Some Waukegan High School students say they feel unsafe with no school resource officers (SRO) from the Waukegan Police Department on duty more than two weeks after classes started.
Meanwhile, members of the public do not understand why a deal cannot be reached between the city of Waukegan and Waukegan Community Unit School District 60 to place SROs on the high school’s Washington and Brookside campuses.
The contract between the city and school district placing SROs on the two campuses was not on the agenda at the District 60 Board of Education meeting Tuesday at the Lincoln Center administration building in Waukegan, as the two sides remain $40,000 apart.
When negotiations began in July, the city sought $350,000 to cover the costs of placing an SRO at Brookside, where freshmen and sophomores are educated, and another at the Washington campus for juniors and seniors. The district offered $150,000.
After more than two weeks of intense discussions, Superintendent Theresa Plascencia said the district believed $220,000 was a fair price. The city dropped its request to $260,000.
Waukegan Mayor Ann Taylor said Wednesday that $260,000 was approximately $30,000 less than the prorated salary, insurance and pension costs for eight months of work. It would not cover uniforms, equipment and training.
Melanie Rosales and Brianna Bravo, the nonvoting student members of the board, said their schoolmates were afraid. With a high crime rate in the city, there are an average of more than four “incidents” in the schools each month, officials said.
Having police officers on campus would help alleviate some of the students’ fear, they said.
Ray Vukovich, a one-time member of the school board as well as the Waukegan City Council, said city and school officials were taking too long to renew a pact that was a fixture for years.
Vukovich criticized school officials for not working with appropriate dispatch. Before Plascencia disclosed later in the meeting the differential was $40,000, as far as he and others in the room knew, it was $145,000.
“Nobody on this end was really trying to get this thing settled,” he said. “The kids need it to feel safe in school.”
Saying she wants to see SROs in the schools, Taylor said other concerns in the proposed contract were negotiated satisfactorily. Though the cost of the officers’ salary, benefits and pension was $294,000, the city was willing to take $260,000.
“I want the officers in the schools,” she said. “This is not a good situation. I’m not happy about it at all. At the end of the day, we can’t give away city services.”
Citing pension costs as the stumbling block, Plascencia said at the meeting the two sides have been negotiating regularly for nearly two weeks. The district was willing to pay $5,000 more than the cost of a pension for municipal workers, not police officers which is higher.
“The difference in cost is related to officers’ pension,” she said. “The city’s pension rate is significantly higher than its IMRF rate due to the fact the city faces a pension shortfall.”
Taylor said the amount of pension contributions is dictated by a statewide mandate. The amounts required for police officers, firefighters and other municipal workers — including some school employees — are not the same. It is higher for the police.
