Where is a new police force being created?

On Feb. 13, Philipsburg-Osceola Area School District Superintendent Gregg Paladina was in front of his school board at a work session. He had a plan to lay out in front of them.

It detailed the need for police in their schools.

It happened about 19 hours before a gunman shot up the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., killing 17.

In some ways, P-O isn't different from hundreds of other school districts in Pennsylvania, or in America, trying to navigate a path between teaching kids what they need to know for their future and securing their safety to make sure they have a future.

In other ways, it's very different.

The Parkland school was a five-minute drive in normal traffic, with no lights or sirens, from their local station of the Broward County Sheriff's Office.

For P-O's high school, the drive is nine minutes from the state police station on U.S. 322. But that won't be a guarantee for long.

The Pennsylvania State Police announced in 2017 that the station would no longer be utilized by patrol troopers, and would consolidate with the Rockview barracks at a new location being built in Benner Township. State police representative

Ryan Tarkowski said the move is on target for late-July.

That move changes the math. The distance from the high school to the closest station becomes more than 30 miles, with a drive time in optimal conditions and at speed limit of 34 minutes. During winter weather, or with a traffic incident on either U.S. 322 or Interstate 99, it becomes longer.

The best case scenario for two of the district's schools is worse at the moment. Osceola Mills Elementary and P-O Middle School both sit in Clearfield County, meaning they aren't covered by the Philipsburg station, but by the Clearfield one, located 20 to 24 minutes away in Woodland.

P-O covers a number of municipalities in both counties. Philipsburg Borough and Rush Township sit on the Centre County side. Osceola Mills Borough is joined by Chester Hill and Wallaceton boroughs and Boggs and Decatur townships in Clearfield County.

Only Decatur has a police department now, after officers in Philipsburg, Osceola Mills and Chester Hill were slowly let go and departments closed.

State police have said that the location of the stations will not be a factor in response times to the Moshannon Valley, and that troopers will provide zone-based coverage and deployed in the field. Residents have still expressed concerns.

"This was the only solution for us," said Paladina.

The board decided to hire four school resource officers — one for each building. The SROs will be uniformed and carry guns. They will make $25 an hour and work eight hour shifts for a salary of $36,000 a year and a total cost to the district of $144,000.

They will also be overseen by a chief of police. The district's athletic director is Robert Mann, a former state police lieutenant. He will serve as school officer coordinator, with a stipend of $33,000 on top of his AD pay.

Paladina told the Centre Daily Times that the decision is not being made because of problems that exist at the schools that need to be addressed.

"This is about prevention and safety," he said.

State police support the move.

"Hiring a school resource officer (SRO) is an effective way for a school district to maintain a trained, professional day-to-day police presence on campus," Tarkowski said. "Any major incident at a school would still almost certainly receive a response from multiple police agencies in the area, including state police."

So are the metal detectors which will be installed. Four of them will be implemented at the middle school and another four at the high school.

Paladina said those are not about getting kids in trouble.

"If a student still has a, you know, a knife from a camping trip in his back pack, it gets caught at the metal detector. The parents get called, it gets turned over. No one's in trouble," he said.

In fact, he stressed, fewer kids could get in hot water because those weapons would never be found otherwise until they were in school, and that would create a problem.

Metal detectors aren't a move every district is taking.

"I understand why. This definitely isn't being done everywhere," Paladina said.

But the district observed the process used at DuBois Area School District and said it worked.

"We watched 1,100 kids go through and there was no backup," Paladina said.

The district is also looking at other security improvements, like guest identification kiosks. Those are already being used at other Centre County school districts including Bellefonte and Bald Eagle Area.

Then there are barricade systems to be utilized in the event of a lockdown. Young Scholars of Central Pennsylvania charter school is among schools using those. P-O hasn't decided on exactly which system it would be using, but it would be used on about 350 doors throughout the two elementary schools, the middle school and high school.

Young Scholars used crowdfunding to pay for its barricades. P-O will be using cash on hand.

Paladina said the district will not be raising taxes to pay for the police or other improvements. The changes go into effect for the start of the new school year in the fall.

"We didn't plan any of this because of what happened in Florida," Paladina said. "This is just what we need to do."

This story was originally published April 26, 2018 at 11:30 AM with the headline "Where is a new police force being created?."