With the first day of school less than a week away, Riverhead Town Board members and Riverhead school district representatives clashed Thursday over who should pay for school resource officers assigned to Riverhead High School and Riverhead Middle School.
The contentious discussion during the board’s Aug. 27 work session focused on a past agreement that placed two uniformed Riverhead police officers in the district’s secondary schools. Under that agreement, the district paid 50% of the cost of one officer during the 2024-25 school year and 50% of the cost of both officers during the 2025-26 school year.
Town, school district agree on staffing of resource officers in high school and middle school (July 25, 2024)
The agreement has expired, and the district is seeking to reduce its contribution.
Greg Gillen, an attorney with Guercio & Guercio, counsel to the school district, told the Town Board the district budgeted $200,000 for SROs and proposed paying 50% of the base salaries for two officers, rather than 50% of the full salary-and-benefits cost. If the town would not accept that, he said, the district could afford to pay 50% of the full cost of one officer, leaving one fewer SRO in the schools.
“Our offer has been, since the beginning of the summer, to pay 50% of the salaries for the two SRO officers,” Gillen said, according to the meeting transcript. “If the town board will not accept that, then what we can afford to pay for is 50% of the full benefits of one SRO officer, and we would have to take one SRO officer from you guys.”
Town officials pushed back, saying the district had previously agreed to increase its share and should have planned for the full cost in its budget.
Councilman Ken Rothwell said the town paid 75% of the program’s cost in the first year of the agreement and 50% in the second. He said the district should have treated SROs as a school budget priority.
“Reinstate it and put the kid’s safety first and foremost above everything that you do at the school district,” Rothwell said.
Councilwoman Denise Merrifield said Riverhead taxpayers who live in other school districts should not be asked to subsidize security in Riverhead Central School District buildings. Portions of Riverhead Town lie within the Shoreham-Wading River, Mattituck-Cutchogue and Eastport-South Manor school districts.
The town’s 2026-27 final assessment roll shows the issue is most significant in the Shoreham-Wading River school district, which includes 1,739 Riverhead Town parcels. The roll also lists 125 Riverhead parcels in the Mattituck-Cutchogue district and just one in Eastport-South Manor, which Merrifield cited during the discussion.
“I don’t think that’s fair that people are paying school district taxes in Shoreham-Wading River and also in Eastport-South Manor, that they’re being asked to pay additional monies towards a school district that they are not getting any services from, that not that their children go to,” Merrifield said. “It is not fair. And I represent not just residents from Riverhead that attend the Riverhead School District. I represent residents that also go to those two different school districts.”
Merrifield said it seems the Riverhead Central School District is shifting its financial burden onto the taxpayers of the entire town of Riverhead, which she said is not fair. The district avoided having to pierce the 2% tax levy cap by shifting that burden to the town, Merrifield said.
Rothwell agreed. ‘“You looked at what you want to keep in your budget and what you want to cut, and you guys chose to cut the SRO program. That’s what you did. And you chose not to keep it, but you chose to bill us for the services.”
Gillen disputed the town’s characterization, saying the district was not trying to end the program and remained committed to student safety.
“We are trying to work with the town of Riverhead to continue the program,” he said. “I’m not looking to tear it up.”
Council Member Joann Waski asked why, with an operating budget of over $200 million this year, the district “cannot find any money” to pay for its own SROs.
Gillen said the district has, since the beginning of the summer, offered to pay 50% of the salaries for the two SRO officers. If the Town Board will not accept that, then what we can afford to pay for is 50% of the full cost, including benefits, of one SRO officer. The district cannot afford the full 50% share of salary and benefits for two officers, Gillen said.
“But you still have your assistant to the assistant to the assistant of an assistant working within the school district,” Waski countered. “That’s more important than the safety of your students? “
“That’s a gross mischaracterization,” Gillen replied.
“I don’t want to litigate the point, but …the bottom line, we looked at what we could afford and we put $200,000 in the budget,” he said. “We are trying to work with the town of Riverhead to continue the program.”
