Alamance-Burlington schools renew $3.1 million for 36 resource officers

The Alamance-Burlington school board has voted 7-0 to renew $3.1 million in contracts for 36 school resource officers, keeping armed law-enforcement presence in place across the district for the 2025-2026 school year. The decision covers one of the system’s largest safety-related expenses and preserves the officer network that school and city officials have long treated as a core part of campus security.

A Burlington city webpage describes the School Resource Officer Program as a vital entity of the Burlington Police Department and says the officers are certified law-enforcement officers permanently assigned to schools. The city says those officers serve in elementary, middle and high schools, along with the Career and Technical Education Center in Burlington city limits, giving the district a direct police presence in the places where thousands of Alamance County students spend their day.

The spending answers a specific problem: how to keep a law-enforcement response available inside schools without pulling officers away from city or county duty elsewhere. Supporters of the model say SROs can help deter threats, respond to emergencies, assist with student conflicts and handle incidents that require police expertise. In a district as large as Alamance-Burlington, renewing every one of the 36 positions signals that board members still see that role as essential.

The tradeoff is financial. A $3.1 million SRO commitment competes with other school needs, including classroom resources, teacher support, transportation, maintenance and student services. That pressure matters more now because ABSS has also faced a budget deficit of $3.5 million and relied on $7.5 million in federal ESSER money that ended in 2024. In another budget cycle, the district asked the Alamance County Board of Commissioners for more than $59 million, while the county proposal would have allocated $46,795,651.

The school resource officer debate is not new in Alamance County. In 2021, ABSS proposed spending $1.1 million to hire enough SROs to cover every school in the county, and a local critic argued that students needed counselors, psychologists and nurses rather than more policing. That argument still shadows school safety budgeting, even as the board keeps the officers on the books as a recurring line item and not a one-time purchase.

For now, the 7-0 vote leaves the district with the same basic formula it has relied on: police inside schools, a multimillion-dollar annual cost, and a continuing question over whether safety dollars are best spent on officers or on other student supports.