City, schools kerfuffle goes public

BROOKINGS — Negotiations over whose budget carries what weight of paying school resource officers in Brookings spilled into public last week when Brookings Superintendent of Schools Summer Schultz brought them up at a meeting of the school board — and later in a radio interview — and Deputy Mayor Nick Wendell responded at a City Council meeting the next day.

At issue is what percentage of whose budget will provide funding for the city’s two school resource officers.

Currently, Wendell said at the end of the council meeting, the city pays for 25 percent of one officer and 100 percent of the other.

Because the entities run on different budget cycles, Wendell told the group, City Manager Paul Briseno reached out to Schultz about possible modifications to the split and if, and when, they would be feasible.

“I just want to affirm that we are committed to the SROs,” Wendell told The Beacon in a follow-up interview. “We know the district is committed to the SROs. This is not about that. This is just about making sure as we’re going through the budgeting process, we talk more clearly about that relationship. I also wanted staff to give us a sense of what is the best practice? There’s other mid-sized and larger cities throughout the region that have a similar relationship. Let’s just kind of take a look at what other communities are doing, and ideally, over time, we might align with other communities, if that’s not feasible in the short term, that’s fine. But we at least kind of acknowledged what the current funding balance is.”

Schultz brought up the matter during an Aug. 10 meeting of the school board.

“We were notified by the city last month that the funding for the school resource officers will be changing come January 1. So historically, the school has paid 75 percent of one of the two SROS that are in our building; and now it is being requested that the school pay 75 percent of both SROs,” she said.
Schultz said the school district is on a tight budget recently approved by the board.

“In a full year, the change in commitment would cost the district around ($92,000). And so with just the half of the year… to come up with, you know, 40 to 45 thousand dollars in January after the budget [has been finalized] — it’s a tight budget, we’re really proud of our budget, but it is tight. I’m not sure that we’re going to necessarily be able to do that mid-year.”

Wendell explained at the Council meeting that the council’s interest was doing its due diligence for the following budget, and stressed that both parties were committed to the SROs — and that taxpayers ultimately bear the cost, however the two budgets break down.

“Our fiscal year runs January to December, the calendar year, and their fiscal year runs July 1 to June 30,” Wendell said. “And so, if any change was going to be made in that existing funding relationship, we wanted to make sure the school district had as much advance notice as possible, so that if we are going to request any type of change, that they had time to absorb that into a future budget. We’re entering into the 2027 budget cycle now, so it’s an appropriate time to start that conversation with the school district. I’ll just say, as an individual member of the council, I think it’s unfortunate that that now has bubbled up to a public discussion. It was not intended to be publicly debated because it’s not about the city’s support or the school district’s support of our school resource officers; those are valuable positions. We’ve got phenomenal SROs in our schools.

“It is important that we look down the road and consider that relationship. I know the school district will be doing the same thing.

Both of our personnel budgets are tight, so this is an important shared relationship,” Wendell said. “This is not about us shifting that. It’s really just about what is the industry standard. Is there room for changes in Brookings, and can both of us absorb those changes? And can we do that thoughtfully? We’ll continue that conversation.”

Wendell made a motion to put the issue up for public discussion at a future meeting, and that motion passed unanimously, 6-0.

Linehan is the Beacon’s managing editor and welcomes story tips and comments at BrookingsBeacon@gmail.com