Daytona Beach, FL-The new school year will look a little different than last year for 10 Volusia County public schools. That’s because all of them are based in Daytona Beach, where the city’s police department has agreed to station a full-time School Resource Officer at each campus.
Those officers will be assigned to a particular school and will have a variety of duties at that school besides walking around to make sure the campus is safe. Some of them will help teach students and others will even serve as coaches. Of the 10 schools, 6 are elementary (Champion, Longstreet, Ortona, Palm Terace, TT Small and Westside). There are also 2 middle (Campbell and Hinson) and 2 high (Mainland and Seabreeze) that will be under the eye of a DBPD officer.
The money to pay for these SRO’s is coming from a special federal grant that will run for the next 3 years. Prior to this year, the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office provided SRO’s at those schools. They’ve since been assigned to other schools in the county that didn’t have SRO’s last year. Speaking with WNDB’s Marc Bernier on Friday, DBPD Chief Mike Chitwood hopes the officers will make an impact on truancy rates as well as establish a positive bond with students. He says the SRO’s have already visited the homes of students who cut class a lot last year and talked to their parents about making sure their kids get to school and stay there. Chitwood says fixing truancy is often the best way to make sure kids don’t grow up to be criminals.