BY CHRIS SHANNON
THE NATOMAS BUZZ | @natomasbuzz
The Twin Rivers Unified school board this week delayed making a decision about the district’s embattled police force.
School board president Cortez Quinn told a standing-room-only crowd that no action had been taken on the district’s at-times controversial police department during closed session at the Oct. 9 board meeting.
The Twin Rivers District Police Department was not on the agenda for the board’s open session Tuesday, but several members of the public voiced opinions about the police force’s future during public comment.
Whether the district could legally disband its own police force and contract with the Sacramento Police Dept. for public safety services as currently proposed was questioned by one Twin Rivers police officer.
“Education Code 45103.1 states that you cannot disband a particular position or police department for the purposes of contracting out,” Officer Arlin Kocher said.
Kocher added that a decision to eliminate the school district’s police department would leave the community and its schools without law enforcement services for three years before it would be able to hire another entity to provide those same services.
Some members of the community supported the Sacramento Police Dept. stepping in.
Said Gregory Jefferson, Del Paso Heights Community Association and the United Coalition for Students representative, “We are one-million percent support for the City of Sacramento controlling the (Twin Rivers) Police Dept. on an interim basis.”
Others said the Sacramento Police Dept. working with the Twin Rivers Police Dept. would be a conflict.
“The impropriety of letting the Sacramento Police Dept. have any further interaction with Twin Rivers is so egregious that it must ethically and legally be discontinued,” said Lisbeth Gray. “Sac City needs to cease taking over the contract.”
“Future searches for officers and staff for Twin Rivers ought to be conducted outside Sacramento County so we can step further and further away from the appearance if not the actuality of conflict of interest and impropriety,” she said.
The next scheduled Twin Rivers Unified Board Meeting is set for Oct. 16.
Kocher is reading EC 45103.1 wrong, and it’s not even close. 45103.1 only applies to “classified school employees”, which doesn’t include those requiring any sort of certification. School police carrying weapons are required to be POST certified, while teachers are required to have teaching credentials.
“45103. (a) The governing board of any school district shall employ persons for positions not requiring certification qualifications. The governing board shall, except where Article 6 (commencing with Section 45240) or Section 45318 applies, classify all of these employees and positions. The employees and positions shall be known as the classified service.
45103.1. (a) Notwithstanding any other provision of this chapter, personal services contracting for all services currently or customarily performed by classified school employees to achieve cost savings is permissible, unless otherwise prohibited, when all the following conditions are met:
(3) The contract does not cause the displacement of school district employees. The term “displacement” includes layoff, demotion, involuntary transfer to a new classification, involuntary transfer to a new location requiring a change of residence, and time base reductions. Displacement does not include changes in shifts or days off, nor does it include reassignment to other positions within the same classification and general location or employment with the contractor, so long as wages and benefits are comparable to those paid by the school district.”