On Monday, the Atlanta school board could take the first steps toward replacing the city police officers currently patrolling schools with school resource officers directly accountable to the district.
That would mean ending the district’s $5.6 million contract with the City of Atlanta.
A spokeswoman for Mayor Kasim Reed called it “a terrible decision.”
“However, if that’s their judgment we will honor it. We don’t believe that this approach would be more responsible in responding to threats that are present on our educational campuses at this time,” Reed spokeswoman Anne Torres said.
The board is scheduled to vote Monday evening on creating leadership positions in a new safety and security department. The people hired into those jobs would eventually supervise the new department. The new officers could be in schools at the start of next school year, district spokeswoman Jill Strickland said.
The district would hire trained, certified officers who would receive additional training in working with students, she said.
“This is the first phase of that process,” Strickland said. “We look at this as aligning with our new charter system operating model where there’s more autonomy and flexibility at the school level.”
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