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Trustees weigh police pay increases, endorsements and paid lunch-hour proposals tied to new state safety funding
Summary
Trustees and administrators discussed raising starting pay for district police officers, paying for TECO/TCOLE endorsements, and whether to compensate officers for their lunch hour (district estimate: roughly $331,000 if paid as overtime); staff said some costs can be offset by state safety allotments but concerns remain about sustainability.
Laredo ISD trustees spent much of the June 11 budget workshop on whether to raise school police compensation, pay one-time endorsement stipends and compensate officers for their lunch hour.
Chief Hill and Sergeant Villareal explained options to trustees, including a recommendation to raise the police minimum to $23.18 per hour and to provide one-time payments when officers obtain state endorsements. Rogelio, the budget presenter, said endorsement stipend levels used in the estimate were $300 for intermediate, $500 for advanced and $1,200 for master-level endorsements and that paying current officers for endorsements would cost roughly $25,700 under current counts.
Trustees compared Laredo ISD starting pay to neighboring districts. Staff noted UISD starting pay had been cited as $40,000 and that, under the proposed pay plan and placement scale, a Laredo ISD starting officer could move to about $40,800. Sergeant Villareal clarified the UISD starting figure and the district's treatment of years-of-service credit: "The 40,000 that start the starting pay for UISD is 40,000. That does not include the hour lunch. That's just base pay," he said.
A major point of debate was whether the district should pay officers for their lunch hour because school officers are required to remain on campus and must respond if an incident occurs. Administrators estimated that converting the unpaid lunch into paid work (and accounting for overtime/time-and-a-half where applicable) would add about $277,008 for officers and roughly $53,057 for sergeants for a combined estimate in the neighborhood of $331,000; staff cautioned that those estimates were computed on the current pay scale and would rise if base pay increases were adopted.
Trustees and the chief also discussed differences in how districts credit prior experience. Laredo ISD said it credits TCOLE (Texas Commission on Law Enforcement) experience across agencies; UISD grants additional stipend credit for years of school-district experience, which staff said had contributed to recruitment challenges.
Administrators pointed to a new state safety allotment under recently enacted legislation and said some of the proposed police compensation increases could be partially funded from that source. Staff warned, however, that the state funding is not guaranteed to fully cover the proposed increases and that any gap would have to be filled from local funds.
Trustees did not vote at the workshop. Staff were directed to provide refined cost estimates, clarify how state safety allotments would be coded and to develop a funding plan that balances recruitment objectives with the district’s larger budget constraints.
