The City of Fort Mitchell is sponsoring a full-time School Resource Officer at Blessed Sacrament School.
City council and mayor have said before that while Blessed Sacrament School is private, they feel responsible for student safety. At their Oct.13 meeting, the city council decided that employing an SRO is part of that responsibility.
Blessed Sacrament cannot hire its own SRO. A local government must sponsor them. The school approached Fort Mitchell this time last year to ask that the city sponsor an officer for them. After about a year of discussions, the city council voted to enter an SRO contract with Blessed Sacrament School.
“We’ve got a great internal candidate that will need to be interviewed by Blessed Sacrament School to move forward,” Mayor Jude Hehman said.
If that candidate were to become the school resource officer at Blessed Sacrament, the city would need to hire another full-time officer to fill his role in the Fort Mitchell Police Department.
Fort Mitchell will have to amend their annual budget to account for this school resource officer. As of right now, the city doesn’t have any exact numbers, but they anticipate the cost being around $80,000 annually. Blessed Sacrament will also contribute funds to the SRO initiative.
“Historically, we have come in under budget on expenses most every year,” Hehman said. “So, I don’t worry that hiring a school resource officer will hurt us financially.”
Fort Mitchell and Blessed Sacrament School are still negotiating a contract, but hope to come to an agreement soon.
“Ideally, we’d have the officer start in this school year,” Hehman said. “We want them to get to know the school and the kids as soon as possible.”