The SRO program followed years of intermittent discussion between the town and district over armed police presence in schools. RiverheadLOCAL reported in 2018 that the town and school district were discussing cost-sharing for a school resource officer after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The Town Board later authorized an agreement that year to provide one SRO, with the town and district splitting the cost equally.
That officer was assigned primarily to the high school, with possible assignments to other district buildings. The district and town split the cost of one SRO until the COVID-19 pandemic shut down schools in 2020. The officer did not return after buildings reopened in 2021.
Calls for increased security grew louder in 2023 after a high school student was arrested for bringing loose bullets into school and, later, three middle school students were arrested on weapons charges in separate incidents. Parents demanded added security measures, including metal detectors, private security and school resource officers.
In July 2024, Riverhead police officers Eric Cohen and Kaley Castantine, were reassigned from the department’s Community Oriented Policing Enforcement unit to serve as SROs at the high school and middle school. The two officers’ annual salaries at the time were $143,105 each, with salary increases scheduled under the town’s police union contract.
The agreement said the SROs would enhance security, help with emergencies and emergency planning, teach specialized classes, refer students and families to community resources, and help build relationships between students and law enforcement. It also said they were not to act as school disciplinarians or participate in student searches conducted by school officials.
At Thursday’s work session, Police Chief Ed Frost said the expired contract required an SRO in the middle school and high school daily, with the town required to cover absences.
“Contractually, in this past contract that just expired, [there were] very stringent guidelines where we need to have an SRO in the middle school and the high school daily,” Frost said. “Even if they’re on vacation, we have to cover them.”
Frost said that differs from arrangements in other parts of Suffolk County, where SROs move among multiple school districts and are not assigned daily to one building.
District officials and town board members also discussed the complicated geography of the Riverhead school district, which has different boundaries than the Town of Riverhead and takes in portions of Riverhead, Southampton and Brookhaven towns.
Councilman Bob Kern again suggested the school district seek financial help from Southampton Town because more than 1,400 students from Riverside and Flanders attend Riverhead schools but their families do not pay Riverhead town taxes that support the Riverhead Police Department.
In the past, Kern has advocated for the Southampton Town hamlets to be shifted out of the Riverhead school district and into a school district within the boundaries of the Town of Southampton. Riverhead Central School District was formed by voter referendum in 1956 when the Riverhead Village Union Free School District consolidated with 10 smaller districts, including the Flanders Common School District. The consolidation referendum was approved by voters in the 11 affected school districts in May 1956, and the consolidation took effect July 1, 1956.
Riverside was already part of the Riverhead Village district before that, reportedly since the Civil War era, so the 1956 consolidation added Flanders through the former Flanders Common School District.
If the consolidation can’t be undone, Kern has argued, Southampton Town should bear responsibility for the costs of educating students who live in Southampton Town but attend schools in the Riverhead school district.
“The median income here is $75,000. The median income over there is about $1.5 million, maybe $10.5 million. So, I’m just asking you, you know, maybe, you know, I, you know, to go over there and ask them, Hey, we need help because Riverhead is educating your Southampton students from Flanders and Riverside,” he said at Thursday’s meeting.
Phillips Avenue Elementary School, located in Riverside, has an SRO provided by Southampton Town Police.
Riverhead School Superintendent Bob Hagan said the district wants the SRO program to continue and praised the officers’ work in the schools.
“The SROs are amazing people,” Hagan said. “They work tremendously well with our kids, with our community, with our faculty. They are part of what we do.”
Hagan reiterated that the district allocated $200,000 in its budget to help fund the program and is willing to work with the town.
“What we want to do is we want to work together, and we want to make sure that this goes forward,” he said.
By the end of the discussion, no agreement had been reached. Supervisor Jerry Halpin asked district officials to go back and reconsider their offer, while saying the town would also review the district’s proposal.
“We need to come to a resolution here,” Halpin said. “We need to work forward.”
Town Attorney Erik Howard said the two sides could consider an interim agreement, but said a broader agreement addressing the full school year would be preferable.
Merrifield said she was not in agreement, but would meet with the school board and listen.
The district’s first day of classes is Thursday, Sept. 3.
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