MOBILE, Ala. — The Mobile County Commission voted unanimously Monday to reauthorize the agreement that keeps 12 Mobile County Sheriff’s Office deputies assigned full time to the public school system’s high school feeder patterns, extending a school resource officer arrangement now valued at $1.06 million a year.
The contract still requires reauthorization by the school system. Once both bodies sign off, the deputies continue working campuses in 11 feeder patterns: Mary G. Montgomery, B.C. Rain, Baker, Blount, Williamson, Murphy, Davidson, Vigor, LeFlore, Theodore and Alma Bryant.
The money does not come out of the county’s general fund. The Mobile County Public School System pays for the positions, and Commission President Connie Hudson was direct about where the bill lands.
“The school system is paying for this,” Hudson said. “We are being responsive for their request for service through the sheriff’s office.”
Mobile County Sheriff Paul Burch said a sworn law enforcement presence on campus remains a priority for his office.
“It is important to have sworn law enforcement officers in all schools within the Mobile County School System,” Burch said in a statement, calling the program “essential to the safety and security of our students, teachers and staff.”
What a School Resource Officer Contract Buys
The arrangement the commission reauthorized is a service contract rather than a hiring program. The deputies remain sworn employees of the sheriff’s office, subject to its chain of command, policies and training standards; the school system reimburses the county for their salaries and benefits. That structure is common across Alabama and keeps the officer’s law enforcement authority intact while giving the district a predictable, budgeted cost.
The current reimbursement figure is $88,487 per deputy in salary and benefits. Multiplied across the 12 positions, that accounts for the bulk of the $1.06 million contract value.
The model most school resource officers are trained under comes from the National Association of School Resource Officers, a nonprofit founded in 1991 and headquartered in Hoover. NASRO teaches what it calls the triad concept: an SRO functions as a law enforcement officer, a public safety educator and an informal counselor or mentor. Its foundational program is a 40-hour Basic SRO Course, taken on top of the standard police academy training every sworn officer already completes. The organization reports more than 5,000 members.
That training distinction matters in practice. An officer whose only preparation is patrol work approaches a fight in a hallway or a student in crisis differently than one trained specifically for a school environment, where the same officer may be expected to handle a criminal matter one hour and a classroom presentation the next.
Why Feeder Patterns, and Not Individual Schools
The 12 deputies are assigned by feeder pattern rather than by building, and that distinction explains a great deal about how the program works. A feeder pattern is the chain of elementary and middle schools that send their students up to a particular high school. Assigning an officer to a pattern rather than a single campus means the same deputy becomes a familiar presence to a student across several years and several buildings, and it lets the office cover more ground with fewer positions.
It also concentrates coverage where the district judged the need to be greatest. High schools have the largest enrollments, the most after-hours activity, the most vehicle traffic and the widest age range of visitors. A deputy based in a high school can respond to a feeder school nearby, but the day-to-day post is at the top of the pattern.
Mobile’s Growing Security Roster
The sheriff’s deputies are one layer of a larger security apparatus. The Mobile County Public School System employs 13 full-time SROs of its own, a cybersecurity officer, an operations manager and a director of safety and security. The district also contracts with roughly 20 law enforcement officers from various municipalities to work part time in schools, and it retains a private security firm to assist with school security and athletic events.
Another layer may be added soon. The Mobile City Council and the school board are working out the details of an agreement that would put four school resource officers who are Mobile police officers into schools inside the city limits. Those officers would be trained through the National Association of School Resource Officers. South Alabama News reported on Sept. 7 that the council was weighing four additional community safety team positions in county schools.
Officials have been clear that the city positions would supplement the sheriff’s deputies, not replace them. Burch welcomed the prospect.
“I am very pleased that the Mobile Police Department will be participating in the School Resource Officer program,” Burch said. “Keeping our schools safe requires strong partnerships and shared commitment from law enforcement, educators and our community.”
