Alabama’s largest public school system is on the cusp of hiring a dozen armed sheriff’s deputies who will be placed at the school system’s high schools and will be charged with preventing violent crimes or potential shootings.

The Mobile County School System and the Mobile County Commission are continuing negotiations that will lead to the hiring of 12 new sheriff’s deputies, paid for by the school system, and who will work full-time at the county’s school system.

Related content:

“It’s something I thought was needed for a long time,” Mobile County Sheriff Paul Burch said Monday. “I never understood why schools in Mobile County do not have officers in the schools, short of their resource officers who cannot carry a gun nor make an arrest.”

He added, “We’ve been fortunate nothing tragic has happened in the schools. I do not want to just sit and wait (for something tragic to happen). I want us to be proactive and deter anyone from doing anything like that other than reacting to a tragedy.”

The Mobile County School Board and the County Commission will both need to separately approve a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that will spell out the terms and conditions of a three-year program that, all told, will cost the school system around $4.2 million.

The costs are for the salaries and equipment for each new sheriff’s deputy that is hired and placed within the school system. For the first year, the school system will appropriate approximately $1.8 million, and $1.2 million for both the second and third years.

The county commission was set to approve their agreement on Monday, but held off while negotiations continue.

Burch is hopeful that within the next “month and a half,” the MOUs will be adopted by both boards, and he can begin hiring new deputies, who will then be placed at schools within the Mobile County School System.

He credited a new state law, passed during the spring legislative session, that will allow retired state police officers to serve as school resource officers or correctional officers without losing retirement benefits.

“Currently, if you retire from a (Retirement Systems of Alabama or RSA) department, you can only make $37,000 a year,” said Burch. “That bill bumped it up to $52,000 a year. That makes it attractive for someone who draws a decent retirement and who can supplement it with a decent salary.”

County officials have been hesitant to call the positions “school resource officers” or SROs. But the deputies would be trained through the Alabama Peace Officers’ Standards and Training Commission (APOST-certified) and would receive additional training through the National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO), based in Hoover.

Mobile County, at the start of the 2022-2023 school year, had 12 SROs stationed at each of the district’s 12 high schools. But those SROs are unarmed, a point of contention within the school system and among law enforcement officials for several years.

A trained SRO is different from security guards or police officers or sheriff deputies in that they undergo specific training for the job. NASRO offers a basic, 40-hour course that includes content on teen brain development, the effects of trauma, cyber safety, special education law, and preventing school violence.

Rena Philips, a school system spokeswoman in a statement, said, “MCPSS is constantly updating our school safety procedures and looking for ways to improve. While we are still working on the details of our partnership with the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office, we are looking forward to working with them and the Mobile County Commission to keep our students and faculties safe at school.”

School Board President Sherry Dillihay-McDade said she believes adding an armed sheriff’s deputy to each of the district’s 12 high schools is “outstanding,” and a “longtime coming.”

“As soon as we can come to an agreement, we’ll push it forward,” she said. “We have 91 schools and we are starting off small. We hope to end big.”

School Board member Johnny Hatcher, who worked with Burch and Commissioner Randall Dueitt to move the issue forward, said his goal is “to secure every school” within Mobile County.

Hatcher also said that Mobile Police Chief Paul Prine was involved in conversations. The City of Mobile is not a participant in the program at a time when the city’s police department is facing a personnel shortage.

“If we did this with the city of Mobile, it would be within Mobile city jurisdiction only,” said Hatcher. “If we do this with the county (commission and sheriff’s office), then it’s countywide.”

The Mobile County School System is Alabama’s largest public school system with an average annual student enrollment of around 53,000.

Burch said the program in Mobile County is not specifically pattered after any other county, although Hatcher said the Baldwin County School System’s program was pointed to as an example of having armed and NASRO-certified officers at every school building. In Baldwin County, all 46 of the county’s schools have a SRO assigned and placed at each building.

School systems throughout Alabama have increased security in recent years, but especially after last year’s tragic school massacre in Uvalde, Texas, in which 19 children and two teachers were killed by a lone gunman.

Some schools, much smaller than Mobile County, have pressed ahead with adding SROs in recent years. Demopolis City Schools in Marengo County added a fourth, full-time SRO last year. Elmore County Schools in Wetumpka had 14 on-campus police officers last year.