County, resource officer agreement same as last year
BY PAM BRANNON Gulf Breeze News news@gulfbreezenews.com

Rogers

The Santa Rosa County School Board came to an agreement last week concerning school resource officers with the Sheriff. But the final deal will not save the sheriff any money in his next year's budget, as he had hoped.

School Supt. John Rogers said he and his staff had met with Sheriff Wendall Hall last week to come to a final deal over resource officers.

Sheriff Hall reported, "The school board does not have any more money to pick up any more of the cost of resource officers than they have been doing. That means we will be staying to our normal deal, of us paying half the cost of officers for the schools. But it will be a little better for us this year, since the school board is not going to place resource officers in the elementary schools."

Supt. Rogers said they will have six resource officers for high schools, and six for middle schools, and two Gulf Breeze Police officers working in Gulf Breeze schools. "We already have just over $400,000 budgeted to pay our share of those resource officers," Rogers said.

"The sheriff also has four officers that have one more year on a grant program, so those costs for the four will be paid through grants. But he is matching our money for the program 50-50."

The sheriff had been hoping that if the school board could pick up the entire cost of the school resource officers this next school year, he could put that money back into his budget that is being cut from the county cut-backs.