This story was edited on Dec. 19 from it’s original version to add additional comments from the Evesham Township School District Superintendent John Scavelli:
At the Dec. 16 meeting of the Evesham Township Council, what started as an explanation of the Evesham Township BOE’s request to split the cost of hiring a part-time police officer to help with truancy issues in the district ended up as nearly 40 minutes of raised voices and accusations.
The discussion started when Mayor Randy Brown asked township manager Tom Czerniecki and Evesham Township Police Department Chief Christopher Chew to explain to him the board’s request.
Czerniecki and Chew explained that the officer would be hired by the department as a part-time employee at $26,000 a year with no pension or health benefits, and would work no more than 20 hours a week, with the salary and time working split equally between the township and school district.
The officer would mainly deal with truancy issues in the district, going to the homes of children who missed school without being properly called out.
The officer would also help in planning security initiatives in the schools and rotate between schools in the morning for checks and furthering the department’s community outreach by greeting parents.
Brown said he theoretically loved the idea, but wanted assurances the officer’s time would be documented accurately, so the township wasn’t paying half the salary of an employee whose time was spent working mostly for the district.
Brown also said at a total of 10 hours a week in the district, one officer could only spend a little more than one hour at each school if they were even actually in that school, and he questioned what would happen if the officer had a situation where there were multiple truancy calls at once.
It was then that Brown moved into a different area of questions, in which his voice steadily rose as he wondered aloud why the BOE wouldn’t go further and put an officer in all the district’s schools for several hours a day, as he said he specifically lobbied the BOE for in 2012 after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn.
“I think the superintendent needs to open his eyes and understand what’s going on in today’s world and realize that, you know, maybe you cross-off an administrative staff at $150,000 and next thing you know you could pull in about seven of these guys instead of one of your curriculum directors,” Brown said.
Brown said if the BOE would allow the township, he would be willing to split the cost of a part-time officer at each school.
“I will split it in half to put (one officer) at each school,” Brown said. “I’ll split it in half. Out of our budget, we will find $80,000 or $90,000…offer him (Evesham Superintendent John Scavelli) that deal. If they’ll give us an answer, next council meeting is Dec. 30.”
According to Brown, he believed the BOE wouldn’t agree to the idea because of the cost, even though he was working with a municipal budget of $33 million versus the school district’s budget of $77 million.
With laughter in his voice, Brown called his offer to the board “a softball” thrown very high.
“If you can’t hit that ball, you do not belong on a school board,” Brown said. “You got a nine-member board that somebody better be able to count to five.”
The council ultimately voted in a 4–1 decision to table the motion until Czerniecki and Chew could further discuss the issue with school district administrators.
Councilman Steve Zeuli was the sole vote against tabling the motion, saying he believed there should have been officers in the schools years ago and the agreement currently on the table was better than nothing.
The issue was then brought back up during the public comment portion of the meeting, when former BOE member Rosemary Bernardi said the discussion to hire one officer to deal with truancy was different than hiring an officer to be at each school all day, so Brown should readjust his figures regarding cost.
Bernardi also argued that an officer, such as the proposed 20-hour-a-week part-time officer, would only be able to be at a school for one to two hours a day and questioned what would happen if there was a violent incident such as a shooting during the majority of the time when the officer wasn’t there.
Brown argued back that he still believed officers there only some of the time would be better than the current situation.
At the following BOE meeting on Dec. 18, Scavelli said he had a chance to briefly speak with the Chew about what happened at the Dec. 16 council meeting, and would follow up with Czerniecki.
Scavelli said for the time being he would wait to see if the council will act on the original agreement for one part-time truancy officer, which the BOE already agreed to and passed in October.
As for adding multiple police officers such as Brown suggested, Scavelli said anything such as that would have to be discussed with the board in the future.
“It would be something I would have to talk to the board about and see if they were interested in doing that type of thing,” Scavelli said.
