Jun 19

Written by: Bret Rachlin
6/19/2009 3:38 PM

While federal stimulus dollars continue to help fund many school resources across the country, many school districts still face steep budget cuts (Source: The New Britain Herald, June 17, 2009, Public expresses concern for school budget at meeting). Connecticut’s New Britain school district is one of those having to make a significant cut of $7.8 million from its budget. The majority of those cuts come from reducing teacher salaries, but $87,000 will be yielded by slicing security-guard salaries.

According to the article, New Britain High School had no security guards to spare. Plummer Carroll, head of security for New Britain High School, said “the removal of a security guard, or any security guard, would put us one instance away from media coverage at New Britain High School. If you cut security, the safety in the school will be in jeopardy.”

Obviously, it’s understandable that the school board needs to reduce budget funding. The question is on what basis did they make the recommendation to cut security-guard salaries? Did the board interview the head of security for the high school prior to making this decision? Has it investigated ways to streamline security and safety services, making them more efficient and less costly? Did it conduct a security assessment to identify the most critical risk areas?

Overall, it’s possible the school board did all of these things and cutting the security-guard salaries was its only option. However, given the emphasis the head of high school security places on the need for security guards, it’s unlikely that the board exhausted all of these efforts.

If the school board and the district conducted a security assessment on a yearly (or more often) basis, then at least it would have the supporting information to make more accurate budget decisions. For example, an assessment may conclude that security guards are critical for maintaining order in the high school and cannot be reduced at this time, necessitating the delay of a security technology implementation. It also could conclude the opposite, which would enable the board to answer questions from the public confidently that it is cutting budget in the most appropriate places while not jeopardizing security.

Does your district utilize security assessments to assist in making budget recommendations?

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