By Becca Savransky
The Idaho Statesman
CALDWELL, Idaho — Armed private security officers will soon be stationed at some Caldwell schools after the Caldwell School District eliminated its $300,000 contract with Caldwell police to provide school resource officers.
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The district’s school board approved a contract with a private security company to have a security officer placed at three of its schools in an effort to deter threats and ensure safety, administrators said. District officials ended their contract with the police agency after the district’s supplemental levy failed to garner enough support in the November general election, forcing them to make cuts.
The district was able to redirect federal funds to finance a large part of the private security agreement, which cost a total of about $210,000, and may need to use some money from other funding sources for the remainder, administrators said.
Eric Phillips, the director of student safety and emergency operations in Caldwell, said during the board meeting that having security officers will create a secure environment and help better address threats.
“In a world with security threats that are increasingly prevalent, having a strong, reliable defense is more important than ever,” he said. “With the loss of the school resource officer program due to the failure of the supplemental levy, adding armed uniform security officers is the next best route we can take to keeping our kids safe.”
The proposed contract brought before the school board last week with the security company, Eagle Eye Security, initially included four security officers, one at each secondary school in the district. But the board asked to reduce the number of officers to three and eliminate the officer at Jefferson Middle School — which cut costs by $70,000. The company approved the change, Caldwell School District spokesperson Jessica Watts said.
Caldwell isn’t the only district in Idaho that’s using private security officers. Eagle Eye Security said it has been working in Twin Fall schools for several years. Districts across the country have made safety and security more of a priority in recent decades and put more resources and personnel toward securing schools. Schools are now more likely to have secure entrances, active shooter plans and security staff than they were about a decade ago, according to an analysis from the Pew Research Center in 2022.
Nationally, there has been a rise in school shootings over the past two decades. A Washington Post analysis found there have been 413 school shootings since 1999, including 46 in 2022. But school shootings are still rare events and officers deal far more with behavioral or other security issues, security experts say.
But there are some key distinctions between the capabilities of private security officers and school resource officers, who are employees of the local police department.
“We can’t replace an SRO. Obviously they’re full law enforcement officers. We still would need their help in certain circumstances,” said Rantz Hanchey who works at Eagle Eye Security and presented the details of the contract to the school board. “The theory behind it is to make sure, we’re trying to be hopefully a deterrent for any kind of threat.”
How SROs and private security operate
Private security officers and SROs have different responsibilities and different authorities.
SROs are responsible for enforcing state laws, and their authority primarily comes from elected officials, said Mike Munger, the manager of the Idaho Office of School Safety and Security, a state office that performs threat and vulnerability assessments at Idaho schools. Security officers’ authority comes from the school district.
Unlike SROs, security officers can’t write up tickets or arrest people. Their job is to secure the perimeter, walk the hallways, be present during pick-up and drop-off and be a person kids feel they can go to if they have a concern, Caldwell Superintendent N. Shalene French said during the board meeting.
“They’re kind of two different tools working different aspects of the same problem,” Munger told the Idaho Statesman.
Under the Eagle Eye Security contract with Caldwell, the company must acquire its own insurance, including professional liability and worker’s compensation insurance. The employees must also go through background checks.
The agreement also says the company must provide education to security officers on how to do their jobs in a “non-discriminatory fashion” and to “have an understanding of engagement with special populations of students,” such as students with disabilities and English language learners. There are no state requirements specifically for private security officers in schools.
“Those relationships are negotiated at the school district level, so those are going to be based on what the needs of the school district are,” Munger said.
SROs are unique in their specific training, background and experience, and are adept at dealing with stressful situations, Stu Hobson, an SRO support coordinator with the Idaho Office of School Safety and Security, told the Statesman. Last year, 75 Idaho school districts had SROs in their schools, Hobson said.
The school resource officer is trained as a law enforcement officer, informal counselor and public safety educator, he said. The state is also pushing for all SROs go through a 40-hour training class from the National Association of School Resource Officers on developing relationships with students and supporting those with behavioral needs, along with learning more about digital safety and best practices for deescalation, Hobson said.
“You’re not going to get that with a school security officer because they don’t have that training, the knowledge and background,” Hobson said.
SROs can be called away from the school for public safety reasons. For example, if there was a car crash near the school, the officer may need to respond to that — especially in more rural and remote areas where they are a shared resource, Munger said. Private security officers would be at the school all day.
Ultimately, Munger said, it depends on the school district’s specific needs what combination of security resources are best.
Federal funds help cover Caldwell private security
The district chose to go with a private security company in part because of the way its funding works, French said.
The district received a grant for its Community Schools Initiative, which gave district officials the ability to redirect some of its federal Title IV funds they used for the initiative to private security instead.
Federal dollars have strict parameters, and the district couldn’t use them for school resource officers who would be pulled away from schools often, French said during the school board meeting.
The district said it’s still trying to get a grant to have an SRO, but it’s a competitive process.
“We still would love to have SROs,” French said, “but we also know we have these federal dollars we could use for school safety and security.”
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