The Citrus County School District is still trying to figure out how to pay for school security now required by state law.

• County commission refusing to raise taxes to increase funding
• Sheriff's Office, schools encouraged to consider other forms of security
• Sheriff, Schools Superintendent not in favor of Guardian program

Currently, county commissioners say they will not provide more money to make that happen, saying there’s enough available funding to meet state requirements.

The exact number of additional school resource officers Citrus County needs, however, has varied since the new state mandate went into effect. One thing commissioners agreed on was the original proposals to meet the state's mandate were too costly.

"The plan that was beginning to emerge was one that no one could afford," said Commissioner Jeff Kinnard. "It wasn't in the Sheriff's budget, the school board's budget, and certainly was not in our budget."

Commissioners feel the money the state is giving the district will be enough to cover the additional officers at each school.

"The Sheriff's numbers were roughly $100,000 per person," Commissioner Ron Kitchen explained. "The school board stated they needed roughly 7-9 people, and my understanding is we're getting roughly — the school board is getting roughly $700,000-$900,000."

For that reason, commissioners didn't want to raise taxes in order to provide any additional funding.

Even if the state funding wouldn't cover the cost of all of the additional SROs, commissioners encouraged the sheriff's office and the school board to consider other forms of security, especially depending on the size of each school.

"What we're looking at right now is how do we meet the letter of this law," Kinnard said. "And the way that you meet that is by putting an armed person and armed trained person into each school, making sure they're there. And thankfully we've got a majority of them already covered."

If the Sheriff's Office feels that it's enough of a priority for them and the School Board feels it's enough of a priority for them to do specifically SROs, then have at it — that will be on their budget," he added.

Both Sheriff Mike Prendergast and Superintendent Sandra Himmel have said they are not in favor of the Guardian program, which would allow for some staff members to be armed.