Round Rock ISD board approves district police force

Nearly two years after the Round Rock school board began looking for future security options, it has officially approved a district police department.

On Thursday, the board voted 7-0 in support of a resolution allowing for the creation of the district police force.

The resolution was a largely formal step. In December the board approved a motion instructing the superintendent to continue working toward the creation of a police department. For months prior, staff had been working on plans for the police department as the board pursued a desired, but unlikely, partnership with Williamson County.

“First thing is first, we need a resolution,” Superintendent Steve Flores said. “We can talk all day long about what the future can look like, but without a resolution we can’t even get that TCOLE application in.”

Flores referred to the district submitting a Texas Commission on Law Enforcement application to get state approval for the district police department. That application could be approved in about a month, district staff said.

Director of Safety and Security Jeffrey Yarbrough said the resolution allows the district to take several crucial steps in the application process, such as negotiating agreements with law enforcement agencies that have overlapping jurisdiction and starting the search for a police chief.

The district can now also move forward with developing a hiring plan and creating plans for dispatch services and evidence and documentation storage.

The district first learned it would have to find a new security option in March 2017, when the Round Rock Police Department informed district leadership that it would not provide officers past June 2021 for the current school resource officer program.

The Williamson County sheriff’s office also announced it would be pulling out of the plan, and both agencies stated they felt it was in the district’s best interest to create their own department.

For more than a year, a citizen-based safety and security task force researched security options, and in September 2019 it presented them to the board.

“I think we have been in slow motion for a long time and we are getting closer to 2021 and the need for our campuses to ensure our parents, our students, our staff that they are going to be covered is imperative,” Trustee Nikki Gonzales said.

The board initially expressed interest in partnering with the sheriff’s office overseeing school safety and security. However, the Commissioners Court, which oversees the sheriff’s office budget, took no action in December on a proposed agreement to take over the district’s school resource officer program, effectively killing it.

Yarbrough walked the board through some necessary changes in the district’s existing safety and security committee to comply with Senate Bill 11, which addresses school safety.

To meet the requirements, the district will need to ensure the committee is comprised of the correct members, including the superintendent, a teacher, two parents, one representative of a local office of emergency management, the board president, a second board member and representatives from local law enforcement organizations.

Yarbrough said they will use a lottery system to ensure fairness that one parent from each learning community is randomly picked to join the committee. He said they would also choose a teacher at random from interested candidates.

The board also discussed forming an oversight committee for the police force, though the board only took the action of approving the resolution.

Flores said there is much work to be done, but stressed for expediency in creating the new police force.

“There is also a certain point that we have to submit proposals … because time is of the urgency,” he said.