School board members: Winter Park could lose school resource officers

The city is among five municipalities that still hasn’t reached an agreement with Orange County Public Schools over how much the district will pay for the officers

April 9, 2025

By Gabrielle Russon

Winter Park is in jeopardy of losing its five school resource officers and having them replaced by armed guardians next school year.

Orange County Public Schools board members recently voiced their outrage that they haven’t reached SRO contract deals with Winter Park and four other municipalities since the current contract expires next month at the end of this school year.

“There is no other way to characterize that than they are negotiating in bad faith with us, and I am so disappointed and so frustrated,” said school board member Stephanie Vanos at the meeting.

Orange County Superintendent Maria Vazquez urged the school board to reconsider a controversial plan to hire new armed security under what’s known as the guardians program for those five communities.

“I know that our conversation a few months ago surrounding guardians in our school was one that the board was adamant that we could not look at or that we would not pursue,” Vazquez said at last week’s school board meeting. “I am requesting that the board reconsider that stance.”

The board will meet during a workshop to continue the discussion. No workshop date has been scheduled.

District spokesman Michael Ollendorff said if the guardian program is pursued it would involve private security staff such as hiring former military or law enforcement rather than arming teachers and school staff, which Florida law also allows.

Winter Park, Apopka, Ocoee, Winter Garden and Windermere have been at a standoff with OCPS for months about the cost to pay for SROs.

Ollendorff declined to say how many SROs currently are deployed at the schools in those five communities, saying that information was confidential under state law for security reasons. Central Florida Public Media previously reported the number was at 34.

Currently, Winter Park Police officers make up five of them — one at Brookshire Elementary; one at Lakemont Elementary, one at the Ninth Grade Center and two at the Winter Park High main campus.

OCPS pays about $72,000 a year per officer and proposed an increase to $75,000 per officer rate for the 2026-27 school year. OCPS already signed three year-contracts with the other four law enforcement agencies in Orlando, Maitland, Eatonville and the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.

Meanwhile, the five remaining cities argued OCPS is not giving enough money to cover the SROs and asked for an additional $2 million to pay for the officers.

“I would encourage them to remember that we are public education — we are not just a business. We have extremely limited funds,” Vanos said. “We don’t have other avenues to generate revenue like they do.”

The school board prefers SROs, said school board member Alicia Farrant who added, “if people don’t want to play nice and negotiate, then we’ll have to look at the guardian program, which, in my opinion, is also a great program.”

Other schools are tapping ex-military and former law enforcement officials to become guardians, Farrant said.

Apopka Police Chief Mike McKinley, who is leading the negotiations on behalf of the five cities, and Winter Park spokeswoman Clarissa Howard declined to comment for this story. Winter Park Mayor Sheila DeCiccio did not respond to a request for comment.

“At this time all parties are still actively negotiating terms,” Apopka Sgt. Jennifer Rudich said in an email.

In a statement released in December, McKinley said none of the law enforcement agencies were in favor of the guardian program and noted that the police agencies “never threatened or even considered withdrawing SROs from schools” when the current school year started without a contract in place.

“While we understand the financial challenges OCPS faces, our agencies are also contending with significant fiscal pressures,” the statement said. “These include difficulties in recruiting personnel and ensuring adequate equipment to meet the growing demands of our cities. Addressing these financial challenges through appropriate funding is essential to sustaining the high level of service we provide.”

Amid the SRO discussion, Vazquez and school board members warned the school district is facing an unprecedented budget crunch that could lead to hard decisions — like closing schools — in upcoming years.  

“I have not seen a time in my educational career where it has been this bleak,” Vazquez said.

Some public school funding is getting cut at the expense of taxpayer-funded private school vouchers, officials said. Other revenue cuts are coming from Medicaid that reimburses students’ mandated therapy services while more federal money is budgeted to get axed under President Donald Trump’s administration.

OCPS pays for SROs using Safe Schools funding – a pot of state money that’s been increased by the Legislature since the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland in 2018. Currently the state appropriation for Florida schools is $290 million.

However, OCPS said its $21.1 million Safe Schools allocation isn’t enough to cover all the district’s expenses and leaves the district with a $16.3 million shortfall this school year.

In addition to paying $23.1 million for SROs, the district is legally required to give $1.7 million to Orange County charter schools and also must fund district police and SAFE coordinators, as required by the state, which costs about $12.5 million. 

In 2019, state lawmakers divided down party lines approved a school safety bill that included a provision to allow school districts to voluntarily set up guardian programs to arm and train school staff.

Democrats voiced fears that teachers and guidance counselors are already slammed with their demanding jobs without the pressure of stopping an active shooter. The guardians, who would undergo 144 hours of training with the local sheriff’s office, would be missing the extensive training that sworn law enforcement officers have, Democrats argued.

“We’re asking our teachers to be law enforcement … and that’s wrong,” said former Democratic Sen. Bill Montford during the 2019 debate.  “Let’s put our money where our mouths are. Let’s provide enough funding so that we can have real, true, well-trained law enforcement, people protecting the children – which they deserve.”

But Republicans argued districts need the option for guardians if they can’t afford SROs or need more police coverage.

“There may be some place in the state where some superintendent has decided that for his community, for those kids in that classroom, he has no other choice,” said then-Sen. Manny Diaz, Jr., a Republican who today is the Florida Commissioner of Education. “The majority of our superintendents and school boards will make decisions based on the resources they have available to them.”

Clarification: This story previously reported that teachers and school staff could be armed through the guardian program under consideration by Orange County Public Schools. While arming teachers is allowed under Florida law, the district clarified it would consider private armed security such as former military or law enforcement personnel, not school staff.

WinterParkVoiceEditor@gmail.com

Gabrielle Russon is a freelance reporter and former reporter for the Orlando Sentinel, where she covered K-12 education, colleges and universities and the tourism industry. She lives in Orlando with her family and writes about politics, education, theme parks and the courts.