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Beaufort County Sheriff Scott Hammonds shared with Beaufort County Board of Education and Board of County Commissioners how he plans to place deputies back into public schools as school resource officers (SROs). 

Beaufort County Commissioners and Beaufort County Schools held a joint meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 18 to hear from Hammonds and to discuss other local education related topics. 

The Current Idea  

The idea is that six school resource officers from the sheriff’s office would be added during the 2024-2025 school year then another six from the sheriff’s office would be added during the 2025-2026 school year. By the 2026 school year, all Beaufort County schools would have an SRO from the sheriff’s office. All Beaufort County public schools currently have an SRO that is supplied by Allied Universal, but by 2026 they would be phased out. 

“I have six [deputies] committed to you today, and I want Beaufort County to know that I am committed to put personnel in the schools right now. I agree that each school does need an SRO,” Hammonds said. 

Hammonds said he already has in mind the schools that would be first; however, as a safety precaution, he did not specifically say which ones. 

Before the second set of officers arrive, the sheriff’s office could work out an agreement with Allied Universal and the school district to offer a hybrid model of deputies in half of the schools and Allied Universal officers in the other half. 

“We would have to do a hybrid model, it sounds like, between Allied and the sheriff’s office,” Terry Draper, Vice Chairman of the Board of Education said.

Implementation 

Beaufort County Schools’ contract with Allied Universal ends July 1, 2024. Superintendent Dr. Matthew Cheeseman said that date is not a firm deadline to have everything figured out. He would rather see most of the plan designed by March. 

“No one has given me a hard test deadline, but you have to have this figured out by March, in my mind,” Cheeseman said. This would provide enough time to hold meetings between the two boards, the sheriff’s office and Allied Universal in addition to having deputies trained and certified to be an SRO who can carry a weapon before July. 

“It’s [Hammonds’] goal to get back to get back to the community use of local law enforcement which I think everybody’s on the same page,” Cheeseman told reporters on Wednesday. “We never wanted them to leave in the first place.” 

Cheeseman continued to say, “To my knowledge, [Allied Universal] is not offended by that. They know they are not the long-term solution.” 

Fulfilling promises 

The only foreseeable issue with placing deputies into public schools is being able to hire six additional deputies. Law enforcement agencies have struggled to hire personnel. Which is why Commissioner Ed Booth is concerned the sheriff’s office may be unable to deliver on their promise of a second set of six deputies. 

“You can’t come in here with half enough, and you can’t promise these people that next year ‘I’ll have six’ when we’re having the problem all over the country. You can’t promise them. You can’t guarantee…They’re just not there…That’s kind of tough to guarantee two years from now that ‘I can guarantee you six more,’” Booth said, paraphrasing Hammonds. 

Cheeseman also addressed this concern saying, “Yes, I would have a concern, but not in such a way that I don’t believe it could happen.” He explained the school district “struggles to find” not just teachers but counselors,  administrators and bus drivers.  

Cheeseman is not worried about the first set of SROs, but said finding the second set “will be harder.” Because the commissioners approve the sheriff’s office and school district’s annual budgets, if the goal is to hire SROs who can keep students safe and have a personality that works well with children, it’s up to the commissioners approval of competitive salaries to make those hires achievable. 

Budgeting for SROs 

Money, County Commissioner Chairman Frankie Waters said, would not be an issue, because the commissioners are “willing to fund” 12 SROs. 

The Board of County Commissioners approves the sheriff’s office annual budget. This means, the sheriff’s office’s budget will need to increase to cover the cost of SROs’ uniforms, equipment and vehicles. In addition, the budget will need to increase to account for six additional SROs in the future. 

According to the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office, it would cost $691,039 to provide 12 SROs with uniforms, equipment and vehicles. 

“The hybrid word is really not that – it’s not that far fetched. I really don’t understand why that would be an issue,” Hammonds said in reference to county commissioners funding both the sheriff’s office and school districts’ annual budgets. 

Hammonds ended the conversation about SROs by saying, “my professional ethics will be to put these schools and these children first and foremost.” 

Background 

Beaufort County Schools received a written letter from the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office on Nov. 13, 2020 stating that a memorandum of understanding (MOU) would be terminated in 90 days. Meaning, an agreement between the sheriff’s office and school district to place school resource officers in schools would end six months prior to its official end.  The letter was signed by then Sheriff Ernie Coleman. 

Coleman stated in the letter he did not want the agreement to end; however, he cited funding decisions made by county commissioners as to why it happened. 

“The reality of the situation is that this decision is over funding, or more accurately, a defunding of deputy sheriff positions because of personal feelings and politics above personal safety,” a portion of the letter read. 

In the fiscal year 2020-2021, 102 positions were allocated in the sheriff’s office’s budget – a decrease of five from the previous fiscal year. 

“County Manager Brian Alligood last month explained that the Sheriff’s Office made a commitment last year to bring back a flat budget to the commissioners, and in order to accomplish that they had to leave those five positions unfilled and cut some capital spending as well.  Alligood also said that the commissioners took revenue shortfalls caused by COVID-19 into consideration when crafting the budget. He said all county departments had to tighten their budgets with that in mind, and all of them were put under a partial hiring freeze,” an article from the Daily News explained. 

On Nov. 17, Cheeseman, his assistant superintendent and Coleman held a meeting where Coleman told Cheeseman the school district would need to find a third party alternative for school security in the future. 

After meeting with the chairman of the Board of County Commissioners earlier in 2021 about funding school security, the school district voted to sign a contract with Allied Universal. Cheeseman then presented a pricing proposal from Allied Universal to county commissioners. The proposal, worth $650,000 per contractual year for the next three years, passed with a 4-3 vote. 

According to Cheeseman, when he arrived in Beaufort County in January of 2019, “we did not have one SRO in every school building even though the MOU said they would.” It has always been the Board of Education’s belief that an SRO should be at every school, he said.