SRO Report by Sheriff Lott

At 0:27:55 on the January 28 Board Meeting video-recording, Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott was introduced to report on school resource officers (SROs).

The RCSD point-of-contact with the Richland 2 School District is Cleveland Smith. Chief Administrative Services Officer.

Twenty-seven SROs cover 22 schools, including four schools added to the SRO program last month. RCSD has a total of 90 SROs which, Sheriff Lott mentioned, is more deputies than many departments in the state have in their whole department. He mentioned that SROs teach (some) classes, including the DARE Program.

Five weapons have been confiscated in Richland 2 schools this year, including one gun.

Trustee Agostini asked Sheriff Lott how can the seriousness of "kidding-type" threats be gotten across to students; i.e., that a threat is not a joke. He said that Lexington 5 produced a video that was distributed to students.

Note to Teresa Holmes and Board members; Mute your microphones when there is a speaker at the podium.

Holmes made a gushing expression of appreciation to Sheriff Lott.

It should be remembered that Holmes went to the Sheriff's Department in March 2019 and filed a frivolous report of harassment against me. The Sheriff's Department quickly determined that her report had no merit. RCSD should have filed charges against her for false reporting, because the report contained numerous lies. You can read all about that right here.

It seems to me that Trustee Elkins-Johnson requested information from the Administration about the costs of having deputies at the school board meetings. I wonder if she ever got the details.

1/28/2020 Board Meeting - one public speaker

At the January 28, 2020 Regular Meeting of the school board, the Minutes for this meeting indicate that "One person spoke during public participation. "

It is the practice of the District not to identify the person who spoke in the Minutes and not to provide information about the topic addressed. There is no written record of the name of the person and no mention of the topic. That detail is lost forever - except in the video-recording of the meeting.

In this way the Minutes of every Board meeting are incomplete.

Who spoke during Public Participation on January 28?

At 0:03:59 on the YouTube video-recording the Board Chair introduced (sounded like) Latasha Talton to speak during the Public Participation segment of the meeting. When she introduced herself, her name sounded to me like Ratasha Talton. She told the board that she is an Activities bus driver (for the District).

Ms. Talton spoke to the board about the money ($1,000 bonus) that is set aside for the permanent, full-time employees. There are 30 drivers in the Activities (bus) section who are part-time employees. They fill in when needed and work without benefits. She mentioned "medical" (which may depend on how many hours a part-time employee can get in). They get no time off. She asked that the board remember them (when money is being passed out).

Her words were prophetic, because she referred to inclement weather and not getting paid when, for example, activities are canceled. Isn't that exactly what happened two days later?

In fairness to all employees, should not the board have made some disbursement to part-time employees, instead of just doling out $1,000 to all full-time, permanent salaried employees?

That is one brave lady.

I wonder how long she'll be employed by the District. Will she suffer the same fate as Lt. Col. Vindman and former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Yovanovitch?

Thank you, Ms. Talton, for being brave enough to step up and address the board! I hope they didn't just listen to you; I hope they heard you.