To offer better coverage to the elementary schools and help conduct safety audits, Ector County ISD trustees recently approved hiring three new police officers.
During his media call Wednesday, Superintendent Scott Muri said the new officers, who have not been hired yet, will provide the district police department with more capacity.
At the Oct. 18 board meeting, trustees approved a $12,215,683 budget amendment that will help pay for the new officers, plus equipment and training.
That included $472,500 for new officers and related expenses.
With the addition of the new officers, there will be 32 all together including 31 full and one part-time officer.
“Many people in the community are well aware that the state of Texas is conducting safety audits at this time of all schools in the state of Texas ensuring that all external doors are locked,” Muri said.
“Our police officers conduct a safety audit for every school, every week. These three officers will give us the capacity to continue to conduct those safety audits to make sure that students and staff members are as safe as they can possibly be on each of the Ector County Independent school sites,” he added.
Muri said the job descriptions are posted, but it takes a while to hire them.
“There are a lot of background (checks) and a lot of hoops, if you will, that police officers have to jump through in order to become an ECISD police officer. It will be several months before we actually bring them aboard officially and then once they start they actually have to spend several months with an existing officer learning how to work in the school system. It’s a pretty rigorous process to become a school district police officer,” he said.
The process isn’t as extensive if they are already police officers.
“Even though they’re an existing police officer, there are still background checks and other bodies of work including training that have to happen before they’re officially aboard as an officer,” Muri said.
In a similar vein, Muri was asked if there was something the district could do to bring home the consequences of making threats, bringing weapons to school and getting into fights.
“We’re doing quite a bit on our side, but we really need the help of our moms and dads … There’s a law enforcement part of this. Ten years ago, a student could use words at school and a teacher would remind the child that those words might be inappropriate. … Ten years ago, a child would probably end up in the office to have a conversation with a principal or administrator reminding them that type of language is inappropriate at school,” Muri said.
“But today, using those words at the elementary level, middle school level, or high school level will result in an arrest. We’re not joking. This is serious. Even if a child may be joking when they say the words, our responsibility today is to take everything seriously, and we do. And so there are legal consequences. You have children — elementary kids, middle school kids, high school kids — arrested because of what they are saying. … Children go to the juvenile detention center. Beyond that, that is not something the school district controls. But that is our judicial system that deals with kids from that perspective. What we do on the education side is our teachers and our principals have been very diligent in reminding children, educating children that when you have an issue, when you become angry or upset there are appropriate behaviors that you can display to help you deal with your anger, or deal with any concern or frustration that you may have,” Muri said.
ECISD also has social-emotional curriculum that provides students with the tools and resources that they need should they face someone that makes them angry or upset in any way.
“This teaches them the appropriate words or actions they can take to keep them safe, and certainly words and actions that do not get them in trouble,” Muri said. “We’re living in a different world today and our words — anytime a student says anything threatening another child or threatening the school in any way — there will be consequences that the school administers, as well as law enforcement” will need to address.
“I strongly encourage all of our parents to have regular conversations with (their) children about what to say and what not to say, what is appropriate, what is not appropriate and then when you feel a certain way as a child what are appropriate words or appropriate actions that you can take in order to resolve any issues or conflicts that you may have,” he added.
Unfortunately, Muri said, children sometimes copy things from the news, things they see, hear or read about things. He said negative behaviors get a lot of attention and he wished positive behaviors were more in the spotlight.
“The reality is that 99.9 percent of our kids are great students every single day. That’s the type of behavior that we expect from all of them, but we have to get our kids, and their words specifically, under control and help them think differently and speak differently today. … This not only an ECISD issue. We’re seeing this across our state and nation right now,” Muri said.
“Our children are screaming for help and we have to come to their rescue,” he added.
“We have to continue to support our kids and help them see the right kinds of behaviors that will help them be successful in life rather than headed to jail or prison as the case may be,” Muri said.
Also during the Oct. 18 board meeting, trustees discussed the possibility of a future bond referendum.
“They asked me as the superintendent to bring back some recommendations to them, so I did and the board has now adopted — with some adjustments — those recommendations,” Muri said.
The board adopted a timeline and they are targeting November 2023 for an election.
“We are now in the process of forming a new bond committee. That committee will be made up of a little over 140 individuals … We will have 44 parents, one parent from each of the 44 schools in ECISD. We will have 44 staff members — one staff member from every school in ECISD. We will have 21 community members — 21 individuals that are each recommended by the ECISD Board of Trustees. We will have multiple central office employees those that represent our fine arts department, athletics department, transportation — all of the areas that typically a bond would consider. We will have those individuals represented, as well.”
Those interested in serving on the bond committee should let their board member or their campus principal know. Each trustee will submit three names to be part of the committee.
Trustee contact information is available on the ECISD website, www.ectorcountyisd.org.
The first meeting will be in January.
“We will continue to meet monthly through the month of May. Then a recommendation will be brought to our trustees during the month of June,” Muri said.
