ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla — School safety remains the top concern for schools across our area, and that includes St. Johns County.
The district announced that the amount of money spent on school safety will increase by more than $1,000,000 this year, with nearly $700,000 coming from the district.
"Safety and security has been a top priority in this district for as long as I've been here," says Paul Abbatinozzi, the Senior Director of School Services for the St. Johns County School District.
Abbatinozzi says the increased funding will add to the total number of law enforcement officers as well as public service assistants assigned to the 43 schools in the district.
"So when those officers aren't covering vacancies we'll have double officers in our high schools, so many high schools throughout the year will have 2 officers in them," says Abbatinozzi.
The total cost for law enforcement throughout the district will increase by more than $1,000,000. The district pays 70 percent of the officer's salary during the school year, which means that the district will pay more than $668,000 extra this year, but funding hasn't been cut for anything else.
"We haven't cut anything funding wise," says Abbatinozzi, "there's a portion of our contract with the Sheriff's Office that's covered from safe schools allocation, the other portion we cover from our general operations budget".
And the improvements to safety don't stop with officers.
"We are in the process of implementing a system where any teacher can start a lockdown of the building throughout our school facility," says Abbatinozzi.
Abbatinozzi also says that the district does a risk assessment of its schools every year to determine where they can improve school safety and security.