Several DeKalb County school resource officers have been paid tens of thousands of dollars in overtime in the current and previous school years, records obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution show.
In the 2022-2023 school year, school resource officers were paid an average of $58,650, and received an average of $19,400 in overtime pay, a review of the payment logs of more than 50 officers showed. But two officers earned more than $100,000 in overtime pay — or roughly 2,000 hours of overtime — in that same year. Three earned more than their salary in overtime. And 11 officers earned more than 50% of their salaries in overtime pay.
The trend appears to continue this school year. Seven officers had earned more additional pay than regular pay by the beginning of March. One officer had already more than doubled his salary.
In total, DeKalb, the state’s third-largest district, paid officers more than $1 million outside their base salaries in both school years.
School resource officers are law enforcement personnel stationed at schools. They carry weapons, respond to emergencies on campus and work with school personnel to maintain a safe environment.
The district is investigating the overtime pay given to some officers, it said in a statement to the AJC. The AJC began requesting information about overtime for officers in September and obtained some records through the Georgia Open Records Act. The school district’s investigation has been going on since at least December, as reported by Channel 2 Action News. The AJC confirmed that the investigation is still open.
District leaders declined to comment on the overtime issue directly, stating that personnel matters are confidential.
“We’re doing the investigation as a district and we’ll move accordingly based on what our policies and our legal recommendations are,” Superintendent Devon Horton said in an interview with the AJC.
Officers must justify overtime requests in writing, and supervisors must sign off. A review of one officer’s overtime records shows reasons like “morning coverage” and “ERT” (Emergency Response Team) listed as common justification for overtime.
The law enforcement industry has had a hard time in recent years finding and keeping qualified officers, said Mo Canady, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers. Metro Atlanta school systems are not exempt from those challenges: In the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year, the AJC found that six Atlanta-area school systems, including DeKalb, were trying to fill 100 openings.
In the past six months, DeKalb has only been able to hire a couple of officers, Horton said. Another three or four people are being trained at the state level to work in the district. In upcoming budget discussions, district leaders will consider raising the salary for officers or paying for specialty training in an effort to recruit more people.
“It’s been tough,” Horton said.
Facing shortages, agencies often rely on overtime for officers to compensate, Canady said.
“Unfortunately, the only answer some agencies have is to reuse their people,” he said. School resource officers in particular are often needed outside of the school day for things like athletic events or extracurriculars. “Those kinds of thing can really drive (overtime rates) at times.”
DeKalb does not appear to have a policy limiting the amount of overtime an employee can receive. But Horton and School Board Chair Diijon DaCosta said the district is in the process of reviewing all of its policies and updating them where necessary — which would include policies about employee overtime.
Fiscal responsibility has been a concern in DeKalb: State auditors previously found that the school district paid employees in the human resources and payroll departments bonuses that they were not eligible for. Audits of its spending of pandemic aid and sales tax funds are ongoing.
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