When it comes to School Resource Officers, or SROs, Guilford County Schools contracts with 3 agencies: Greensboro Police, The Guilford County Sheriff's Office and High Point Police. There are a total of 39 officers in ever middle and high school in the district.
Tuesday night, the City of Greensboro approved a new contract with GCS that includes the SRO budget, which is something they regularly look over. In the budget the district puts money toward salaries, benefits, maintaining plice cars, even uniforms. There's also more than $100,000 dedicated to training and conferences.
"SRO officers receive some additional training on top of what they would normally receive as a patrol officer and that is an annual training for about a week during the summer time," explains Scott McCulley, Chief Operations Officer at Guilford County Schools.
That 40-hour training is through the North Carolina Justice Academy. It's not mandatory, but we're told a majority of North Carolina's SROs go through it. There's training to deal with active shooters and other school threats, but they also learn techniques to help them in their work with kids.
"You're a police officer first, but you put the mentor hat on or a kid that doesn't have a father comes and asks you for life advice," explains Mike Anderson, the Community Development and Training Manager
for the NC Center for Safer Schools and the NC Department of Public Instruction.
Anderson served for more than two decades with the Cary Police Department and worked as an SRO for about 10 years. He works now with educators and other SROs when it comes to training.
"I actually had a lot of principals call me after Parkland and ask me the strangest question. 'How do I know my SRO is going to respond correctly?' I was like well they have a badge and they swore an oath and if they're put in that position, hopefully they're going to respond to that."
Recently, a judge ruled that school and law enforcement had no legal duty to protect students from school shootings. That stemmed from a lawsuit against the Parkland high school where a gunman opened fire and killed 17 people in February.
Anderson says there's no contract or document that SROs have to sign saying they will always confront a shooter at school, but they are bound by the oath of their agency. SROs get their law enforcement training first and then go through additional training when they transition into working in schools.
North Carolina lawmakers recently passed a new law making more funds available to school districts to help enhance their SRO coverage. Districts can apply for grants and with certain requirements they can receive more money for additional SRO salaries, trainings and other safety expenses.
There are several districts in the Piedmont Triad that will receive the grants for the 2018-19 school year. Some districts that were allotted the most money include Surry and Rockingham County Schools with nearly $200,000 each and Davidson County Schools with almost $300,000.