The Orange County (Florida) school district has settled its dispute with five local police departments over how much it will pay for resource officers patrolling school campuses.
The Orlando Sentinel reports that the tentative agreement will keep officers on campuses through the 2026-27 school year. The district did not provide financial details of the settlement.
Apopka, Ocoee, Winter Garden, Winter Park and Windermere initially asked for a combined $2 million more to cover the cost of providing school resource officers at all district campuses.
The district said it could not afford that hike, prompting months of back and forth. School officials said they might have to consider using armed guardians, who cost less but also receive less training than police officers.
Following the 2018 shooting massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland that left 17 dead, Florida passed legislation requiring public schools to have either police officers or armed guardians on their campuses.
The Orange County district has opted to pay for police officers to serve on its campuses.
Previously, the county’s two largest law enforcement agencies — the Orange County Sheriff’s Office and the Orlando Police Department — and some smaller departments had agreed to a three-year contract to continue providing school resource officers at most of the district's more than 200 campuses.
But police departments at the five remaining municipalities rejected that deal.
In December, Apopka’s police department said it would be “fiscally irresponsible to our residents to accept a minimal increase” given that the department’s costs had risen significantly in recent years. Apopka was the largest municipality pushing back against the school district’s school offer.
