Budget ax falls on Harris County schools' security Schools scramble after budget ax falls on security

Campuses losing officer contracts

Deputy Constable Mark McGinnis prepares to direct traffic outside Galena Park High School on Friday. He has been stationed at the school for 15 years. Deputy Constable Mark McGinnis prepares to direct traffic outside Galena Park High School on Friday. He has been stationed at the school for 15 years. Photo: Brett Coomer, Chronicle Photo: Brett Coomer, Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Budget ax falls on Harris County schools' security 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

Budget cuts have led two Harris County constables to cancel their security contracts with several area school districts, leaving the districts scrambling for a fix to cover the end of this school year and beyond.

Most parents and educators say going without campus cops is not an option, but the cancellations could not come at a worse time for schools, which are facing severe funding cuts from Austin.

Galena Park Independent School District already has received permission from the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officers Standards to form its own police department. Cypress-Fairbanks ISD's board of trustees is expected to consider its own application on Monday. Tomball ISD has found a short-term solution to replace two contract deputies.

Cost of doing business

Cy-Fair is facing the loss of a 38-deputy contract with Precinct 4 Constable Ron Hickman. Galena Park will lose its existing 11-deputy contract with Precinct 2 Constable Gary Freeman.

In both cases, the districts reimburse the county for 80 percent of the $91,000 cost of a deputy's salary, benefits and equipment. The full cost of the deputies come out of the constables' budgets, and the reimbursements from the school districts go into the county coffers.

Hickman's contract with Cy-Fair, for example, represented a nearly $3.3 million expense on his $29 million budget this year; the district's cost would have been about $2.7 million.

Harris County Budget Director Dick Raycraft, whose office has worked with constables to implement the county's deepest spending cuts in years, said the school contracts were the first to go because districts can levy taxes to hire police, unlike, for example, civic clubs.

"We've been very sensitive to the fact that the county more or less just dropped this on them with no notice, so there's a lot of scrambling," said Hickman, whose current budget is 17.8 percent lower than his spending in the fiscal year that ended Feb. 28.

Cy-Fair, the state's third-largest district with 106,000 students, has contracted its security with the Precinct 4 constable's office for two decades. Deputies are assigned to all Cy-Fair high schools and many feeder schools.

The district's contract ends April 22. Its board is expected to approve a measure Monday to put the funds remaining under its canceled contract toward a new one, paying full price for 24 deputies and a sergeant. The agreement must be approved by Commissioners Court.

Cy-Fair still up in air

Galena Park, which straddles two constable precincts and has contracts for 11 deputies with both Freeman and Precinct 3 Constable Ken Jones, will hire most of the deputies from Freeman next week as the first members of the district's new police force, said Bourke Meagher, associate superintendent of communications.

Jones' contract will be canceled and some of those deputies brought onto the force later in the year, Meagher said. The district has sufficient savings to hire about 16 officers and spend $500,000 on 13 fully equipped police cars this year, she said.

Cy-Fair is not so lucky, board member Larry Youngblood said.

"There's no way we can cover the cost of doing our own police force right now due to all the budget cuts, but we may have to do that," he said. "There aren't any good options. I will not lose a teacher because we have to spend money for security."

Fellow Cy-Fair board member The Rev. John Ogletree had a different view.

"You cannot educate without security, so we're going to have to take care of it," he said. "It's just a matter of how much and when and how it will look. We'll have to find some dollars from somewhere."

Vicki Morrison, whose son is a junior at Cypress Creek High School, said she would not be comfortable sending him there if a deputy was not present.

"During the lunches, in between classes when the students are going through the hallways, every now and then there's a whistle blowing and the cops are running down there because some kids are in a fight," she said.

Maria Flores, president of Galena Park High School's Parent-Teacher Association, agreed, adding that she thinks resources must be spent on security even during lean budget times.

"If there is an interference with them learning, then what's the purpose of sending them to school if I can teach them at home?" Flores said.

Precinct 2 Constable Deputy Mark McGinnis, who has been stationed at Galena Park High School for 15 years, said his duties range from joining an administrator for a discussion of misbehavior with a student to occasionally arresting students for theft or drug possession.

The 1,000-student school sees about five to seven fist fights a month, he said.

"Kids that might be tempted to take a disruption with a teacher to the next level, possibly even a physical altercation, know that we're right there in the first-floor hallway," McGinnis said. "It has to be a huge deterrence."

Tomball covers this year

At Tomball ISD, spokeswoman Staci Stanfield said the district has arranged with Hickman's office and the Tomball Police Department to cover its needs through the end of the school year.

Precinct 4 had provided two deputies full time to the district, one at Tomball High School and the other at a junior high.

Chronicle correspondent Robin Foster contributed to this report.

mike.morris@chron.com