Because Ector County ISD is unable to meet the requirements of House Bill 3, which requires a police or peace officer at every campus, the district has declared financial hardship.
During his media call Wednesday, Superintendent Scott Muri said the reasons are lack of funding and lack of police officers. The district has 45 campuses.
“Currently, ECISD has police officers in our high schools and in our middle schools and then we patrol our elementary schools,” Muri said. “The law requires that we now place a uniformed officer in each of those campuses. We had a conversation last night with our trustees about that. The law also allows a school district to exercise a waiver, if indeed we are unable to meet that law by the first of September.”
At this time, Muri said ECISD is unable to meet the law for two reasons, one of which is funding.
“Adding 30 additional police officers to our police force is at a cost of $4.5 million. That includes their salary, as well as all of their uniforms and equipment that they need to possess in order to fulfill their jobs as a police officer. The state, however, provided only $670,000 of that of $4.5 million, so we’re declaring a financial hardship as a reason that we’re unable to fulfill that by Sept. 1,” Muri said.
“In addition, we do not have 30 officers waiting in line to fulfill that opportunity, so we will begin to recruit and attempt to fill those vacancies as officers are available … We are excited to be able to announce that once we find the officers and have the resources from our state, we will be able to put a uniformed officer in each of our schools,” he added.
Muri said the district is in the process of working with state legislators to make sure they are fully funded for that expectation.
The $4.5 million cost of adding 30 more officers would include $2.1 million in salaries and the rest in equipment, training and resources that those officers need.
He noted that House Bill 3 affects all 1,200 districts in Texas and many are in a similar situation. Some don’t have a police department or any officers.
Muri said there are three officers in the process of being hired, but they still need an additional 27.
“Right now, there’s no one waiting in line to fill those positions. The Odessa Police Department, Sheriff’s Department and other law enforcement agencies are also searching for law enforcement officers, so it is a problem within our region, within our state, and in many cases throughout the nation,” Muri said.
All districts fell under the same funding formula receiving $15,000 per school and an additional 28 cents per student for safety.
Asked if this was a way for the governor to defund public schools, Muri said he couldn’t speak to the intent of anyone.
“The law was created by our legislature potentially just not understanding the full scope of the cost that it would take. There are school districts in Texas that do not even have police. They don’t have officers today, nor do they have their own police department. It’s a significant cost for school districts across the state of Texas. Our opportunity is to work with our state legislature to help them understand the cost of this requirement. I think the requirement is tremendous. I agree with putting a uniformed officer, an armed officer, at every school,” Muri said.
“Our challenge is simply the finances are not enough to pay for it and nor do we have the people in line to take the jobs,” he added.
Muri said he has already had healthy conversations with State Rep. Brooks Landgraf, R-Odessa, about this.
Landgraf has been a “staunch supporter of public education and the work that specifically we’re doing in ECISD. We need to make sure that all of our state representatives and senators understand the situation so that it can be remedied,” Muri added.
One idea is to create a pipeline for officers that can be used for all local law enforcement agencies.
Four years ago, ECISD didn’t have enough teachers in classrooms, so they went to work building teacher pipelines “and thinking creatively about how to solve that.”
“That is the work that will begin really today as the board voted,” Muri said.
