Harlingen, HCISD to meet over negotiations on campus security

HARLINGEN — After 18 months of negotiations, city commissioners and school board members are formally meeting to try to reach an agreement aimed at providing police security across the Harlingen school district’s campuses.

Commissioners and board members are set to meet at 6 p.m. Thursday at the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley Collegiate High, the high school which the city and school district helped develop.

In closed session, officials are expected to “deliberate the deployment, or specific occasions for implementation of security personnel, critical infrastructure or security devices,” the meeting’s agenda states.

During the meeting, commissioners and board members are expected to discuss coordinating law enforcement efforts while considering reaching an agreement in which the city’s police department would assign officers to work security at the district’s campuses, the agenda states.

Commissioners and board members are set to return to open session to discuss coordinating law enforcement efforts before considering “possible action” on the security agreement, the agenda states.

On Wednesday, city and school officials declined comment on the meeting.

Since officials entered negotiations in mid-2022, Thursday’s forum marks the first time commissioners and board members are formally meeting to discuss school security, which became one of the community’s biggest concerns in the wake of the May 24, 2022, shootings in which a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at an Uvalde grade school.

Now, new schools Superintendent J.A. Gonzalez, who took office in August, will have a hand in the discussions.

For about 20 years, the city and school district have been renewing a security agreement.

Then in 2019, the city’s police department began assigning four full-time officers, including a sergeant and three officers, to help work security across the district’s 31 campuses.

As part of previous agreements, the district has paid the city $213,714 in exchange for the four officers, along with $14,000 to cover vehicle maintenance and $2,336 for travel and training, city records show.

Now, the police department, with 138 officers on duty and 11 joining the force, is straining to staff shifts to patrol the city whose population has grown by at least 11%, climbing to about 72,100, since the 2010 Census.

Every year, commissioners and board members have been automatically renewing the agreement.

But in July 2022, the parties hit a snag after Police Chief Michael Kester called on district officials to “take steps” to develop a police department like those of many school districts, adding the city would help.

In late 2022, negotiations stalled as the parties were discussing a city proposal to charge a new administrative fee aimed at offsetting some of the program’s costs.

As negotiations entered their second year, district officials were requesting the police department assign six officers to the program, officials said.

In response, city leaders proposed assigning five officers.

Last year, city officials were requesting the district pay a new administrative fee to help offset program costs, including Kester’s time in overseeing the operation along with payroll expenses, officials said.

Amid negotiations, district officials have been taking steps to bolster security across campuses.

In 2022, they entered into agreements with Cameron County and the cities of Primera and Combes to provide officers to work security, with the agencies’ daily assignments of 12 to 17 off-duty sheriff’s deputies, deputy constables and police officers, officials said.

By the opening of the 2022-2023 school year, the district was also hiring more security personnel, boosting their numbers to 42, they said.

At district offices, officials also began operating a “surveillance room,” monitoring hundreds of surveillance cameras across 31 campuses.

Meanwhile, city officials continue honoring the parties’ previous security agreement, assigning four police officers to the district.