Lehighton Area School District’s board of directors took the first step Monday night toward adding two armed part-time police officers who would “provide a consistent presence” in district schools and at extracurricular activities.

By an 8-1 vote, with David Bradley Sr. voting no, the board approved petitioning the Carbon County Court of Common Pleas to add the officers. It later approved the pay rate and job description.

The district was looking into a school resource officer partnership with Lehighton borough and had proposed paying 80 percent to cover the officer, while the borough would pick up 20 percent. When the borough asked the school district to fund the officer 100 percent, however, administration began looking at other avenues.

“In talking with other districts, we began seeing that hiring our own part-time officers would give us greater flexibility. We now have the option to hire two part-time officers as opposed to one school resource officer, which would also carry with it post employment benefits.”

Locally, Hazleton and Pleasant Valley are among the districts to already have school police officers in place.

Bradley questioned why the district “didn’t consult the community prior to making the recommendation?”

“Everyone should have the opportunity to be asked prior to a police force being assigned to this district,” Bradley said.

Other board members felt they already had enough information to make a decision.

“Why would we not provide a safer environment for our students and staff to go to school?” board President Larry Stern responded.

Director Andrew Yenser, meanwhile, said making decisions on the behalf of constituents is what they were put in office to do.

“Citizens elected us to represent them,” he said. “We do talk to them at community events, the grocery store, sporting events and school concerts. But they also elected us to do research ourselves and homework ourselves to make the best decision on their behalf.”

Bradley was also critical of the district’s decision not to have conversations with parent-teacher organizations about the plan.

“Would we not hire a police officer because a certain PTO might be against it?” Director Rita Spinelli said. “We have the responsibility to take the whole district and its safety in our hands.”

In most cases, Cleaver said, the officers hired by districts are retired from state police or local municipal forces.

The officers will each be paid $30 per hour for up to 120 hours per month (30 per week) for 10 months.

The district received a grant when it was considering a school resource officer of $60,000 for the first year and $30,000 for the second year.

“By going with school police officers, the grant would only drop to $40,000 for the first year and $20,000 for the second year,” Cleaver said. “The state has made it clear that they intend on making more money available for school safety, and we fully intend on continuing to apply for those opportunities.”

The officers would have full arresting powers and work under the supervision of the superintendent.

“The plan is for the officers to rotate buildings throughout the district,” Cleaver said. “We want them to have a very visible presence. The flexibility would also allow us to have the officers at extracurricular activities. At a Friday night football game for example, where we would normally use four borough officers for security, we could cut that down to two and also use our own officers.”

Adding the officers to the district payroll would increase Lehighton’s insurance package by $2,500 per year for the extra liability.

Lehighton solicitor William Schwab said the district has to petition the court because the officers would be covering multiple jurisdictions.

“They would have the right to investigate something at East Penn or Mahoning or Franklin,” he said. “The court would also review the list of names when we have candidates.”

Schwab said he wasn’t sure how the process would work or how long it would last as no other school in the county has gone through it.

Should the court approve the district’s petition for armed officers, candidates for the positions could be brought before the board as soon as the April meeting.

“As soon as we could get them sworn in, we’d be looking to start right away,” Cleaver said.