Marksville, Moreauville police departments fill vacant SRO positions

Officers provide extra security, other benefits at high schools

All three of the Avoyelles Parish School District’s traditional high schools still have full-time law enforcement officers on campus during the day, but there have been changes in the past few months.

The Sheriff’s Office had been providing the School Resource Officers for Avoyelles, Bunkie and Marksville high schools for the past few years. LaSAS, a charter school within the local public school system, has never had an SRO assigned to it.

The officers receive special training in how to work in a school setting and relate to students and school personnel.

Due to manpower shortages, APSO now only provides an officer at Bunkie Magnet.

Marksville PD is providing an officer for Marksville High and Moreauville PD has assigned an officer to Avoyelles High.

“The benefit of the School Resource Officer program is huge,” Superintendent Blaine Dauzat said. “When it is done properly, these officers do so much more than provide security on our campuses.”

The deputy assigned to Avoyelles High left APSO in late November. The officer assigned to Marksville High was reassigned earlier this month to cover parish patrol duties.

“APSO still provides resource officer Eric Overgaard at Bunkie Magnet,” Dauzat said. “He’s awesome and we appreciate what he does.”

PROVIDES SECURITY

Dauzat said having a law enforcement officer on campus, even without the additional training, is important because it provides more security.

“The safety of our students comes first, and we thank these agencies for helping out,” Dauzat said.

The program is so popular with schools, students and parents that the School Board even considered expanding the SRO program to the elementary schools.

However, board members were told in July there were too many hurdles to overcome to make that feasible.

In addition to the $25,000-per-officer cost to the School Board’s budget, APSO Maj. Steve Martel told board members this past July that the Sheriff’s Office would have trouble recruiting officers to fill those positions.

The department would also be faced with an additional $20,000-per-officer cost not covered by the amount paid by the School Board. That expense would not be possible in the current budget.

The $20,000 APSO cost includes training, equipment and additional salary and benefits in excess of the $25,000 payment from the School Board.

Even if the personnel could be recruited and APSO could afford its additional costs, it takes about two years to train a School Resource Officer.

Without that specialized training, the officer is more of a “security guard” than a true SRO, Martel told the board.

At this time the amount the district had been paying for the officers at Avoyelles and Marksville will be paid to the municipal police departments providing those officers.

Dauzat said he hopes APSO can step back in to fill the two positions with fully trained resource officers either in the next few months under Sheriff Doug Anderson’s term or when David Dauzat takes office on July 1.

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