Evesham School District Superintendent John Scavelli has been in discussions with the police department to put together a shared-services agreement that would lead to the district having a part-time police officer work on school days as an attendance officer.
Scavelli said the position would be a part-time, level II officer, who would work for the school district on days school is open and then would work for the township on all other workdays.
The officer’s responsibilities would include general daily duties within the schools, mostly focusing on attendance matters, yet Scavelli said the position is different from what many people might picture from the “old days” as a truant officer.
“The old notion of it in the old days was basically kids cutting school — the truant officer went and gathered them up and brought them to school,” Scavelli said. “That’s not necessarily what our person does.”
Scavelli said the attendance officer would deal with matters involving student attendance relating to a child’s well-being, such as checking on a child who wasn’t in school on a particular day if that child was not called out by parents and then the parents cannot be reached.
Scavelli said the officer could also deal with situations where a child reaches excessive absenteeism by delivering a letter to the parents to inform them of the problem, and if at some point actual truancy charges need to be filed, the officer could take care of that as well.
“I think the effectiveness of it, the presence of a police officer coming to your home, I think is a little more effective because we want kids in school,” Scavelli said. “We want them here in school.”
According to Scavelli, the cost of the officer would be split equally between the school district and the municipality, with an estimated $13,000 being paid by the district.
“Right now…we anticipate that someone working the full year is about $26,000, so we would pay half of that, about $13,000 but that’s still to be finalized,” Scavelli said.
Scavelli said the district already has money in the budget for the officer from a combination of sources.
Several months of salary have accumulated for the district business administrator position, which has been open since June when the former business administrator left to take a position with another school district. The replacement for that position is not scheduled to start until November.
In addition to monies left from the open business administrator position, the current and previous Evesham Child Care coordinator has performed the duties of attendance officer, so the district has saved money there as well.
Scavelli said the officer would also act as a general police presence in the district when there are no attendance matters to handle, with a rotating schedule between schools in the district to keep a presence in all buildings and deal with any issues that might normally require a call to the police.
“If we have an issue with a child, normally we might have called the police department,” Scavelli said. “It might be something that we would call a police officer over to talk with the child. We’ll have that person (the attendance officer) and say ‘hey we have this situation going on, we think we need a police officer to talk with the child,” have that person do that,” Scavelli said.
According to Scavelli, both the police department and school district will benefit from the officer.
“It seems like a win-win, and will benefit both of us, and really give us a whole lot more than we have to begin with,” Scavelli said.
