More $$ for school safety won't bring back liaison officers to Elgin schools

Elgin Area School District U-46 may have received another large safety grant, but $459,000 will do nothing to help the reduced number of police liaison officers in Elgin middle schools.

Why, exactly? I asked district spokesman Tony Sanders this week.

The federal grant, which comes from the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, must be applied to specific purposes, he said.

Like emergency management and CPR training. Adding handicapped evacuation chairs to multistory buildings. Safety vests. Classroom safety vests. The list goes on, but does not include one area where the district will really be hurting come fall: police liaison officers.

Instead of having one full-time officer at each middle school campus next fall, Abbott, Ellis, Larson and Kimball middle schools will now share two officers.

However, Tefft and Canton in Streamwood, Eastview in Bartlett and Kenyon Woods in South Elgin will continue to keep one officer each.

No, it's not fair. But U-46 officials say the issue's out of their hands.

While a municipality's police department employs each school's police liaison officer, U-46 pays that department a per diem reimbursement for the officer.

"We don't have any influence on negotiating the increases," District Safety Coordinator John Heiderscheidt told the school board this winter. "That's a department cost."

Elgin police have historically asked U-46 to pay about 75 percent of an officer's cost, Sanders said.

For the upcoming school year, they asked for 100 percent.

U-46's tentative $427 million budget assumes no increase in state aid and flat property tax revenues. It also factors in a decline in interest on investments and a $17 million increase in negotiated salary and benefits for union employees.

Along with cutting nearly 350 positions and trimming spending on supplies and capital outlay, Sanders said, U-46 has approached all of its police departments to reduce reimbursement costs. The state's financial woes are placing even more restraints on the district.

"Every other department has been very understanding," Sanders said Tuesday of reducing reimbursements for officers.

With their contracts not yet finalized, Elgin Police still have the chance to lower their reimbursement rate.

For the Elgin middle schoolers' sakes, we can hope the district and the police department will put their heads together to find a better solution before the school year starts.

Times are tight for everyone. But these officers provide needed support to teachers and students.

A standoff on cost shouldn't result in disparities between schools' safety.