Needed to qualify for grants and gain access to alerts

It’s official. The local school district now has its own law enforcement agency: the Marion County School Board Police Department.

The small force, featuring a half dozen former Ocala police officers and Marion County deputies, will be charged with making sure the district’s 50-plus school and district offices are safe and secure.

The designation allows Dennis McFatten, the district’s safe school coordinator and police chief, to receive national, state and local law enforcement alerts. Before the designation, law enforcement could not share certain information with the local School District.

The designation also opens the doors for the district to apply for security grants that are solely for law enforcement agencies.

The district will still use school resource officers, known as SROs, at all 51 schools. Those officers will still report to their own agencies: Belleview Police, Ocala Police or the Sheriff’s Office.

Superintendent of Schools Heidi Maier recently emailed school board members with a photograph of the Marion County School Board Police Department patch.

“This patch, which can also be utilized as a badge design, provides visible credibility of our sworn employees to other (School District) employees and campus visitors,” Maier wrote. “The design is also featured on police department letterhead.”

Maier said in a Tuesday interview that the uniforms will be low-key, like khakis and pullover shirts that feature the patch.

“I want them (security team) to blend in,” Maier said. “I want the children to come back to school and be happy and ready for a new year.”

The School District has received $2.5 million in state and federal dollars to help with school security needs and has applied for $457,000 more, school documents show.

The Florida Department of Education issued Marion $1.49 million to help toward fencing costs and to install door locks across 51 school campuses and district offices.

The state also awarded $1 million to Marion for its mental health plan. Those funds purchased a license for the online Behavioral & Emotional Screening System. It also gave the district money to pay for several counselors and psychologists, according to Rene Seutjens, coordinator for grants and federal programs.

Almost all elementary school children have been screened, and secondary school students will be screened when referred by school officials, Seutjens said.

Another program purchased with those state dollars is called Signs of Suicide. More than half of Marion’s 11th-graders were surveyed late last year. Of the 2,070 students, 12.3% were found to be at-risk.

Another funded program is called SAVE, Students Against Violence Everywhere. Every middle school campus will launch promise clubs.

The district has applied for two other federal grants that would help secure schools and purchase five bulletproof vests.

The School Board learned a few months ago that all security measures, from cameras to school resource officers, will cost the district nearly $18.6 million over four years.

Of the annual cost of $4.65 million, $1.24 million will come from the 1-mill school tax that Marion County voters agreed to renew last fall.

The Marion County Sheriff’s Office, Ocala Police Department and Belleview Police Department each agreed to lock in their costs for three years. The total cost in 2019-20 will be $3.62 million per year for 56 officers, about 2 percent less than the cost for 2018-19.

Joe Callahan can be reached at 867-4113 or at joe.callahan@starbanner.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoeOcalaNews