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Board wants to keep officer on school duty
By jeanne starmack
struthers
The school board would like to keep a city police officer on duty in the schools but is unsure how the district would pay for his services.
Officer D.J. Aldish will be on his beat for the first week schools are open, said Police Chief Tim Roddy. Beyond that, it is uncertain how much time he will spend in the schools.
Roddy said Wednesday that there is $15,000 left in a state grant of $56,000 the city got two years ago to fund Aldish in the schools.
The grant pays his salary while he’s on that beat. When schools aren’t in session, he works for the city and is on its payroll.
The $15,000 is enough to keep Aldish in the schools two days a week through the end of December, Roddy said. He said he didn’t want to split the school beat into part-time hours.
“I don’t think part-time would be servicing both parties adequately,” he said.
School-board members talked at their meeting Tuesday about how to keep Aldish.
“I don’t think two days is enough for our school- resource officer,” said board member Sheri Noble.
“I’d like to explore the other three days a week as a purchase-service,” she said, adding that “we definitely want to keep it parttime — five hours a day.”
Roddy said that time would be a side job for Aldish and would not affect his 40 hours on the city’s payroll.
Schools Superintendent Bob Rostan said he was under the impression that Aldish would be in the schools fulltime through the end of December.
“This is the first I’m hearing ‘two days a week,’” he said. He also said he has applied for a $10,000 grant to be used toward funding the resource-officer position.
Board members also talked about what they would do in January.
“We’d have to contract him in 25 hours a week, ultimately?” asked member Ron Carcelli.
The board did not make a decision at its meeting.