By: Shelia Mader
We sat down with Superintendent of Schools Hunter Nolen last week to discuss his role as superintendent thus far as well as his take on the 2023-2024 audit recently released. Nolen was elected in November and was not in charge for the time period of the audit. The Operational Audit was conducted by the State of Florida Auditor General’s Office.
When asked about the audit and its findings, Nolen said, “Me and my team are still reviewing it and we’ve put forth a couple of statements, and we are going to try to correct them in the future. I know some had to do with security and some IT issues, but me and my team are on them right now.”
The audit cited that four employees did not evidence any background screenings and district records for two other employees and a contract worker only evidenced level 1 background screenings rather than the level 2 required screening. According to district personnel, the four employees had been screened but the screening results could not be located and the other two employees and contract worker submitted fingerprints for level two background screenings that were rejected for poor scan quality and fingerprints were not resubmitted. About these findings, Nolen said, “I know I have been looking into those situations and I know we are always looking for good teachers and good bus drivers and I know that is something we will definitely fix in the future.” When asked he if he had any concerns over anything in the audit, he said, “No, not really, but we are going to keep a check on that.”
When asked about strengthening the relationship with the sheriff’s office, Nolen said, “We have a great relationship with Sheriff Edenfield and his deputies that are in our schools each and every day.” He said as a former administrator and principal he liked having that deputy on campus and he hopes it can continue.
The audit cited, “For the 2023-24 fiscal year, the Board contracted with the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office to provide 16 SROs at 11 District schools. As part of our audit, we requested for examination District records supporting 8 selected SROs at five District schools and found that controls over SRO services could be improved. Specifically: The contract provided that the SROs would complete mental health crisis intervention training using a curriculum developed by a national organization with expertise in mental health crisis intervention. While District records evidenced that 5 SROs completed the required training before the 2023-24 school year, District records were not maintained to evidence that the other 3 SROs received the required training. Subsequent to our inquiry, District personnel requested and received evidence from the Sheriff’s Office that the 2 SROs who remained employed with the District had completed the required training; however, the training was completed in July 2024, after the 2023-24 school year ended.
Although SROs individually maintained attendance records, District procedures had not been established to require and ensure that school personnel with direct knowledge of SRO attendance verified the accuracy of the attendance records. According to District personnel, they relied upon the Sheriff’s Office to ensure that all SROs completed the required mental health crisis intervention training and that at least one SRO was present at each school facility during school hours. However, such reliance provides the District limited assurance that SROs completed the training and provided the services as intended. Absent effective monitoring procedures over SRO services, the District cannot demonstrate compliance with State law or that appropriate measures have been taken to promote student and staff safety. A similar finding was noted in our report No. 2022-079. Recommendation: The District should enhance procedures to ensure and demonstrate compliance with State school safety laws. The enhanced procedures should require District personnel to document verification that each SRO completed the required mental health crisis intervention training and that at least one SRO was present during school hours at each school.”
The audit continued to say the Board contracted with the Sheriff’s Office for SRO services at each school facility. The contract required monthly fixed payments that totaled $1.23 million for the 2023-24 fiscal year, including $1,036,000 for salaries and benefits of the 16 SROs and $194,000 for operating expenditures, such as training, transportation, and information technology (IT) support costs. To help the District pay for the SRO services and other school safety measures, the District received a legislative safe school allocation of $630,600. District management indicated that, because the SRO contracted service costs significantly exceeded the District’s safe school allocation and evaluations of SRO service costs were needed for negotiations with the Sheriff’s Office, the District prepared a cost analysis comparing District SRO service costs to the service costs at eight school districts in north Florida with similarly sized student enrollment. “The cost analysis disclosed that, for example, the District paid more per FTE and per SRO than each of the other eight school districts.”
As part of the audit, they examined District records and noted the following sequence of events associated with the Board’s SRO contracting process:
“On May 13, 2024, the Sheriff’s Office e-mailed a proposed 2024-25 fiscal year contract to the District for 14 SROs at a total cost of $1,044,000 and District management e-mailed each Board member the District-prepared SRO cost analysis.
On May 15, 2024, District personnel provided the Superintendent and Sheriff’s Office a proposed 2024-25 fiscal year SRO contract that reduced costs to $785,824 by reducing the number of SROs to 13 and removing certain operating expenditures.
The District had 5,919 full-time equivalent students (FTE) and the eight school districts included in the cost analysis were Walton (12,114 FTE), Columbia (10,178 FTE), Suwannee (6,189 FTE), Gadsden (4,641 FTE), Washington (3,260 FTE), Holmes (3,089 FTE), Calhoun (2,084 FTE), and Liberty (1,303 FTE). The District SRO contracted services cost was 195 percent of the safe school allocation whereas, SRO services costs ranged from 44 percent to 113 percent, and averaged 82 percent, of the eight school districts’ safe school allocations.
Specifically, for SRO services, the District paid $208 per FTE and $76,875 per SRO while the other school districts paid $55 to $183 with an average of $122 per FTE and $41,071 to $63,720 with an average of $51,054 per SRO. The proposed SRO services cost was less than the prior year contract amount due to a reduction in the number of SROs.
Specifically, the proposal reduced the number of Marianna K-8 School SROs from three to two and eliminated one SRO if the Jackson Alternative and Hope Schools are combined removing certain operating expenditures.”
In response to this part of the audit, Nolen said, “We will be working on the contract for next year with the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department next month as I hope we can continue our great relationship. I feel it is the best safety/security we can offer our staff and students. And like you said, these findings happened before I was in office, so I have no doubt that my team will look to correct for the future. The attendance of SRDs has already been fixed as each SRD signs in each day, at each location. End of the month, school administration signs off and it is sent to the district office for documentation purposes.”