He added: “I look forward to the day when we have a trained law enforcement officer in every school in Mobile County. Our children deserve nothing less.”
The Arithmetic Standing in the Way
Burch’s stated goal runs into a number. The district operates roughly 90 schools. At the current rate of $88,487 per deputy, putting a full-time law enforcement officer in every building would cost close to $8 million a year — a recurring expense, not a one-time capital cost, and one that would have to be absorbed by a district already funding 12 deputies, 13 of its own SROs, part-time municipal officers and a contracted security firm.
School board member Reginald Crenshaw said cost is the central obstacle.
“I haven’t heard of any complaints,” Crenshaw said of the sheriff’s office partnership, which launched in 2023. “Again, the main issue is the cost.”
Crenshaw said the board is waiting on a recommendation from Superintendent Chresal Threadgill before it takes up any expansion of the SRO program.
The Mobile County Public School System did not respond to a request for comment Monday. Last week, a district spokesperson said the “safety of our students and employees is a top priority” and said the system continues exploring “opportunities to strengthen and expand the security measures we have in place.”
The district serves approximately 49,500 students and ranks among the 100 largest school districts in the United States, which means even modest per-school increases in staffing translate into large annual figures.
How Alabama Got Here
The expansion of school policing in Alabama and nationally followed a recognizable pattern: a high-casualty school shooting, followed by a round of local decisions to put more uniformed officers on campuses.
Baldwin County Schools expanded its program ahead of the 2018-19 school year so that all 46 of its campuses had a uniformed law enforcement presence. That decision came shortly after the Feb. 14, 2018, shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in which 17 students and staff members were killed.
A second wave followed the COVID-19 pandemic and the May 2022 attack at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers. Uvalde was particularly consequential for law enforcement doctrine because of the delayed response by officers on scene, which prompted agencies nationwide to revisit active-shooter protocols and, in many districts, to increase the number of officers stationed in schools.
Alabama districts moved in that period. Madison County Schools, for example, added 18 resource officers, more than doubling the number assigned to its campuses since 2019.
The State Layer: Alabama’s School Security Act
Local contracts are not the only force shaping campus security in Mobile County. The Alabama School Security Act, passed in 2024, requires standardized digital campus maps that first responders can access, updated emergency operations plans for schools, and improved communication systems for use during a crisis. The law also provides for periodic security inspections of public schools and establishes a state fund to award security and fire safety grants.
Implementation is underway. In January 2026, the state approved $6.48 million in contracts to carry out the mapping and planning requirements: $4.19 million to Geo-Comm Inc. for a mapping system and $2.29 million to SchoolDogs Solutions for a software platform, both funded with state dollars.
Those state investments address a different part of the problem than an SRO contract does. Mapping and emergency planning improve what happens when outside agencies have to respond to a campus. An officer stationed in the building addresses the minutes before that response arrives. Districts that want both have to pay for both, and only one of them comes with a state check.
What the Research Says, and What It Does Not Settle
School resource officer programs remain a subject of genuine policy debate. Supporters point to response time — an officer already inside a building does not have to be dispatched — and to the relationships officers build with students over a school year, which can surface threats before they materialize. Critics raise concerns about the role of police in routine school discipline and about disparities in how school-based arrests and referrals fall across student groups.
Those questions have not been raised as objections in Mobile County’s deliberations. The debate here, as Crenshaw framed it, is about money rather than merit: the local officials on record support the concept and are constrained by what a district budget can carry.
What Happens Next
With the commission’s unanimous vote recorded, the agreement moves to the school system for its own reauthorization. Assuming approval, the 12 deputies continue in the high school feeder patterns for another year under the same terms.
Separately, the city and the school board continue negotiating the four Mobile Police Department positions. Any broader expansion beyond that waits on Threadgill’s recommendation to the board, and on a funding source for a per-officer cost that has not gotten any cheaper.
For parents, the practical effect of Monday’s vote is continuity: the same deputies, in the same schools, under the same contract, for another year.