Zanesville City Schools and Muskingum County schools will see a change in security for the 2018-19 academic year.

Four full-time officers from Zanesville Police Department, one full-time officer from the Muskingum County Sheriff’s department and one non-commissioned, retired officer will be assigned to Zanesville City Schools for increased security. That is an increase from the 2017-18 academic year as the six-school city district only had two school resource officers. Those two officers will return for the upcoming academic year and be included in the six school resource officers delegated to the city schools.

The non-commissioned, retired officer will cover Zanesville Community High School, the county officer will cover National Road Elementary School and the four city officers will cover Zanesville High School, Zanesville Middle School, John McIntire Elementary School and Zane Grey Elementary School.

A Muskingum County Sheriff’s Department deputy is being assigned to National Road Elementary School due to the school being located just outside of Zanesville city’s limits.

“We took the last nine weeks of the 17-18 school year and we had extra duty officers in every building, once the shootings in Florida and the shootings in Texas occurred in February,” Mike Young, Treasurer of the Zanesville City School District and Zanesville Community High School, said. “The board made the decision to go ahead and put those guys in every day, so we had everything from the K-9 unit to different officers in there.”

Muskingum County is also ramping up school security by adding five more school resource officers to its five existing officers to complete a 10-person team to cover the county schools. Three officers had already been hired to those position as of last Monday, Sheriff Matt Lutz said.

“The school is a place where the kids are supposed to be able to go be safe from everything and learn,” Lutz said. “Obviously from what’s been going on (nationally), that’s not been going on at every school.”

This academic year, Muskingum County will have at least one resource officer in every school district across the county. There will not be a resource officer in every school building in the county.

“In our county, we’re very fortunate that the school districts have taken on that burden to try to make their school as safe as what they can right now, and we’re in the process of providing that service to them,” Lutz said. “I’m a firm believer that the number one fight against school incidents is having an SRO in that school, having a cruiser parked out front, having an SRO at the front door when the kids come in the school.”

The salary for the officers in the city will be based on their wages and benefits with the city. There is a 75-25 split in covering the salaries of the city officers between the school district and the police department. For the months that school is in session, the school district is responsible for the officer’s pay. During the months and breaks from school, the city officers will return to working for the police department and the department is responsible for their salaries during that time.

The county’s Sheriff Department officers will also return to either patrol division duty or jail division duty during days or months that school is not in session.

Total, the six school resource officers’ salaries add roughly a $420,000 expense to the school district, Young said.

During the 2017-18 academic year, the two school resource officers earned an hourly rate of $27.88 plus a benefits package. Overtime was not provided through the school district.

The four officers provided by the Zanesville Police Department are not new hires to the department. Four officers from the department will be assigned to the schools with the option of pulling those resource officers out of their assigned school during an emergency.

There is potential for the department to increase staffing due to the assignments of the school resource officers but that decision is still “up in the air,” Rhonda Heskett, the budget and finance director for the City of Zanesville, said.