WATSONVILLE >> The Pajaro Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees unanimously approved an agreement between the district and the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office to assign a deputy sheriff to provide a law enforcement presence on Aptos High School’s campus at the board’s Wednesday meeting.

The vote was preceded by a small group of public speakers requesting the board pull the item from the consent agenda — where generally routine items are voted on in one motion unless requested to be pulled by trustees or members of the public — for further discussion on the continued use of school resource officers on campuses.

The agreement between the district and Sheriff’s Office seeks to assign sheriff’s deputies to the Aptos High campus as part of a school resource officer program for the 2024-25 academic year. The school resource officer would be paired with a mental health clinician to provide prevention, intervention and connections to community resources, would conduct criminal investigations when necessary, assist the district in promoting safe schools and provide law enforcement resources if a serious incident occurs at the school. Officers would not be tasked with enforcing school discipline or issuing academic consequences to students.The regular duty hours would be 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, per the agreement. Officers would be required to attend trainings and school resource officer meetings. They would be paid a daily rate of $943.04, which would come out to a yearly total of $169,746.33 when also factoring in the designated vehicle cost.

Aptos High, along with the district’s other two comprehensive high schools, has had a school resource officer program for years. However, these programs have become heavily scrutinized nationwide in recent years over their effectiveness in preventing crime, incidents of police brutality on campuses and concerns of increased juvenile arrests and disproportionate targeting of students of color and students with disabilities.

These concerns heightened in 2020 with growing scrutiny over policing as a whole, especially in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer that Memorial Day. In July of that year, the board voted 5-2 to dissolve the school resource officer program and replace officers with social-emotional counselors, partly due to budget issues but also the practicality of maintaining an on-campus officer program as schools were in district learning mode in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, the on-campus fatal stabbing of 17-year-old Aptos High student Gerardo Sarabia in 2021 caused the district to rethink its decision, ultimately voting to bring back the school resource officer program at its three comprehensive high schools, this time pairing officers with mental health clinicians.

Concerns over the new agreement were presented at Wednesday’s meeting. Bernie Gomez, program and leadership coordinator of MILPA Collective, suggested the district start looking into alternative methods of campus supervision.

“We can do better with $169,000,” he said. “With this, I’m sure you can hire some parents to become campus supervisors. I know that other states are doing that.”

Lourdes Barraza, a local psychologist, said there was not enough evidence that school resource officers created safer environments.

“I find it insane that the district is willing to pay $1,000 a day for SROs,” she said. “That money can be put to much better use. How about we have social workers? They don’t make $1,000 a day. How about we have more mental health professionals?”

Omar Dieguez of Barrios Unidos suggested mentorship programs to show to students there are alternatives to violence.

“Mentors is what the schools need, not cops,” he said.

Aptos resident Nat Low felt the money would better be spent on education.

“School is for learning and not for policing,” they said.

Low also shared a story of a student who was allegedly being followed and harassed by a school resource officer.

“I don’t see how policing and SROs are gonna help that,” said Low. “I think that’s gonna make the problem worse because everyone has their biases, but then you have someone with their biases and with extra power over students.”

Elias Gonzales, MILPA’s training and site manager, suggested the district be creative in its approach.

“Instead of investing (in on-campus officers), I think we can promote positive psychological approaches, Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports, social-emotional learning, youth development” and more, he said.

The board did not pull or discuss the item, instead voting 6-0 to approve it along with the rest of the consent agenda, save for a few items that were pulled and also unanimously approved. Vice President Oscar Soto was absent.

In other business, the board unanimously approved design immunity for the District Office Climatec solar project and new contracts for Claudia Monjaras and Michael Berman to serve as the district’s assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction/professional development and assistant superintendent of educational services respectively.