After a decade, Florida school shooting finally may shake money free for safety, security

Editor's note: This article was edited from its original version following Wednesday's shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida.

The massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School finally might spur lawmakers to give Florida schools more money for safety and security for the first time in a decade.

Still, it took the loss of 17 lives — students, at least one teacher and a coach — to push the issue to the forefront.

The threats facing Florida schools, and the lack of funding to protect them, are nothing new.

Escambia County, for example, has fewer school resource officers this year compared to last, said Cmdr. Dale Tharp. That's fewer barriers to prevent attacks like the deadly shooting Wednesday in Parkland.

"We used to be the good guys in white hats, breaking down the barrier between students and law enforcement," Tharp said. "Now, we’re making sure parents can send their kids to school and have them come home in the afternoons."

Resource officers in Florida, in large part, are paid for from a pool of money called Safe Schools, earmarked each year strictly for school districts to use on safety and security.

The state's 67 school districts this year are sharing $64.4 million, an amount unchanged for the past seven years.

Schools are supposed to use this money for a gamut of safety-and-security needs, from bullying prevention to after-school programs, yet more than 80 percent is spent on school resource officers.

More: FBI failed to pursue January tip on Nikolas Cruz, Florida school shooting suspect

More: Florida school shooting: No decision on when to resume classes at Marjory Stoneman Douglas

As the 2018 legislative session trudged past the halfway point, the state Senate and House had been split on kicking in any more money for Safe Schools.

But in the wake of the Valentine’s Day shooting in Broward County, lawmakers changed their tune, showing renewed interest in chipping in more for security.

House members Thursday implored Speaker Richard Corcoran, R-Land O' Lakes, and Senate President Joe Negron, R-Stuart, to find more money for Safe Schools. In addition to now wanting nearly $14 million more for Safe Schools, they’re asking $40 million be set aside strictly for mental-health programs in schools.

“We will work together to make a significant investment in school safety,” Corcoran said in a statement Thursday.

Out of the 'back seat'

Safe Schools dollars, as Tharp and educators across the state lament, are being spread thinner than ever. Many districts use their entire safety allocation for resource officers, leaving nothing left for other security needs.

All it takes is an incident such as Wednesday’s mass shooting to open people’s eyes and move the issue front-and-center.

"As long as you don’t have a catastrophic event, sometimes things like Safe Schools funding just have to take a back seat," Juhan Mixon, executive director of the Florida Association of School Administrators said in an interview with the USA TODAY Network just weeks before the Parkland massacre. "I guess the hope is we will continue to be safe."

Now the reality of a “catastrophic event” has moved Safe Schools up from that back seat.

Like many trends in Florida's education spending, the decline of Safe Schools began with the Great Recession, Mixon said.

Districts 10 years ago divvied up a Safe Schools pot of about $75.6 million, a plateau that hasn't been seen, or even approached, since.

Since 2007, Safe Schools has been cut by 15 percent — little by little until it hit $64.4 million in 2011, according to the Department of Education.

Florida school enrollment, meanwhile, grew by more than 300,000 students over the same span, according to the state.

Each district gets a minimum lump sum every year for Safe Schools, plus extra money based on the county's crime rate.

That minimum was $73,485 in 2007-08 compared to $62,660 in 2017-18, according to the state.

More: Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting: A closer look

More: Was Broward shooter out for 'revenge?' | Gil Smart

Safe Schools funding, Mixon said in an interview before the Douglas High School tragedy, must be a priority for lawmakers so districts can make up for the money lost since the recession and keep up with the influx of students across the state.

And it's not as if educators haven't asked for more.

Numerous groups, including the Florida Association of School Administrators and the Florida Association of District School Superintendents, have told the state Board of Education they need more money for Safe Schools. For their part, board members agree the program is underfunded.

"The money … is nowhere near enough to do what’s necessary to keep schools safe," Andy Tuck, a member of the state Board of Education, said at a July 17 meeting after a presentation from Mixon.

Asking over and over

The Department of Education has asked the Legislature for more Safe Schools funding each of the past eight years, records reveal.

Yet year after year, lawmakers have set aside no more than the same $64.4 million.

The first plea came before the 2012-13 school year, when the Department of Education requested a $1.9 million increase to Safe Schools.

Lawmakers said no.

Undeterred, the Department of Education returned for 2013-14 with a smaller request: a $394,832 boost to Safe Schools.

Still, nothing.

The Department of Education asked for about a $1.2 million Safe Schools hike in 2014-15. But the Legislature voted for the same $64.4 million.

But the Department of Education didn't give up after having nominal increases rejected year after year. Officials asked the Legislature for an extra $10 million for Safe Schools three years in a row, and had been planning to do it again for 2019-20.

If that money makes it to the state budget, Safe Schools finally would be back to pre-recession funding.

"For four consecutive years, we have proudly proposed a $10 million increase in school safety, and I look forward to working with the Legislature to make this a reality," Tuck said in a statement to the USA TODAY Network.

Tuck, at that July 17 meeting, implored local school districts to work with law enforcement to make sure both sides are paying their share for security. Most districts, as it turns out, already have partnerships to split the cost of resource officers with police departments and sheriff's offices.

Nevertheless, in 16 school districts, Safe Schools paid for at least 90 percent of school resource officers in 2015-16, the most recent data available from the Department of Education.

Staffing, programs suffer

Statewide, $52.3 million of the $64.4 million set aside for Safe Schools went to paying school resource officers, according to the 2015-16 data.

But even with the bulk of money helping keep resource officers on the job, it still is not enough to keep every district fully staffed. Now, the Parkland shooting is sure to add to the debate, heighten awareness of officers in schools and raise questions across the state about whether districts’ current number of resource officers is enough.

Take Escambia County, for example. Tharp's crew is down four officers and a supervisor compared to last year. High schools used to have two officers. Now each has one.

And they still are tasked with providing the same amount of security.

One day in October, Tharp recalls, a Pensacola middle school student was bullied to his breaking point.

A tip led deputies to search the 14-year-old's gym bag, where they found a loaded 9mm pistol. Extra magazines were stuffed into a bag pocket.

The incident, Tharp said, is emblematic of how school security has changed since he started working as a resource officer in Escambia County more than 25 years ago.

After spending millions on school resource officers each year, districts are left only with scraps to pay for other needs, such as training educators and administrators need desperately, Mixon said.

More than half of districts across the state said they had too little money to pay for bullying-prevention programs, according to the 2015-16 data.

Twenty-four of Florida's 67 districts had high school suicide-prevention programs in 2015-16; 41 had violence-prevention programs, according to the state.

"We can argue how (funds are) allocated, what’s for training and school resource officers," Mixon told the Board of Education in July. "(But) it is not a simple fix of an educator carrying a gun."

What happened in Parkland, however, could put a different face on things.

Before Wednesday, school security funding was not a heavily debated issue among lawmakers this session. The House and Senate quietly pushed through vastly different proposals on how much to set aside for school safety next year.

The Senate recommended a whopping budget increase, including an extra $13.7 million for Safe Schools. That would raise each district's base Safe Schools allocation from $62,660 to $250,000.

The House, however, recommended an all-too-familiar allocation for Safe Schools: $64.4 million.

Now, it appears, both sides are open to making school security a priority.

“The sad reality is that evil is real,” Corcoran said in his statement. “But I'm convinced that there are enough people of good will to work together to solve this problem.”



