Alamance-Burlington school board members have voted 7-0 to renew $3.1 million in contracts for 36 school resource officers (SROs) and three supervisors for the upcoming school year.
The school board’s unanimous approval of the contracts at its latest meeting follows warnings by school officials that ABSS faced the possibility of eliminating some SRO positions for the 2025-26 fiscal year due to an anticipated shortfall in county funding.
However, during a special joint meeting between Alamance County’s commissioners and school board members on Friday, June, 20, the county agreed to allocate an additional $4 million to ABSS.
The agreement stipulates that $1.3 million of the additional $4 million allocation can only be used for the SROs and supervisors that the sheriff’s office provides.
Alamance County manager Heidi York had proposed in mid-May to transfer the $1.3 million in SRO funding to the sheriff’s office.
“We paid $1.05 million for SROs who are county deputies,” Fleming wrote in a May 20 email to York that ABSS subsequently furnished in response to a public records request by The Alamance News. “In your budget, you are holding $1.3 million to pay them directly. This means we will be short $250K on SRO payments to the municipalities. We are notifying them today that we will not be able to meet the 25-26 payment obligations, thus risking the loss of the municipal SROs.”
For the 2024-25 fiscal year that ended June 30, the school system paid a total of $2.85 million for the 36 SROs and three supervisors.
A portion of those positions was funded by a combination of county current expense funding; a state-funded grant for SROs; and state at-risk funding, ABSS chief finance officer Tony Messer confirmed for the newspaper in May.
The cost for 36 SROs and three supervisors will increase to $3.1 million for the 2025-26 fiscal year, based on the contracts approved last Monday night by the school board.
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The Alamance County sheriff’s office will provide 13 SROs, plus three supervisors, for a total cost of $1.3 million this fiscal year, under the terms of the contract that the school board has approved with the sheriff’s office.
The SRO contracts with the five municipal police departments provide for the following:
- Burlington police department: 12 SROs, plus one “flex” position at $75,000 each, for a total cost of $975,000;
- Graham police department: five SROs at $75,000 each, for a total cost of $375,000;
- Mebane police department: four SROs at $75,000 each, for a total cost of $300,000;
- Elon and Haw River police departments: one SRO apiece at $75,000 each.
ABSS chief operations officer Greg Hook told the board last week that, as a result of the funding agreement reached on June 20, the school system will continue paying the sheriff’s office for the 13 SROs and three supervisors it provides.
In a subsequent interview with The Alamance News, school board chairman Sandy Ellington-Graves explained that the funding that ABSS contributes toward the SROs is a supplement to those officers’ salaries.
“After salaries, benefits, and equipment, it far exceeded the [actual] cost,” Ellington-Graves told the newspaper after last week’s school board meeting. “I see this as our commitment.”
Fleming explained at last week’s meeting, “We currently pay 12 months for all of these officers…We are going to have look at how we document the way we are paying; we cannot pay that out of state funds or [the state] SRO grant.”
In other words, ABSS is required to use the state-funded school safety grant and at-risk funding for services that directly benefit students – including during the summer months when most students aren’t in school.
For her part, Ellington-Graves told the newspaper that ABSS might be able to spread its payments for SROs over 10, rather than 12, installments to avoid getting cited for a budget violation on its annual audit. She also pointed out that SROs currently assist with Burlington’s Junior Police Academy each July.
“We are going to have to work around some things,” Fleming told the board last week. For an example, he said that SROs could provide coverage for school-related functions that ABSS holds during the summer, such as a symposium during which ABSS teachers begin preparing for the upcoming school year.
