Want to keep Escambia students safe? Escambia schools seeking campus security officers

Escambia County Public Schools are seeking qualified individuals to work as campus security officers for the 2023-2024 school year.

Campus security officers are district employees trained by the Escambia County Sheriff's Office whose sole mission is to protect students and staff in our public schools.

The current openings, according to Director of Protection Services Kyle Kinser, are to maintain a sustainable number of staff. According to Kinser, the district has 35 CSOs and aims to keep around 40 on staff.

“The job market is a tough position to retain and recruit and just to maintain an adequate number of staff. I don't want the perception to be that we're having more or less than what we've had in the past,” Kinser said. “This is just to maintain our presence on campus as we're required.”

The Coach Aaron Feis Guardian Program was established after a gunman killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, including Feis, who gave his life saving others.

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Legislation was later passed enabling law enforcement agencies establish and train one or more safe-school officers at each school facility within their district to aid in the prevention of active assailant incidents on school premises.

Guardians can be anyone including coaches, school employees or people hired specifically to serve as school guardians. Typically, citizens who participate are either prior military or former law enforcement.

The training curriculum involves 144 hours of training where 80 hours are taken straight out of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement course. It also includes 80 hours at the gun range with 85% proficiency, unlike law enforcement which needs 80% to pass that part of their training.

Applicants also go through an intense process to identify the most qualified candidates. This includes a panel interview, a polygraph test, a psychological evaluation to determine mental stability and ability to handle the stresses of an active shooter situation, and then a background check.

The guardian program in Escambia County typically ends up graduating 50% to 60% of its class.

“If you're somebody that doesn't know how to handle a firearm, you're somebody that can't shoot accurately, you're somebody that can't respond to the stresses of an active shooter scenario, you are not somebody that will ever be on our campus with a gun,” Kinser said.

Traditionally, school resource officers were in middle and high schools. Prior to 2018, very few elementary schools in the nation had any law enforcement presence, but the landscape has shifted in recent years because of school shootings such as the attack in Parkland, according to Kinser.

In 2019, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an executive order to institute the Coach Aaron Feis Guardian Program, allowing school districts to cooperate with law enforcement agencies to assign one or more safe-school officers at each school facility by the start of the 2018-19 school year. Escambia County became one of these school districts to participate but immediately reassured people that teachers would not be armed.

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Selected candidates for the campus security officer program begin with a starting salary of $33,309 for 10 months of employment. Once the training process has been completed, candidates are eligible for a variety of benefits.

Kisner reassures that the Guardians were not created to challenge but to complement school resource officers by keeping schools safe from outside threats and criminal activity on campus. They are not involved in general student discipline matters such as fights or truancy.

“The SRO program is a phenomenal partnership between the Escambia County Sheriff's Office, PPD (Pensacola Police Department), and Escambia County Public Schools, which basically puts law enforcement officers in our schools,” Kinser said. “The other part that I love about it is that you get to see them not only just enforcing rules enforcing the law, but they're a part of that school, there's partnerships there, people always think about the negative light of law enforcement, but there's so many good things that they do every day building relationships and supporting the community.”

For more information about the job and others go to ecsd-fl.schoolloop.com/employment.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Escambia Guardian program needs school campus security officers