily falling on the local governing body,” he said.

Non-public schools include home schools. Elliott said that those were included in the bill so that they weren’t excluded and said that some home schools are a group of kids coming together with families.

“I will say on the homeschooling side of things, I do think it would be cost prohibitive for them to take advantage of this,” he said. “But again, it’s just something I wanted to make sure we included them if possible.”

Photo byPixaboy

The bill was filed in last spring’s legislative session. It passed the Senate but did not make it through the House of Representatives. Elliott said the bill had been amended with feedback from the Sheriff’s Association and the Association of County Commissions of Alabama (ACCA).

A message seeking comment was left Friday with Sonny Brasfield, the executive director of the ACCA.

Mack said since the Parkland shooting, SROs have moved more towards a relationship and community-based operation. Students feel more comfortable speaking with an SRO with whom they have a relationship, he said.

“It’s very important that you have consistency with those school resource officers and the students and the staff, which builds positive relationships, if you just had a different officer there every day of the week, or every other week or whatever, it doesn’t afford the opportunity to have those relationships,” he said.

The 2025 legislative session begins in February.

This article is republished from The Alabama Reflector under a Creative Commons license.

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