Following a presentation by city staff and brief discussion from City Council, no motion for the agenda item was approved, resulting in it being postponed to a later date.
The background
Since 2011, the cities of Schertz and Cibolo have had interlocal agreements with SCUCISD to provide city police officers to school campuses.
The city of Cibolo is working to expand its police department and potentially have an officer for each geographic area in the city, council member T.G. Benson said during an April 9 meeting.
On April 9, Cibolo City Council held a discussion to return the officers part of the SRO program back to the city of Cibolo, allowing the city to have more police coverage.
During a May 8 SCUCISD board of trustees meeting, a resolution was passed showing support for the interlocal agreement. Board President Ed Finley shared this resolution with Cibolo City Council during the May 14 meeting.
A closer look
During the public comment period of the meeting, residents raised concerns about removing city police officers from the schools, with some SCUCISD students submitting letters to City Council noting the importance of SROs for student safety.
While many of the public comments focused on whether the district needs SROs, Finley said the district will continue to have certified peace officers on each campus in the district as required by state law.
Following the approval of House Bill 3 in 2023, school districts are required to have one armed security officer present at each district campus during regular school hours. Should the interlocal agreement between Cibolo and SCUCISD not be renewed, the school district would still have to fulfill the legal obligation to have armed security officers on campus.
Breaking it down
Cibolo Police Chief Thedrick Andres and SRO Sgt. Steven Schauer gave a presentation to City Council highlighting the duties of an SRO and detailing the number of calls Cibolo police officers respond to at Steele High School.
According to the presentation, there were more than 500 calls for service in the 2023-24 school year at Steele High School. These calls are documented any time an SRO or police officer is called to respond.
From those calls, more than 100 cases were made, and around 15 arrests were made. Schauer noted arrests are the number of times students were taken to a detention center and not released to parents.
During the presentation, Andres noted that under the seventh amendment of the interlocal agreement, the city paid around $187,000 for police officers at SCUCISD while the district paid around $500,000. This total did not include the cost for sergeants.
What else?
City Attorney George Hyde said due to the changes introduced in House Bill 3, the interlocal agreement may be void or stale due to the agreement not meeting the standards of the updated law.
“Since [HB 3] was just put into law in 2023, and we are looking at a contract that was made a decade before this, you wouldn’t expect the contract to meet all of the new requirements,” Hyde said.
Meeting highlights
Council member Katie Cunningham made a motion requesting members of City Council, city staff, board trustees and district staff form a subcommittee to talk through a new contract.
“I think that this is a contract issue, and it’s beyond time for us to renegotiate the contract,” Cunningham said.
This motion did not pass, with council member Norma Sanchez-Stephens saying there was not enough discussion to make a decision.
“I really expected more of the conversation,” she said. “I felt like this was very rushed. I really wanted to have a diverse conversation.”
Benson said the issue for the city is that the police department is in need of additional patrol officers, and the presentation did not address the patrol and budget needs that led to the conversation.
“Every two officers, we are giving a third one free,” Benson said. “We don’t have any to recruit or give, and we are losing that level of police officer.”
What’s next?
With no motion being approved during the City Council meeting, Mayor Mark Allan said the agenda item can be revisited at another time.